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The Delaware River is the longest
"free-flowing" river in the eastern United States. It originates on
the western slopes of the Catskill mountains in eastern New York and extends 330 miles
from the confluence of its East and West branches at Hancock, N.Y. to the mouth of the
Delaware Bay. The river is fed by 216 tributaries, the largest being the Schuylkill and
Lehigh Rivers in Pennsylvania. In all, the basin contains 13,539 square miles, draining
parts of Pennsylvania (6,422 square miles or 50.3 percent of the basin's total land area);
New Jersey (2,969 square miles, or 23.3%); New York (2,362 square miles, 18.5%); and
Delaware (1,002 square miles, 7.9%). Almost ten percent of the nation's population relies on the waters of the Delaware River Basin for drinking and industrial use, yet the basin drains only four-tenths of one percent of the total continental U.S. land area. Two stretches of the Delaware River, extending 107 miles from Hancock, N.Y. to the Delaware Water Gap, have been included in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. The two designated river corridors total 124,929 acres. It is navigable by large, oceangoing vessels as far inland as Philadelphia and by smaller vessels to Trenton, New Jersey. The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal connects the Delaware River below Wilmington Delaware, with Chesapeake Bay. The canal is navigable by oceangoing vessels. Through the Delaware River Basin Commission, created in 1961, the federal government and the four Basin states-New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware-jointly manage Basin assets and problems. |