FLOOD MITIGATION - DELAWARE WATERSHED:

My name is Philip Chase. I live in Port Jervis, NY on the banks of the Neversink and Delaware rivers. I have been involved with the NYC reservoir releases since the early 1960s: I represented NYS as a VP on the Save The Delaware Coalition which fought the damming of the Delaware River at Tocks Island. In the mid 70s I was on Governor Carey's Reservoir Release Committee which worked with NYC engineers. I was also a director of the Catskill Rivers Coalition which got NYS legislation passed in 1976, taking control away from NYC which owned the reservoirs of Cannonsville, Pepacton and Neversink, and placing the management of the reservoirs into the hands of the NYSDEC. In four years the control was lost to the power of the 800# gorilla- NYC.

As a career high school physics and chemistry teacher I wrote an Outdoors column for the Middletown Record for 13 years in the 60s and 70s, daily circulation 100,000. I don't have all the answers to a 500 year flood or even a 100 year flood but I do know this - NYC has a strangle hold on the Delaware River and they are not about to let loose of it without a fight. The DRBC doesn't want to rock NYC's management because when the Flood Mitigation recommendations are finalized the City can kill it with their one vote.

The problem began when in 1931 for the first time in the East the diversion of water from one watershed to another was allowed by the Supreme Court. NYC was allowed to divert 440 mgd from the Delaware watershed to the Hudson watershed never to return. Then in 1954 the City was allowed an increase to 800 mgd by the Supreme Court taken out of our watershed.

In 1951 the City hired a panel of national experts, the "Little Hoover Commission", to determine which is most logical for their future supply: to build Cannonsville reservoir for additional Delaware water or to go to the Hudson. The panel's answer-neither. "There was no immediate need for additional water, repair the leaks in the tunnels carrying the water to the City (saving 150 mgd) , metering (saving 100-200 mgd), that when the need for future water arose then pump from the Hudson upstream of Poughkeepsie, and that ALL City water should be filtered". The panel also stated that filtered Hudson River water is safer than non filtered Catskill Delaware water.

Of course the City chose not to follow the panel's advise. Cannonsville reservoir was built, tunnel repairs that should have been done decades ago are just now getting started, for effective conservation- metering individual units must be done rather than just one meter for a building as is typical in the City, the Hudson River is not being pumped for water consumption and NO drinking water is being filtered. The gorilla thumbs his nose.

The EPA continues to allow a "Filtration Avoidance" for the City. A filtration plant for all City water is estimated at $8 billion. By cleaning up the headwaters of farm lands and updating sewage plants above the reservoirs the City has politically and economically avoided the cost of a single large and expensive filtration system. The water is still green coming out of Cannonsville by August. Where is the EPA with its water quality standards?
How does the City avoid filtration?

So how does a different management of the City's water system improve flood control? It has already been stated by the NYCDEP that specific voids of drawdown will not be a goal of the City. They do not want the possibility of their "hypothetical" three year droughts through voids in diverting their 800 mgd to the City. Yet those 3 reservoirs with a storage of 265 billion gallons could be safely drawn down by 70- 100 billion gallons for flood control. How is this possible without endangering the NYC water supply?

This void would represent the volume of water that can be safely pumped from the Hudson for a new water supply for the City. The panel claimed 325 mgd from the Hudson from above Poughkeepsie. Yes, it would have to be filtered and treated as hundreds of large cities across the world do with large rivers even less clean than the Hudson- a river with bathing beaches that are now being enjoyed. Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park above the salt line of the Hudson have been drinking Hudson River water for over half a century. Of course the City will fight this management as the Delaware water is all gravity flow with no pumping and at the present they are dodging the bullet of filtration but it is only a matter of time before filtration avoidance will not be politically avoided.

When the City takes their full allotment of 800 mgd the Upper Delaware will lose its ecotourism of cold water recreation, excellent boating and an ecosystem second to none. Even the possibility of drought will be heightened. If the Hudson concept of a drinking supply were used as suggested by the City's own panel of experts the water released for large voids, if properly managed, would give us a living Delaware River, flood control and with hundreds of miles of a great ecotourism industry.

The cost can not be expected to be born by the City. Flood expenses are in the billions, it only seems logical that the cost of a pump system should be born by the feds- it's a cheap way out. Will this flood mitigation study be one more forgotten study collecting dust?

It's time to think about going back to the Supreme Court and according to WATER SUPPLY- ECONOMICS TECHNOLOGY AND POLICY by Hirshleifer, De Haven, Milliman- "It should also be remarked that the Supreme Court retained jurisdiction of the case should any party desire relief at a later date.- - - There remains, therefore, a possibility to withdraw 800 mgd may at some later date be revoked or scaled down."
It's time someone stood up to NYCity - went back to the Supreme Court and gave us our river back. And it's past time that the City be prohibited from selling our Delaware water to new customers in the Hudson watershed.

Philip Chase - Town of Deerpark Rep to the Upper Delaware Council
12 Evergreen Lane, Port Jervis, N.Y. 12771
(845)856-8767