VAL SIGSTEDT LETTER

My name is Val Sigstedt. I have lived in Point Pleasant, Bucks County, Pennsylvania since 1960. I am part of the old river civilization living along the Delaware River, one of Pennsylvania’s three great river systems.

This open letter is being sent to all the members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to alert them to issues cascading down from increased flooding along the Delaware River to very basic administrative problems, and to offer reasonable solutions. We need your help. The story that follows is documented in the References.

There Are Long-standing Problems on the Delaware River
Unlike the Ohio and the Susquehanna, we do not enjoy water “peace” on the Delaware. Our river was originally diverted on May 4,1931 by a U.S. Supreme Court decision giving New York City 440 million gallons of water (mgd) from the headwaters of the Delaware, without any compensation to the donor states downstream. What we actually got was water issues and serious flow problems. The Supreme Court even promised the downstream states that eventually they too would get their rightful shares of the river, but that never happened.
Under the river’s ‘lead agency,’ the Delaware River Basin Commission’s (DRBC) current management of the River the maximization of stored water is the primary focus, and not the overall health of the Delaware River as an intact ecosystem. With the recent increase of unpredictable and extreme weather events we face the real possibility of a catastrophic failure of one or more of New York’s three earthen dams. With small spillways, the dams simply cannot be emptied fast enough under emergency conditions; when they are released at maximum capacity and all at once, they contribute collectively to severe flooding downstream in the Delaware River Valley.

Some Legal History and the Delaware’s Regulators
Pennsylvania in 1927 was offered 900 million gallons of water daily in proportion to each state’s area in the river basin. New York and New Jersey would each have gotten 600 mgd under that proposal. The opportunity passed, and the argument went to court, where the U. S. Supreme Court denied New Jersey’s appeal for riparian rights and in 1954 a second U. S. Supreme Court Decree awarded the City its present 800 million gallons daily from the Delaware.
Recognizing that this was a Solomonic decision, and in anticipation of eventual water needs downstream, the Court specifically left the case open so the states could revisit and revise the 1954 Decree for a fair distribution of the river’s water. This was a remarkable provision considering that it is in the same Decree that gives New York City its water.

