Let the water flow

Officials from four states and New York City who for more than half a century have navigated an uneasy peace over who gets to use the Delaware River's water may soon have a new tool.

It's a $5.2 million software program that New York City officials said would allow for better management of three gigantic water supply reservoirs in the upper Delaware watershed. The program could allow more water to be released into the river, which advocates have long sought.

New York City, which owns the reservoirs, diverts millions of gallons of water every day from them - and out of the Delaware River basin - to the city. But river advocates have always complained that New York City hoards the water, shortchanging downstream users and the river itself.

More water for New York means less flowing downstream to support aquatic life and keep the salt line - the marker between fresh and salt water - from moving north and affecting Philadelphia's water supply. The lower Delaware River is periodically stricken with drought, which also plays havoc with water quality.

Residents say that water hoarding also causes an opposite problem; it leaves the New York reservoirs too full, so when it rains, water gushes out uncontrollably, leading to more flooding downstream.

The new program incorporates National Weather Service forecasts and real-time data on reservoir levels, stream flow, snowpack, and water quality. City officials said it could be phased in, and complete by 2013.

Potentially, with the knowledge that more water is on the way, more could be released from the reservoirs, which when full hold 271 billion gallons of water.

"It's a way to make better use of the shared water in the basin," said Paul Rush, deputy commissioner for water supply in New York City's Department of Environmental Protection.

But divvying up the Delaware has always been contentious, and this is no exception.

Critics have already pounced, saying that the plan is flawed and that the program will not be transparent. In short: New York will get its way once again.

"How and when did the leadership of the four states in the basin allow New York City's needs to come before ours?" said Elaine Reichart, president of the advocacy group Aquatic Conservation Unlimited. Once a resident of Yardley, she now lives in Warren County, N.J.

Others say anything that can make the diversion smarter is a potential plus.

Temple University's Jeffrey Featherstone, a professor in the Department of Community and Regional Planning, said the tool "sounds intriguing. It looks like good stuff. It's trying to optimize a really complex system."

"I love the idea," said Dan Plummer, chairman of the Friends of the Upper Delaware, another advocacy group.

"We believe there's already plenty of water in the system" for all the needs, if only it was managed better, he said.

But he and others insert a few caveats.

The software will be good IF it works the way New York City says it will.

IF it is used properly.

And IF New York puts in the right numbers to begin with.

Just how much water New York City needs, how much it uses, and how much is left for the rest of the Delaware River Basin, has always been an issue.

A 1954 Supreme Court decree gives the city an average allowance from the upper Delaware reservoirs of 800 million gallons a day. But Rush said that conservation measures have reduced the amount needed.

Water is now metered, which has led to lower usage. Various programs have led to the installation of higher-efficiency plumbing fixtures.

Over the last 10 years, Rush said, the diversion has averaged 650 million gallons a day, recently dropping to 600.

Records with the Delaware River Master, an office in the U.S. Department of the Interior, show that the average diversion in the most recent year was 450 million gallons a day.

If the new program "is still premised on hypothetical diversion figures" - 800 million gallons a day - "I'm not sure what it's going to do," said Jeff Zimmerman, a lawyer for the Friends of the Upper Delaware.

If the program "doesn't use realistic assumptions, it's not going to produce meaningful results," Zimmerman said.

Critics say that when not enough water is released, fisheries and the aquatic ecosystem are harmed. They say that droughts are exacerbated.

At the same time, if not enough water is released before a major storm, rainwater spilling over the dams can exacerbate flooding, critics say. Others say that too much development has occurred in the floodplain, and a bigger factor in floods is the increase in paved surfaces throughout the basin.

Reichart of Aquatic Conservation also faulted the new plan because it factors in water quality, which she feels would increase pressure to use the Upper Delaware reservoirs.

New York gets water from two other reservoir systems, but the Delaware water is cleaner, she said, and that's important because New York City's water system is unfiltered.

"They're holding us hostage, and using our water" instead of building their own filtration system, Reichart said.

New York is giving presentations about the new software to the "parties" of the 1954 decree. In addition to the city, they include the states that have land in the basin - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

Before the program could be used to determine releases, all parties would have to agree.

Officials in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey said they needed to study the matter more before they could comment.

Managing the Delaware's waters remains "a pretty complicated business," said Featherstone, who also is the former deputy executive director of the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate regulatory agency formed after the 1954 court decree. "In the end, it gets down to some political arm-wrestling, and decisions are made."

Several things up the ante when it comes to considering whether to incorporate the new software.

In May, a flow plan that addresses the conflicting uses of the river will expire.

In the past, the reservoirs were subject to fixed releases, often regardless of storage conditions.

The so-called Flexible Flow Management Plan incorporated wider options. When more water was available, more was released from the reservoirs. But the plan still had ample critics, many of whom felt New York City still had the ability to retain more water than needed.

In addition, a major aqueduct that transports water to New York City is in need of repair. Officials need to figure out how to do that and still provide enough water for New York.

To Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper - the head of another advocacy group, the Delaware River Network - the debate on water usage and the new tool amounts to a cautionary tale about messing with nature.

"I get wary that we depend so much on technology to tell us what to do," she said. "We're forced to create these new tools . . . because we decided in the first instance to strip ourselves of the benefits of a naturally flowing system."