Blue herons and great and snowy egrets have returned to local streams. Swimming and boating races are now regularly held on the Cooper River - something that would have been unthinkable in the 1970s. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1967 required each state to develop water quality standards to protect surface water and groundwater. New Jersey state legislation required all future sewerage systems to be developed regionally. In 1972, the Camden County Board of Chosen Freeholders created the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority to meet these requirements.
Tertiary treatment is much more expensive to build and operate than secondary treatment.
As a result, it was cheaper and better for the environment to locate the main plant to discharge into the Delaware River rather than into one of the small interior streams of Camden County. Delaware No. 1 WPCF now provides primary and secondary treatment and sludge dewatering. The southeastern end of the county is in the Atlantic Basin, where water flows into the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Great Egg Harbor River or the Mullica River. Water regulatory agencies prefer to have sewage treated and returned to the drainage basin it came from. They want to make sure that stream flow is not harmed by constantly removing water from one basin and not returning it.