Reservoirs vex Delaware River flood victims

Along the Delaware River's 330 miles of meandering splendor, from the Catskill Mountains to the Delaware Bay, spring's advent brings anxiety, helplessness, and a budding sense of dread.

The snowpack up north is melting, and a hyperactive rainy season has set in. Much of the water will drain into the river. But if a recent pattern persists, not all of it will stay there. Between September 2004 and June 2006, the Delaware breached its banks three times, causing nine deaths and more than $70 million in damage to 2,000 properties.

Among residents of such devastated communities as New Hope, Yardley, Lambertville and Trenton, nature gets only part of the blame, as do overdevelopment and poor storm-water management. More than 10,000 angry victims and sympathizers have aligned themselves behind yet another, newer theory: The flooding has been uncommonly severe because of brimful reservoirs in New York.

In a persistent and impassioned campaign of e-mail chains, letters and yard signs, they are pushing for permanently lowered water levels in three man-made lakes at the Delaware's headwaters. They have persuaded state and federal lawmakers to join their cause - even though results of a scientific study of the reservoirs' impact on flooding are nearly a year away.

Set against these views are New York officials and a number of researchers who contend the reservoirs are a convenient out-of-state target for Pennsylvanians and New Jerseyans whose riverside homes are routinely walloped. They say that people who choose to live in harm's way must be prepared for the consequences, and that land-use policy must be changed to keep others away from danger zones.

Other experts raise another possibility: Everybody has a point.

New York City's three massive Catskills reservoirs ensure the water supply for nine million people from Ulster County, N.Y., to Queens, 83 miles southeast. On most days in late winter and early spring, the reservoirs - the Neversink, the Pepacton and the Cannonsville - are kept topped off as a hedge against summer drought.

But downriver in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the flood-weary say New York could ease their woes. If kept at 80 percent capacity year-round, they contend, the reservoirs could catch snowmelt and excessive rain, for slow release to the river.

New York is waiting for science to make that case. Until then, keeping the reservoirs full is a "right . . . and entitlement," said Mark Klotz, director of the state Bureau of Water Resource Management.

"It's greed," retorted David Jones, accusing New York of hoarding water. Jones' water-sports business north of Stroudsburg, Pa., has been washed out three times since 2004.

The river basin is crowded with combatants: at least six large citizens' groups, officials of four state governments (including Delaware) and the nation's largest city, 14 members of Congress, and nearly as many state lawmakers and special interests, including anglers and boaters.

Hydrologists cannot say with certainty whether keeping the reservoirs only partly filled - creating permanent "voids" - would reduce flooding.

Nor do they know the risks of a prolonged dry spell.

Would the supply be jeopardized not only for New York but also for 2.5 million people in Philadelphia, Bucks County and South Jersey? If not enough water could be released to the river, would the salt line advance from the bay to intake pipes near Torresdale in the city and Delanco, Burlington County?

A $765,000 study by the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Weather Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Delaware River Basin Commission should yield answers early next year.

Absent hard data, the war has heated up, fanned by newly proposed rules from the basin commission. The agency, headed by the four basin governors and a federal representative, has a say in how the river's water is managed.

Intended to tackle sundry issues in the watershed - drinking supply, fish protection, drought and flood mitigation - the new plan calls for greater water releases from the reservoirs to the river at certain times of year. But it doesn't give flood victims what they seek: permanent voids.

With a vote on the new regulations expected this summer, the commission held a hearing Jan. 16 in West Trenton, N.J. - three months after they were informally put into effect. Most of the 150 people there were angry flood victims.

"Stop catering to New York City and New York state!" demanded Gail Pedrick, whose two-story riverfront home in New Hope sustained more than $200,000 in damage in the last three floods.

When the public-comment period on the new rules closed March 3, the basin commission reported that it had fielded 1,918 submissions, plus a petition with 10,443 signatures. The prevailing current was against the proposal.

Through much of the reservoirs' existence, their management was guided by drought.

In a long run of very dry years, they often were well below capacity. In the 2001-02 drought, one of the worst recorded in the basin, the reservoirs dipped as low as 5 percent of capacity, setting off a water scare in New York City.

Afterward, keeping them full became the priority. The weather cooperated, as the atmospheric pattern turned decidedly wetter. And with aggressive conservation, New York City's water consumption steadily decreased.

