Garlits Plan of 4/13/06
May 24, 2009

Flat Brook Creek, within Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, would become a reservoir if a Bucks County man's anti-flood plans are adopted. Nearby Flatbrookville, a largely abandoned New Jersey community, would be under water. Mark A. Genito/Pocono Record

By David Pierce
Pocono Record Writer
August 13, 2006

The long, divisive battle over what is now Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area may be history, but don't tell that to a downstream property owner looking for a solution to persistent flooding.

Bucks County landowner Edward "Skip" Garlits proposes placing a series of nine temporary flood gates across the Delaware River at Wallpack Bend, near Bushkill off Route 209 in the national park. The gates — up to 90 feet high — would close only during a major flood emergency, with a natural low-lying spillway holding back up to 120 billion gallons of floodwaters until the danger to downstream shoreline homes has receded.

Sounding off about flooding

The Portland Area Business Association is hosting a meeting for anyone affected by the June 2006 flood and interested in preventing future floods. Attendees will be encouraged to sign a letter to Gov. Ed Rendell, as a member of the Delaware River Basin Commission, to support the lowering of water levels held in New York's reservoirs.

The meeting will be held at 5 p.m. Monday at Robert C's Café, Route 611, Portland.
For information, call Nancy Knott at 570 897-7140 or Tammy Shepard at 570 872-4257.

He also wants to create a 12-mile-long reservoir on nearby Flat Brook, on the New Jersey side of the park, which feeds into the Delaware at Wallpack Bend. The Flat Brook reservoir would be used as a source for drinking water, limited flood storage and generation of hydroelectricity.

"My contention is it's better to flood the park, flood picnic pavilions and public facilities than to flood somebody's house," Garlits said during a recent presentation before the Yardley Borough Flood Task Force formed after the June floods. "It's that simple."

BUT WINNING APPROVAL for such a major project, even if government engineers determined it was environmentally and financially feasible, is far from simple.

The proposed site is in the midst of a national recreation area visited each year by an estimated five million people who canoe and swim the waterways, visit spectacular waterfalls and take in events centered around historic buildings and natural beauty.

The Delaware River within the recreation area is protected from development through an act of Congress called the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

All that long-time Poconos residents have to do is recall another massive, ill-fated flood control and hydroelectric project named after nearby Tocks Island, and painful memories come roaring back.
Following the devastating 1955 flood that killed 78 people in Monroe County alone, officials proposed the Tocks Island dam and a 37-mile-long lake for hydroelectric generation, flood control and public recreation. In the 1960s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began forcibly buying land for the project from hundreds of property owners, at the Corps' determined price, through a process called eminent domain.

A few were so distraught over losing their properties that they committed suicide.

The Corps bought the land — at the insistence of political leaders through an act of Congress — even though an earlier Corps study determined the geology at Tocks Island was too unstable to support a dam.
First skyrocketing costs, then environmental concerns led to numerous delays. The Corps responded by temporarily renting out some of the homes on the New Jersey side of the river that they took from the original owners. Eventually hundreds of "river people," or "squatters" as many of the locals called them, started occupying homes on both sides of the river in defiance of local, state and federal officials.

It took a lengthy court battle and a final raid in 1974 by federal marshals before the last of the squatters were removed. Support for the dam waned and the National Park Service, which was to run the recreation area to be created as part of the dam, took over the entire 77,000-acre project and converted all of it to the national park of today.

For more about the history of Tocks Island, go to www.poconorecord.com/tocksisland.

GARLITS, 62, ISN'T AN ENGINEER, though one summer during college he was a summer intern at the Delaware River Basin Commission, the multi-state agency formed after the 1955 flood, which manages the river. He went on to earn a building technology degree from Rider College. Today Garlits and his family own a local printing business and run a daycare center.

Garlits and other Bucks County residents who live along the Delaware and its tributaries — like affected residents in Monroe and Pike counties — are tired, financially strapped and frustrated after the third "100-year flood" to hit them in two years.

Local governments in Bucks County have explored a number of solutions, from buying out shoreline owners and returning flood plains to a natural state, to elevating some current homes on stilts. They've also talked about dredging the river of debris, or removing old railroad bridge abutments from the water to improve the flow.
Garlits was named to the Yardley Borough flood task force formed after the June storms. He resumed old contacts with the Basin Commission, based in nearby Trenton, N.J., and searched its records for flood-control ideas.

Garlits found 1946 engineering plans by the Philadelphia Water Commission to divert water at Wallpack Bend as a new source of city drinking water. It included plans for drilling a 15-foot-wide tunnel from Wallpack Bend to the city, a distance of 80 miles.

The Philadelphia project never got off the drawing board.

"All the engineering work was done on the thing," Garlits told those gathered at a July meeting of the task force. The data included results of test borings that determined there is sufficient bedrock to support a dam, Garlits said, unlike the unstable geology detected in another study for Tocks Island just a few miles downstream.

"Wallpack Bend is on solid rock," Garlits said. "At Tocks Island they drilled and couldn't find the bottom."
GARLITS USED the old Philadelphia Water study figures as the basis for his 30-to-90-foot-high flood gates on the Delaware.

Garlits conceded that his flood control plan would result in temporary flooding of parts of the recreation area. The largely abandoned New Jersey community of Flatbrookville would be under water, and small portions of Old Mine Road also might be inundated, he said.

