Our Mission
Our mission is to organize, secure, and support both existing and new public and private partnerships and new funding sources and operating models in order to supplement short-term and long-term maintenance and capital improvement initiatives by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to sustain the Delaware Canal. We seek to have the Canal fully-watered, in order to preserve its many ecological, cultural, and economic benefits. We respect the Delaware Canal as an enduring historic artifact, we support it as a public recreation and civic amenity, and we honor its beauty.
Our Goals
Our goals are to ensure in the future the Delaware Canal will:
Be full of water from end to end on a sustainable and reliable basis
Have adequate maintenance especially preventative maintenance
Have adequate public access to the Canal throughout its 60-mile path
Our Strategy
Our strategy is to achieve our goals by serving as a think-tank and catalyst for change. We envision innovative strategies, and then secure partners and funding to execute those projects. Delaware Canal 21 is pursuing two approaches to solving the problems plaguing our Canal: top down, to improve the Canal’s business model, and bottom up, to improve the Canal one project at a time.
The Delaware Canal Vision Study has identified dozens of specific opportunities for improvement, essentially forming a roadmap to realizing the full potential of the Canal. These projects target locations throughout the Canal’s 60-mile length, and fall into categories such as Water, Access, Environmental, Safety, and Structures.
Delaware Canal 21 supplements local vision and experience by investigating other historic canals and park systems to discover ideas, financing models, asset management systems, funding sources, technology, and other new best practices that can be utilized at our Canal.
Context for Our Efforts
The commercial operation of the Delaware Canal ended in 1931. Since then, the destiny of the canal and its tow path has been determined largely by volunteers who were committed to saving it from being destroyed and to restoring it.
This began in the early 1930s, when the Delaware Valley Protective Association was established. Others that followed were the Lower Bucks County Canal Conservation Commission, those community members who sought and were granted the National Historic Landmark designation, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Friends of the Delaware Canal, Historic Delaware Canal Improvement Corporation, and many individual volunteers who prevented the canal from being completely filled in. They have sought the ways and means to keep it maintained and watered.
It would have gone the way of so many other canals, like the nearby Schuylkill Canal, where few pieces remain, were it not for the passion and commitment of 90 years of volunteer effort.
Delaware Canal 21 is the newest of the volunteer organizations committed to sustaining the Canal. Through in-depth studies, building relationships with the state agencies that own the canal, creating community connections, and seeking guidance from others with canal experience, DC 21 has charted a new direction. The new direction, as memorialized in our mission statement, is to establish new partnerships and funding sources for the short- and long-term maintenance and capital needs.