Merrill Creek Reservoir

Merrill Creek Reservoir, located in Harmony Township, New Jersey in central Warren County, New Jersey, is a 650-acre (260 ha) artificial lake designed to hold 15 billion gallons of water that is surrounded by 290 acres (120 ha) of protected woodland and fields. These lands are themselves part of 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) of open spaces. Merrill Creek is connected to the Delaware River, about 3 miles (4.8 km) via a tunnel. The earthen Merrill Creek Dam (National ID # NJ00864), with a height of 280 feet (85 m) and a length at its crest of 1,140 feet (350 m), was built in 1988 by a consortium of seven electric utilities, under the mandate of the Delaware River Basin Commission. It replaces the river water lost through evaporation in the cooling of 14 power plants. The owners, known as the Merrill Creek Owners Group, are Public Service Electric and Gas, which built the reservoir for the group; Jersey Central Power and Light, Atlantic City Electric, Metropolitan Edison, Philadelphia Electric, PPL Corporation, and Delmarva Power and Light. The reservoir draws water from the Delaware in springtime, when river flow normally is abundant, and restores it in the summer, when the flow is usually meager and – compounding the problem – demand for electricity for air-conditioning is high. In addition, by maintaining an ample Delaware River flow, seawater intrusion into the aquifers that provid

Reservoir data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).