Southern New Castle County Priority Watershed Strategy

This report provides a recommended priority watershed strategy for the streams in southern New Castle County, Delaware. This strategy is designed to be consistent with the (1) total maximum daily loads (TMDL) issued for the Appoquinimink River watershed by the USEPA and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), (2) proposed revisions to the environmental protection articles of the New Castle County Unified Development Code (UDC), and (3) the 5-year New Castle County Comprehensive Plan Update currently underway. The priority watershed strategy concludes that the resource protection level (RPL) standards of the New Castle County UDC are adequate to protect water resources and natural resources in southern New Castle County at full build-out with current zoning in effect. The contiguous chain of watersheds lining the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, the Delaware Bay coast, and the Blackbird forest and wetland complex with low impervious cover and large amounts of forest, wetland and riparian buffers create an emerald ring around the rapidly growing towns of Middletown, Odessa, and Townsend (MOT) in southern New Castle County. These green watersheds should be protected from over-development by acquiring more open space and conservation easements, thus creating an unbroken ring of conservation open space-a green belt-around the periphery of the MOT village core.prepared with John Gysling, John Gaadt, and George Haggerty of the New Castle County Department of Plannin