Water as emergency prep

What the Delaware River ‘salt line’ is, and why we should care where it is​

Among all the things that Philadelphians love about the Jersey Shore, the taste of the Atlantic Ocean is not one of them.

Fortunately, the Philadelphia Water Department assures that it’s highly unlikely that its customers ever would have saltwater running through their taps. But in recent weeks the so-called salt line — the boundary between oceanic and freshwater — along the Delaware River has spiked radically northward, the result of an astonishingly dry three months.

As of Monday, the salt line had advanced to a location near Philadelphia International Airport, about 20 miles north of average for this time of year, and about 20 miles south of the Baxter water treatment plant in Torresdale, a source of drinking water for about 60% of the city.

Delaware River water levels at 60% as salt front increases amid drought
The rains forecast for Wednesday night and Thursday morning throughout the Philly region and in upstate Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey should have at least a mild flushing effect, said David Ondrejik, meteorologist and chief hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center, which monitors conditions in the Delaware and Susquehanna Basins.

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