What do Boeing, Sunoco, Campbell’s Soup, DuPont, Wawa, Starbucks, Iron Hill Brewery, the Philadelphia Eagles, Salem Nuclear Power Plant, and the United States Navy have in common? They all depend on the waters of the Delaware Estuary to sustain their business.
The natural resources of the Delaware Estuary watershed provide tremendous economic value to our region. This report examines that value in three distinct ways:
- Through economic value directly related to the Delaware Estuary’s water resources and habitats. Using economic activity as a measure of value, we find that the Delaware Estuary contributes over $10 billion in annual economic activity from recreation, water quality and supply, hunting and fishing, forests, agriculture and parks.
- Through the value of the goods and services provided by the Delaware Estuary’s ecosystems. Using ecosystem goods and services as a measure of value, we find that the ecosystems of the Delaware Estuary provide $12 billion annually in goods and services in 2010 dollars ($2010), with a net present value of $392 billion calculated over a 100-year period.
- Through employment related to the Delaware Estuary’s water resources and habitats. Using employment as a measure of value, we find that the Delaware Estuary directly and indirectly supports over 500,000 jobs with over $10 billion in wages annually. This does not include the thousands or even millions of jobs in companies and industries that rely on waters of the Delaware Estuary for their industrial and commercial processes.
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