By Noah Zucker

This story was corrected to include the correct amount of money included in Gov. John Carney's  clean water proposal.

MILFORD — As the city begins its slow thaw into spring, the Delaware Nature Society is preparing to bring educational, nature-oriented programming to the Mispillion Riverwalk downtown.

Milford City Council approved a memorandum of agreement between DelNature and the city’s Parks & Recreation department at its last meeting.

“What the memorandum of understanding allows us to do is to provide public programming that is provided on or at the Riverwalk and Goat Island,” said Matt Babbitt, the site manager of DelNature’s Abbott’s Mill Nature Center, located on the Mispillion’s headwaters outside of Milford.

“The idea behind this is to kind of leverage our expertise as outdoor educators with their facilities and resources to better serve the Milford community here,” he said.

DelNature already provides lots of programming at its other two sites on the Mispillion, Abbott’s Mill and Slaughter Beach’s Marvel Saltmarsh Preserve.

In addition to being where the Mispillion feeds into the Delaware Bay, the salt marsh preserve is an important tourist attraction and ecological site.

Mr. Babbitt described the area around Slaughter Beach as globally significant.

“The mouth of the Mispillion, where it empties out into Delaware Bay,” is where “there’s a massive (annual) convergence of migratory shorebirds, most famously the red knot, that rely on horseshoe crab eggs as their food for their full migration,” Mr. Babbitt said.

He said these birds “migrate from the southern tip of South America all the way into the Canadian Arctic every year, and the Mispillion and Slaughter Beach and the Delaware Bay is the halfway point. They will spend about two weeks here fattening up and eating about twice their weight in horseshoe crab eggs every May and June before continuing on their way.”

Mr. Babbitt said DelNature already has one activity planned for Goat Island, a nature preserve connected to the Riverwalk by a footbridge that serves as the trail’s eastern terminus. At 8 a.m. May 1, ornithologist Dr. Ian Stewart will lead a free, all-ages migratory bird-banding seminar on the island.

The group of up to 30 people will safely catch birds in large nets, tag them so they can be tracked and release them back into the wild.

To learn more about this and other activities or to sign up, call DelNature at 422-0847, send an email to info@delnature.org or visit its website.

DelNature will also be providing a canoe series, which will explore the entirety of the Mispillion watershed this spring.

“We’ll be offering Thursday evening sunset paddles and Saturday afternoon paddles from April through June. It’ll be open to the full public,” Mr. Babbitt said. “The idea is we’ll be paddling downtown by the river there, but we’ll also be checking out some of the ponds that feed into the river.”

Anne Harper, DelNature’s executive director, said this opportunity to show the Mispillion in its entirety is of great value to the organization.

“The Mispillion Riverwalk Greenway is the largest municipal park in the state, and it provides an opportunity to help tell this story about the Mispillion River watershed,” she said.

“We have the opportunity to interpret the entire watershed, from the headwaters through the town of Milford and out to Slaughter Beach, where we have the Marvel Saltmarsh Preserve,” Ms. Harper said.

“Clean water is a major focus for DelNature,” she said. “I find the Mispillion River watershed exciting because of exactly that.”

In comparison to many other rivers in this part of the country, the Mispillion has been left largely untouched. Although it does pass through a section of Milford that was once a hub for the shipbuilding industry, for most of its course, the river is bounded by woodland and farms.

“We have advocated for clean-water legislation statewide since 2014, and we’re very excited that this year, the governor is proposing a $50 million fund in the Capital Infrastructure Bill for clean water,” Ms. Harper said.

“We also support House Bill 200, which provides the strategy for uses of those funds going forward,” she said. “These are initiatives that will dramatically impact the opportunity to ensure that every community in Delaware has clean water going forward.”

While Ms. Harper said that DelNature has considered getting involved with the Vinyard Shipyard, a defunct industrial site bisecting the Riverwalk, she said the organization is not currently in a position to buy it and does not have the expertise to run a historical site about shipbuilding without outside help.

“The Mispillion has an interesting history,” Ms. Harper said. “Abbott’s Mill illustrates part of that history of using water power for industry.”

Mr. Babbitt said a mill was first built on the site in 1795. Although its no longer used to crush corn, wheat and barley into various types of flour, it’s still completely functional. Inside the building, there’s even a working scale model of the mill, so visitors can understand exactly what they are looking at.

The site was bought by the state in 1963, and in 1981, DelNature entered into a partnership that gave it responsibility for the mill and the nature preserve around it.

Ms. Harper said DelNature was founded in 1964. It has a three-part mission based around education about, advocacy for and preservation of Delaware’s remaining natural areas. The organization currently has four educational centers across the state, in Wilmington, Hockessin, Greenville and Milford.

This new partnership between Milford and DelNature had been in the works for months when City Council finally approved it Feb. 22.

“We believe they are a great provider of programming, specifically educational-type programming, anything around the water,” Brad Dennehy, Milford’s Parks & Recreation director, said during that meeting.

“Milford has invested a lot of money in building the infrastructure in terms of the Riverwalk over several years,” Mr. Dennehy said. “I think it really behooves us to enter into this partnership.”

Vice Mayor Jason James agreed, saying he hopes these activities would be a boon for commerce downtown.

“Some of those people that are coming to Milford and Milford residents will come out and find their way to downtown Milford, where they can utilize some of the shops and stores,” he said.

Ms. Harper said the arrangement is mutually beneficial.

“It’s leveraging our expertise and their mission to engage the community in outdoor activities in all of their parks,” she said. “They’re able to provide or sponsor, essentially through this partnership with DelNature, opportunities for environmental education on the Mispillion Riverwalk Greenway and at Goat Island, which has some unique ecological habitats.”

Mr. Babbitt added that the arrangement may help DelNature reach new demographics in the Milford area.

“We really view it as a way to further serve our community and really meet our community where they are, as opposed to only being able to have them (at Abbott’s),” he said.

At several points in public discussions about the partnership, Mr. Dennehy expressed a desire to have Milford’s “inner-city kids” be able to easily access DelNature’s programming. It’s much simpler for them to do that at the Riverwalk, which can be accessed by foot for many in town, as opposed to visiting the Abbott’s Mill site, which would require a car.

When asked why a tourist would opt for a day on the Mispillion over the beach, Mr. Babbitt described the river experience as much more relaxing.

“I think there is a lot of natural beauty on the Mispillion,” he said. “It’s a peaceful, quieter time and a way to escape the hustle and traffic of the beach.”