A Fight Over Taming the Delaware

THEY are a community without name, strewn like autumn leaves across four states, 42 counties and 838 towns. Some are rich, some poor, and many somewhere in between. In truth, these people have little in common except their love of the 330 free-flowing miles of the Delaware River, the last big untamed river east of the Mississippi, and their mistrust — some would go so far as to say their loathing — of New York City.

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Although City Hall in Manhattan is more than 120 miles from the headwaters of the Delaware, New York is the target of all this enmity because it operates several huge reservoirs on Delaware tributaries near where the river originates upstate. This has dragged the city into a long-running feud with people who live on or near the river in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and several counties in New York State and say they are at the mercy of the city and the way it manages its reservoirs.

The feud started with a rancorous interstate fight over the city’s rights to build the reservoirs that went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court in 1931. Then, for decades after the construction in Delaware County, N.Y., of the vast Pepacton Reservoir and the Cannonsville Reservoir (about two-thirds the Pepacton’s size), along with the smaller Neversink Reservoir in Sullivan County, there was relative peace along the river’s banks.

Three devastating floods — in 2004, 2005 and 2006 — shattered the peace. The toll of the river rampage was horrific: nine lives lost and well over 0 million in property damage in four states. Now a dangerous combination of melting snow, heavy rains and reservoirs that are already starting to spill has river people fed up.

“We used to really love this river, but now we can’t even stand to listen to the weather reports,” said Gail Pedrick, a retired gym teacher who has owned a riverside house in New Hope, Pa., since 1984. “For 50 years there were no floods, then we had 3 in 21 months. The only common denominator was that all three reservoirs were over 100 percent when the floods came.”

Increasing numbers of people like Ms. Pedrick have banded together recently in loose coalitions that cross state lines to lobby for protection from floods. Most of all, they want the city to do one thing — lower the levels of its Delaware River reservoirs by 20 percent. If the city took just that one action, they say, it would create enough space in the reservoirs to contain the water from heavy rains and prevent the river from cresting into their basements and living rooms.

But the city says it’s not nearly so easy: reservoir levels make little difference; the river simply floods when there is too much rain.

The Delaware reservoirs provide about half of the 1.1 billion gallons the city uses daily, and the water is among the purest in any of New York’s 19 reservoirs. Officials say that keeping them only 80 percent full would leave the city unprepared to handle a drought.

So there’s a rhetorical stalemate on the river, and the issues of forecasting and reservoir management are so complex that there is never a simple answer to even the most basic question. But while debate drags on, those on the river’s edge live in constant fear of another flood, knowing that the river they cherish can suddenly turn into a monster.

For 20 years, Ms. Pedrick said, the river outside her window behaved itself and never threatened her. For much of that time she was plagued by immobilizing back problems; she orchestrated the renovation of her 1810 frame house from a mattress on the floor.

By 2001, the house was a showcase, featured in a Bucks County, Pa., home magazine. Then, in September 2004, the first monstrous flood hit. The river she loved flowed over her newly polished plank floors, and eddied around her new brick fireplace. Her walls, bookshelves and appliances all were ruined.

She rebuilt. Like other people on the river, she considers being close to the running water — hearing its sweet whisper and feeling its fresh breath — an essential part of her life. Then, in April 2005, the waters rose again. And again her renovations were ruined. Still she rebuilt. She had barely put the finishing touches to the new paint by the time in 2006 when the river turned into an angry whirlpool that ebbed through her living room one more time.

“Can you imagine fixing up everything just right and then getting hit again a few months later, and then again, and again?” she said. “The last time I had just put in a new kitchen and I hadn’t even fried an egg yet when we were flooded again. That’s devastating.”

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