SLAUGHTER BEACH, Del. - A new economic assessment recently released by The Environmental Finance Center at the University of Maryland has valued two of Delaware’s watersheds in the millions. This was the culmination of Phase 1 of research being conducted by the Waterways Infrastructure and Investment Network, which formed last year, in the hopes of creating a nature-based investment strategy to capitalize on ecotourism and the safety net that things like the wetlands can provide for Delaware.
The watersheds that were studied include the Mispillion River and Cedar Creek watersheds which encompass the Town of Slaughter Beach and the surrounding marshes along with the Town of Milford and its associated Riverwalk.
As Mayor Kathy Lock of Slaughter Beach put it, “We actually looked at our natural resources and we realized we really didn’t have a good economic basis for the values that the town and our natural resources bring to the State of Delaware.”
Mayor Kathy Lock is hopeful that by giving a value to the wetlands and waterways of these two watersheds that the state will bring more investments to smaller bay towns like hers. She noted that investing in and protecting these wetlands and natural resources is more important than ever due to increasing pressure from development, climate change, and coastal storm risks.
The wetlands act as Delaware’s first defense against incoming storms and also bring great economic value in the form of ecotourism. Ecotourism covers things such as birders, fisherman, hunters, kayakers, nature photographers, and those people who just want to get out in the wilderness.
There will be a second phase of this study which Dr. Jennifer Egan of the University of Maryland’s Environmental Finance Center says, “The second phase is to start looking at specific investments, where can we invest and what can we say about the benefits that they will bring.”
This second phase of the study is expected to be finished within the next two years and some locations which may benefit from this economic evaluation are the Dupont Nature Center, Abbott’s Mill Nature Center, and the Riverwalk Greenway.
