650-Acre Reservoir Offers Vital Water Resource During Challenging Autumn Months
The fall of 2024, New Jersey, along with Pennsylvania and New York, faced extreme drought conditions and wildfires. In response to these challenges, the Merrill Creek Reservoir (MCR) is helping to protect vital resources for the state and surrounding communities.
Located in Washington Twp., Warren County, Merrill Creek Reservoir spans 2,700-acres and is owned by a consortium of several electric sector companies. The site includes a 650-acre reservoir and a 290-acre environmental preserve that protects biodiversity while providing public recreational and environmental education opportunities.
As large portions of the state experienced a record month or more without measurable rain, local lakes and reservoirs reached record-low capacities, leading to widespread water restrictions. In contrast, MCR maintained more than 95% capacity.
MCR’s unique purpose contributes to this stability. Built in 1988, it was designed not for drinking water but rather to replenish the Delaware River of water that is used for cooling power plants. MCR contains 15-billion gallons of water and is only released when requested by the Delaware River Basin Commission in times of extreme low flow of the Delaware River – which has happened only five times in MCR’s 36-year history (Sept. 1991, Sept. 1995, Dec. 1998, Oct. 2001 and Nov. 2016).
Considering climate change influenced fluctuating weather conditions, stored water at MCR is crucial now more than ever for mitigating climate related impacts. Especially, protecting critical drinking water supplies associated with the Delaware River.
The “salt line” marks where the freshwater of the Delaware River, flowing south, meets the saltwater of the Delaware Bay. Normally, in November/December, this line typically rests just over a mile north of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. However, due to the extreme fall drought and reduced river flow it reached 20 miles further north – nearly 10 miles past the Commodore Barry Bridge and only six miles from the Walt Whitman Bridge. This situation put it dangerously close to its record from the 1960s and threatened the drinking water intakes for the cities of Philadelphia and Camden.
“Philadelphia gets about 58% of its drinking water from the Delaware River, while upstream, Trenton takes its entire drinking water supply from the river,” said John Parke, Ecologist at Merrill Creek Reservoir. “About 14.2 million people rely on the Delaware River Basin for their drinking water, which constitutes about 4% of the U.S. population. Since MCR is not a drinking water supply or power-generating reservoir, we continuously store water and can release it to protect these essential resources downriver when necessary.”
While this year’s pending release to the Delaware River is uncommon, MCR provides an equally important daily release to the Merrill Creek.
Native Brook Trout at MCR
“The Lower Merrill Creek is one of the few NJ waterways that still hosts the native Brook Trout, New Jersey’s state fish,” Parke noted. “Brook Trout require very cold water to survive, so by releasing small amounts of water from the bottom of our reservoir, we ensure that the creek not only continuously flows but does so with cold water the fish need.”
NJ Forest Fire Service collecting water from MCR for an air-drop in 2023
In addition to helping to keep the Delaware River flowing in times of low flow, MCR’s reservoir, which is approximately 225 feet deep, serves as a vital water source for firefighting helicopters utilized by the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.
As the drought worsened this year and wildfires began to spread in several portions of northern New Jersey, MCR remained on standby for helicopter pick-ups.
“The last two years saw wildfires in parts of northern New Jersey that haven’t experienced such fires for decades,” said Parke. “The urban-suburban interface with forests, coupled with high-fuel loads in the forests, create the potential for devastating fires. We’re fortunate to be able to offer a large water supply that firefighters need to protect properties and contain these fires.”