WATER OVER THE DAM
Monday, August 20, 2007
BY VAL SIGSTEDT

The Delaware River Basin Commission was created to supply New York City with 50 percent of its water. Always before, the New York City dams were the elephant in the Delaware River Basin's living room. But global warming is not simply a water theory anymore.

For 50 percent of its municipal water, New York City chose to take a river that receives such a low average amount of precipitation that it needed to dam almost every inch of its tiny watershed just to get enough water. The dam's capacity is enormous, "enough to last about a year and a half, even without one single drop more rain or snow-melt flowing into them," according to The Intelligencer (May 7).

The Delaware's headwaters, however, lie in a rainshadow; it receives whatever moisture remains in the sky after Buffalo gets its iconic "lake effect" snows and rainfall.

New York City's dams lie in a river basin that once had severe drought conditions three years in every 10, according to the Delaware River Basin Commission. And the DRBC still insists that the river is basically in a "drought paradigm," even though we are all painfully aware that there were three severe floods within a 21-month period, ending last year. But true to the mission at the DRBC, the state of New York City's reservoirs decides whether the entire river basin is in a drought -- or not. That's river basin management gone awry.

Before New York City's decison makers decided on the Delaware, someone should have told them that it is a very "flashy" river -- think flash floods and sudden, nasty droughts.

The DRBC must actually know that it administers an undependable water supply source. Now, global warming experts say, this region needs to get ready for 100 years of unprecedented "flashiness." The Union of Concerned Scientists and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are climatologists whose reports simply cannot be ignored.

New York City's planners got themselves into this mess. They designed their three huge dams above the Delaware River's civilization with tiny outflow valves be cause they couldn't conceive of ever letting their precious water out, yet they were risking a catastrophe if we experience a period of relentless rain in that small, cramped region where New York harvests its water.

The water scientists and engineers whom New York City chose to build its reservoirs 50 years ago, predicted perpetual drought in the Delaware Basin. But they and the DRBC were wrong, and many people could die because of broached dams from the unplanned storm water. The most frequent cause of catastrophic dam failure in America's antiquated infrastructure is over-topping.

Now we have a crocodile called global warming that is getting ready to bite.

We are not without defenses. Let's lower the dams to at least 80 percent of capacity; support New York City in efforts to obtain a dependable source of water; retrofit the reservoirs with real storm water outflow valves; develop flood-plain strategies; buy enough capacity in New York's dams to make us much safer; let the river flow down to the Delaware estuary where it is starved for water; turn the DRBC into the Delaware River Watershed Association and give the river a voice.

The river needs a new deal. Save the Delaware.

Val Sigstedt has lived in central Bucks County, working as an artist, since 1960. He has written about the river as a environmental columnist and activist since 1983.