Garlits said he wasn't sure what flood impact his proposal would have on New Jersey and Pennsylvania ranger stations, Dingmans campground and the Eshback boat launch site. But he said it's easier to move those facilities outside the impact area of the flood control project than to deal with downstream flooding from Monroe to Bucks counties.

"You're going to have restrooms and things of that nature flooded," Garlits said. "You're going to get parking lots flooded. That's a given. But it's better than flooding all those houses."

The private wooden toll bridge at Dingmans Ferry would be flooded during times when the gates at Wallpack Bend are lowered, but he calls that a blessing.

"This is actually a savior for Dingmans Ferry Bridge," Garlits said. "It would go over the bridge, but you wouldn't have the rapid water flow."

The historic Van Campen Inn on the New Jersey side, still privately operated as a restaurant, would be spared. "It will be lakefront property," Garlits said. "It'll be beautiful."

BUT IT WOULD take an act of Congress — first to repeal the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act that protects the upper Delaware from major alterations, then to require the National Park Service to deed the land to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for development — before officials could begin updated studies to build the flood gates and reservoir.

"That would be a huge obstacle to overcome," said Malcolm Wilbur, acting National Park Service superintendent for the recreation area. "The Park Service's mission is to take a very, very long-term view of the stewardship of the land. We're subject to the laws of Congress, and Congress can do whatever it wants."

Turning Flat Brook into a reservoir would severely damage the prime trout fishery there, Wilbur added. Garlits, though, says the trout problem could be fixed by erecting fish ladders in the reservoir.

Wilbur suggests another solution to shoreline flooding that also requires political will and money.

"The river hydrologists say that the best way to deal with flooding downstream is to prevent development beyond what is already there," said Wilbur, allowing water to gradually seep back into the flood plain after severe storms.

Garlits says it's much more practical, particularly for those who already built near the river, to control flooding from a location that doesn't have many residents.

"The big thing of course is the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act," Garlits agrees. "But after the third flood, everything is on the table."

GARLITS' PRESENTATION to his flood task force attracted considerable regional interest. Those on hand to hear it included state Rep. David Steil, an aide to U.S. Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, two engineers from the Delaware River Basin Commission and an official from the Army Corps. Members of other local flood tasks forces throughout the lower Delaware Valley also attended.

Asked who would be the biggest losers if the flood gates and reservoir were built, Garlits replied, "Nobody."
The federal officials were pressed by several people to comment on the feasibility of Garlits' proposal. Chuck MacIntosh, chief of the Army Corps special studies section, pointed to prohibitions in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

"Right now, legally, you could not pursue it," MacIntosh said. "There's nothing to analyze."

He said even if the law was repealed and everyone agreed to resurrect the Tocks Island dam proposal — where nearly all the engineering work has been completed — it would take two to three years to update the study to meet current standards. The Wallpack Bend flood gates and Flat Brook reservoir would require a lot of additional study that could take 10 or 12 years, MacIntosh added.

"You'd have to look at all the soil conditions there" including the potential for earthquake damage, he said. "You don't want an 80-foot wall of water coming down."

He said the cost of building the larger Tocks Island project, even if the earlier plans were left unchanged, would total about $3.5 billion today. Garlits, though, says MacIntosh's estimate fails to account for the fact the government already owns the land it acquired from residents decades ago by eminent domain.

Reaction among Buck County residents at the task force meeting was mixed. They agreed that "global" approaches were needed to solve flooding problems for a wide geographic area. Most, though, were unfamiliar with Tocks Island or the Poconos in general. None appeared to be aware of the financial and emotional pain sustained by Pocono residents who lost their land through forced acquisition.

Hank Hoffmeister of Lower Makefield Township, who serves on a local sewer authority, echoed the views of several people when he said the task force would be better served focusing on ways to dredge the local river of debris, and debating whether the state and federal governments should be asked to buy out homebuyers or pay to place their homes on stilts.

"Those are things that can be done immediately without a big, expensive dam," Hoffmeister said. "I'm not saying Skip's proposal doesn't have merit, but it's so time-consuming."

Garlits says he is aware of the history that forced former residents out of today's national park. But he disagrees with the notion that his proposal will reopen old wounds, that it might offend those who at least take solace that the dam was stopped and the area became a protected recreation area.

"Some say, 'Our family sacrificed for a purpose that didn't happen,'" Garlits said. "Now it's happening.
"Today the federal government owns the perfect site," he added. "It's time to complete the project."

THE BATTLE: Flooding and reservoirs

The theory: Residents along the Delaware River accuse upriver reservoirs of being too full of water when major storms arrive. This turns heavy rains into devastating floods, they say.

The evidence: Before the two most recent "100-year" floods, water levels in Cannonsville, Neversink and Pepacton reservoirs were at or above capacity.

The other side: Reservoirs are better than nothing. They hold back water and keep floods from being worse.
The sticking point: There's not enough scientific evidence to show exactly how water run-off from full dams affects flooding. But that may change.

The River's Reach

The Delaware River Basin is defined as the land encompassing the river, all of the tributaries that feed it, and the tributaries that feed those bodies of water.
7.8 million people live in the basin.
5.2 million -- two-thirds of basin residents-- are Pennsylvanians.
14 percent of the geographic area of Pennsylvania is in the basin, including all of Monroe and Pike counties.
42 percent of the state's population lives in the basin.
15 millionpeople depend on it every day for drinking water and sanitary needs.

-- Delaware River Basin Commission, Pa. Dept. of Environmental Protection, 2000 Census