But the promised fair dispersal of the Delaware’s waters never happened, and soon afterward, in1961 the DRBC was established. To ensure that the New York Diversion was implemented to the letter and not amended by the other signatory compact states, votes in the DRBC affecting the NY Diversion must be unanimous. Since then, with virtual veto power on the DRBC board, New York City has ruled the Delaware River with an iron hand. Now only by reopening the four-state Compact can real change be implemented in the River’s administration. That is why there are at presently no flood-mitigation structures on the main stem Delaware or its headwaters.
A Solution: Create Reservoir Voids for Flood Mitigation
It is time for Pennsylvania and the other two downstream states to get their grandfathered shares of the Delaware River. We need to take our promised water in the form of more regular releases of much greater volume, and the effective conversion of our shares into permanent voids in the New York reservoirs.
Voids are utterly logical. They will protect us from flooding, improve the ecology of the river from the headwaters down into the estuary, and prevent the over topping and breaching of New York’s fragile water infrastructure and the ruination of that great city’s water supply.
Voids created in the actual reservoir capacity behind the dams will trap storm water that now menaces everything precious downstream of New York City’s antique earthen dams whenever the reservoirs are full.
Flooding
Tragically, the existing spillways are undersized because they were designed to handle droughts, not floods. Over topping of earthen dams is the primary cause of dam failures in the United States. Dry-sounding words, but by 2006 there were three devastating floods in only 21 months along the Delaware River – arguably made worse by New York’s brim-full reservoirs. Because of poor anticipation and no planning the NYC reservoir managers were forced to release their water all at once to avoid over topping. The small river community below the Neversink Reservoir brought suit, trying to force New York City to stop their dam from menacing them.
This is what can happen: When water over tops an earthen dam, eventually it finds a rivulet, cuts a ditch in the dam’s top, then breaches the vulnerable heap of earth, creating a disaster. That was the exact scenario as the Johnstown Flood, a preventable calamity, entered the conscience of America.
“The Delaware Flood” would not be just a footnote. When full, with 270 billion gallons of water (total capacity) upstream and our narrow valleys below, the floodwaters would sweep everything but our cliffs down into the Estuary, rivaling Katrina in Bay Saint Louis, America’s tsunami. Can’t we and New York City just talk about it? Serious storms are coming. We really are in this together.
Climatologists: Unprecedented Severe Storms for this Region
The Delaware is called a “flashy” river by people who live near it, meaning it has always been subject to dramatic swings between floods and droughts. Now modern climatologists confirm that it really is flashy. Global climate experts predict that violent storms and weather uncertainties will actually increase both in frequency and severity in our region in the near future. This paragraph from the Union of Concerned Scientists, describes our new climate paradigm:
”Heavy, damaging rainfall events have increased measurably across the Northeast in recent decades. Intense spring rains struck the region in both 2006 and 2007, for example, causing widespread flooding. The frequency and severity of heavy rainfall events is expected to rise further under either (higher or lower carbon) emissions scenario.”
Droughts
The permanent “Drought Paradigm” declared by the DRBC for the Delaware River Basin is arbitrary, self-serving and wrong, if only because the DRBC just considers the climate directly affecting New York City’s reservoirs, not the entire river basin’s ‘drought’ situation.
But also, the headwaters the Delaware Watershed in the Catskill Mountains lies in what hydrologists call the permanent “rain shadow” of those mountains – making the Delaware reservoir watershed subject to “droughts” three years in every ten (DRBC-Goddell). A shaky source for serious water.
Consequently, the sites for New York City’s reservoirs were poorly located and are grossly oversized, perpetuating permanent drought conditions downstream. Neither Pennsylvania or New York City are even in the same climate zone as the New York reservoirs. New York City is in the Hudson River Watershed – it’s not in the Delaware Watershed.
The Audit: New York City’s Delaware Tunnel Is In Dangerous Disrepair
For all these reasons and others that follow, the Delaware River is a proven undependable regional water source. And now, according to the NY State Comptroller's Office's Audit of the Delaware Aqueduct, in 2007, the Tunnel that carries that water to New York City appears to be self-destructing, an unreliable piece of antique infrastructure. (Referenced below.)
New York diverts the Delaware River water from its impoundments using a dangerously weakened, ribbed steel tunnel running for 60-miles from the Catskill Mountains, and down under New York City. It used to be called “an engineering wonder; now not so much.
In a devastating, 19-page, NYC-commissioned 2007 Audit delivered to NY-DEP, the City’s water company, engineers say the tunnel could collapse at any time, and it leaks at least 35 million gallons of water a day, equivalent to half of the water needs of Boston.

New York’s mighty Delaware Water System is engineered to deliver its whole 800 mgd. But the Audit reports that because the Delaware Tunnel is in such a deteriorated condition during the past ten years New York only got an average of 635 million gallons daily from it. The Delaware Water System therefore has been running at 80% efficiency. Considering that, the reservoirs are grossly oversized, and can easily absorb the 80% voids we are requesting in the Interim FFMP to reduce flooding.

The 2007 Audit warns that 7000 feet of the Tunnel walls is badly deteriorating and that there is severe damage where the Tunnel crosses limestone formations and geologic faults. It quite possibly could fail suddenly. The Audit anticipates years, possibly a decade of de-watering, and huge costs. The Audit upbraids the City for allowing such potentially catastrophic problems to pile up, and warns that there is no backup water system for millions of people in case the Tunnel fails.
A sense of imminent gloom hangs over the Audit.
There is an ominous discussion in the Audit of the Tunnel’s possible catastrophic collapse. The steel tunnel appears to be self-destructing. In other words, New York’s water system drawing from the Delaware River poses not only a calamitous flood threat to Pennsylvania and New Jersey – but a potentially catastrophic water supply disruption to over eight million people.

