“World Rivers Day 2013” on the Schuylkill River
September 29, 2013
Bristol, PA – A canoe and kayak trip and historic canal lock opening will help raise awareness of the values and benefits that the Schuylkill and rivers everywhere provide us every day. “Healthy rivers make healthy communities,” said Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper. “Rivers provide drinking water, flood prevention, recreational opportunities, and jobs – they make our communities stronger and our quality of life richer every day,” said van Rossum.
The Delaware Riverkeeper Network and the Schuylkill Canal Association are celebrating World Rivers Day by sponsoring a guided paddling trip down the Schuylkill River and Canal in Mont Clare, PA. Guides will lead the paddlers and then local historians and authors will share the history of the historic canal, the lock house, and what it took to restore the now-beautiful Schuylkill from a the dumping ground for the coal companies it once was.
The 2-hour trip begins at the Lock #60 Canal House. We will paddle 2.5 miles down the Schuylkill River and portage our boats back up into the Schuylkill Canal to our starting point. The trip begins at 10:00 AM, ending at 2:00 PM.
A historic reundefinedenactment of the opening and closing of Schuylkill Canal’s Lock #60 will provide the back-drop for an open house of the Lock #60 lock-tender’s house and presentations of the role that the canal played in the American Industrial Revolution and then the tremendous effort and cost it took to bring the river back from the brink of ecological disaster to the beautiful river it is today.
World Rivers Day was launched in 2005 when the United Nations launched the Water for Life Decade to help create a greater awareness of the need to better care for our water resources. Since then, the event has continued to grow. In 2012, several million people across more than 60 countries, from Algeria to Austria to Australia, celebrated the many values of our waterways.
To register and get more information, call 215-369-1188 or go to www.delawareriverkeeper.org at http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/about/event.aspx?Id=413.
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