Bob Bateman and his partner showing a photo taken 17 years ago of their house surrounded by hay meadow.
In the nearby PSEG nuclear plant, 3 billion gallons of water are drawn per day from the Delaware River. The Salem plant is thought to be responsible for killing over 800 million fish in the Delaware River each year, four times as many bay anchovy and weakfish than are commercially
caught each year in the Bay.
In 1990, the Department of Environmental Protection ordered PSEG to build cooling towers, however in 1994, that decision was reversed.
One of the accepted counter-measures to offset the impact on marine life, was to create a wetland, effectively flooding the 32 sq. miles of dry haven that separate households in Port Norris and Bivalve from the Delaware Bay.
Today, Bob Bateman’s house is surrounded by water.