The Audit further reveals that since Year 2000 the City has been investigating use of the Hudson River – gratefully, its own watershed - as an alternative to the Delaware River water while the Delaware Tunnel is de-watered for years for repairs. I need to say, that is a good idea. The Hudson River is huge.
The vulnerability to sabotage of such a long, deteriorating tunnel providing New York City with 50% of its water was not brought up in the Audit, but the possibility of New York’s water being security – based on a “more local” water supply is a considerable advantage.

New York City’s Water Planners Must Be Asking These Questions:
• Can that Delaware Tunnel ever be reliable?
• If the tunnel is worn out is the fix worth the cost and the risks?
• Why doesn’t The City sell its interest in the Delaware River headwater reservoirs to the downstream states? New York could apply the savings to a new water treatment plant on the Hudson.
• Wouldn’t that finally guarantee New York a dependable source of water, even when great tropical storms roll across the region, as the Union of Concerned Scientists predicts? (NYT 7/11/07)

A Buy-Out of the New York City Reservoirs Is the Final Solution
Stupendous as a buy-out of New York City’s Delaware Water System may seem, the ides does present a reasonable business opportunity to both the Delaware River and New York City communities which could:
• Rescue New York City from its “flashy Delaware” water dilemma,
• Mitigate the Delaware River’s flooding,
• Provide vital, refreshing new flows to the Delaware Estuary, while
• Protecting the freshwater intakes of Philadelphia from the advancing salt front, and huge new costs for water.

In Summary: Requested Actions by Pennsylvania’s Governor Ed Rendell:
(1) Through you, our Assembly persons, we urge Governor Rendell to set up with the other governors a citizen/state, Delaware River Exploratory Committee, an independent (not inside the DRBC), transparent, fact-finding thinking place, using our best water experts, business and ecological stake-holders and community leaders: This blue-ribbon committee would be asked to examine all aspects of an offering to take over the three New York City reservoirs, then report its findings in a public and timely manner.
(2) Failing even to find negotiating partners, we would request that the Governor of Pennsylvania reopen the Supreme Court’s Delaware River Water Decree and the Delaware River Compact and develop new water for voids.

(3) Please ask Governor Rendell to find a legal path now that cuts through the bureaucracy set up by the DRBC, to act now to lower the water levels in all three New York City reservoirs to at least 80% of their capacities in the interim FFMP currently under consideration.

(4) Ask Governor Rendell to initiate taking that ‘grandfathered’ water virtually guaranteed by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1931 and applying it to New York’s reservoirs as permanent voids. The resulting ecological and commercial advantages would be shared by both of the other downstream states, New Jersey and Delaware, if they agree.

(5) For the people living along the Delaware, we implore the Governor to finally normalize Pennsylvania’s third great river basin. We realize that will not be fast easy or simple. After so many years spent denying that there is even a problem on the river, the administrators of the Delaware River will almost certainly resist all suggestions for radical change. But if these are reasonable timely suggestions, others are saying the same things. “There is no force on Earth like an idea whose time has come.”
Whoever cares about the Delaware will need to use great moral suasion to undo the wrongs done long ago to the Delaware River. The Delaware Diversion isn’t working out the way it was planned. Hopefully, we all can forestall future flooding catastrophes.
In conclusion,
To the Pennsylvania Assembly persons who have understood how important it is to optimize all three of Pennsylvania’s river basins many thanks for your time and your interest. We hope you will petition the Governor for us and help us to Save the Delaware.

Sincere Regards,
Val Sigstedt
References:
1) NY State Comptroller's Office's Audit of the Delaware Aqueduct, 2007;
2) U.S. Supreme Court Delaware River Decree as Amended, 1954,
3) "Damming the Delaware," by Richard Albert;
4) "River Basin Administration and the Delaware" (1960);
5) ‘Union of Concerned Scientists Predicts 100-year Storms in New York City Every Ten Years, In the Future’ (NYT 7/11/07);
6) Union of Concerned Scientists: Confronting Climate Change In the Northeast.