The reservoirs were at or near capacity Sept. 17, 2004, when storms generated by Hurricane Ivan began dumping up to six inches of rain on the basin.

On April 2, 2005, they were full when as much as five inches fell.

On June 23, 2006, they again were at or near the top as a front stalled, dropping up to 15 inches in six days.

The floods were no coincidence to Diane Tharp, a teacher whose riverside home near the Delaware Water Gap suffered $100,000 in damage.

"When the reservoirs were spilling, the river was coming up high," said Tharp, who launched a citizens' campaign for voids.

Deserved or not, the reservoirs had the enmity of the sodden. They also had the concern of the four basin state governors.

Lowering reservoirs "is by no means a silver bullet for addressing flooding," Gov. Rendell said at the time, but "it may provide an added measure of protection for downstream communities."

The governors committed $500,000 to the long-term study. They also convened a flood task force of scientists, elected officials, planners and property owners.

Nearly a year later, it presented 45 recommendations, including improving storm-water systems, elevating homes in floodplains, and limiting development.

But on reservoir levels, the members were noncommittal. Voids, they wrote, "merit careful consideration but must be weighed against the impact to the water supply."

Elaine Reichart, a flood victim from Belvidere, N.J., quit after two months. She had argued for year-round voids, but, she said, most of her conferees "categorically refused to entertain any of it."

Jeffrey Featherstone, director of Temple University's Center for Sustainable Communities and former deputy director of the basin commission, was in the majority. Lower levels probably wouldn't offer much flood relief, he said, for the reservoirs are but a fraction of the 13,539-square-mile watershed.

The task force's July 2007 report disappointed pro-void activists. The basin commission's new water-management program - released in September with the support of Rendell and Gov. Corzine - outraged them.

"We're being represented by governors who care about aspects other than the very people whose lives are affected," Reichart said.

That accusation rankles the governors' proxies on the basin commission.

Cathleen Curran Myers, commission chairwoman and deputy director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said Rendell was "perfectly willing to yell at New York" about not providing permanent voids and had even asked her, " 'Should I be talking to the governor? Should I be talking to the mayor?' "

She has urged him to wait until the study is finished.

"We would ask for voids in the reservoirs if we believed there would be flood relief," she said. That's "what we need to figure out."

Corzine's representative, Mark Mauriello, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, also noted the lack of "agreement among folks who are really smart . . . about the causes of extreme flooding."

One citizens' group sponsored a study by Lafayette College engineering professor Roger Ruggles. Had 20 percent voids been maintained in the reservoirs, he concluded, the upper Delaware would have been between 21/2 and 41/2 feet lower during the last three floods.

However, Ruggles' findings were assailed by seven water experts, who advised the basin commission in a January letter that his work "does not include many important parameters" and "should be considered a preliminary study."

Conceding his critics' points, Ruggles told The Inquirer that his study still showed "there is a potential for somewhat of a mitigation."

His research remains the rallying flag along the river.

U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, a Democrat whose district includes oft-flooded Bucks County communities, sent a letter in January to the basin commission cosigned by 13 congressional colleagues, including four from New York. They asked that "sufficient room be reserved" in the reservoirs "to protect against flooding."

So far this year, the Delaware has behaved. Still, activist residents monitor the weather forecast upriver and reservoir levels online.

As of Friday, all three reservoirs were spilling.

Scott Burgess, 48, of Lower Makefield Township, organized the 200-member Residents Against Flood Trends after the 2006 storm.

"You're nervous on a daily basis," he said.

Instead of worrying, everyone should be pleased with the new rules, said Paul Rush, deputy commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Were they not already in effect, and larger releases already being made, the reservoirs would be spilling even more, he said.

By considering flood mitigation in their operation, Rush said, New York City has made "a huge shift."

But not huge enough for activist Tharp, director of the Delaware River Watershed Conservancy. She has vowed legal action if the new rules are adopted.

This month, she caught a break from the river. It was near flood stage by her home March 5 and 9, but never left its banks.

The reservoirs were spilling at the time. But, as per the new rules, accelerated releases were in effect. That, Tharp conceded, "gave us a little bit of benefit."

Still, with rain due this week, she said, "we will keep our lower floor packed up.

Contact staff writer Diane Mastrull at 610-313-8095 or

» READ MORE: dmastrull@phillynews.com

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Inquirer staff writer Anthony R. Wood contributed to this article.