READY FOR THE QUIZ?

Where are These People Swimming?

HOW ABOUT THE COOPER RIVER?

A Success Story About Your Dollars at Work...

Yes, every dollar spent on the treatment of sewage and other wastewater by property owners in Camden County is adding up to one of the most dramatic environmental success stories in the nation.

The joke used to be that if a person bathed his feet in the Cooper River, they'd fall off minutes later. But it was no joke that if a person accidentally ingested some Cooper River water, he was advised to see a doctor.

We're not saying that the Cooper is now ready to compete with Haddon Glen or Crystal Pool or any of the other man-made private swim clubs in the county. Not yet. But the Cooper River, a stream that was a certified sewer (its fecal colony count per liter of water was once in the millions!) and was used as the classic example of environmental rapes, is again a living, thriving ecosystem supporting wildlife and vegetation that hasn't been seen in decades.

Not only are Blue Herons back, staking out feeding territories while Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets and Double-crested Cormorants scrounge for crayfish, eels, and sunfish, but human activities abound and are increasing.

National rowing races are now frequent events. Pleasure sailing is more and more a family event (eight year olds can be seen learning "solo" how to man their crafts). And there's even a beach on the North Park Drive. The sand extends into the water where it's only waist high deep more than 30 feet out. While this beach is presently used for the first phase of races, it is now not an impossible dream to think of it as a swimming and sunbathing beach for Camden County residents...in the near future?

Feel good about it. Feel good about the other streams in Camden County. Your dollars are paying for the cleaning of more than 50 million gallons of wastewater every day, a large percentage of which used to go untreated into our streams and groundwater.

The Cooper is back. The Newton is back. The Big Timber is back. The Pennsauken is back. Clean enough to swim in? The investment of your dollars is headed in that direction. And not just for us, but for our children and their children...

Fishing on Newton Lake

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