By Linda Seida, Staff Writer
Opponents of the Delaware River Basin Commission’s Flexible Flow Management Plan for New York City’s reservoirs, many of them three-time flood victims, are pleased the DRBC recently postponed a crucial vote.
But they say they still have their work cut out for them to protect their homes from future flood damage.
”It’s a minor victory, but nothing has changed,” said Gail Pedrick of the Delaware Riverside Conservancy.
The former gym teacher’s Waterloo Street home in New Hope flooded three times. The first time, 2½ feet of water entered her first floor. The following two floods each brought more than 4 feet of water.
The nonprofit conservancy lobbies for a permanent decrease of the reservoirs’ levels to at least 80 percent. Many flood victims in the region say the higher levels maintained by New York are a leading cause of the damage they’ve endured in three major floods in less than two years.
From April to July, New York consistently maintains a capacity close to or at 100 percent to prevent drought there. Sometimes, the levels exceed 100 percent as they did in April.
The DRBC was scheduled to vote on amendments to the management plan Sept. 24. The proposal does not include permanent 80 percent voids, and the commission received nearly 2,000 comments from the public on the proposal.
The earliest the DRBC could schedule another vote on the changes is Dec. 10.
Richard Green, whose Lambert Lane home in Lambertville also flooded three times, said, “This was a minor victory for those of us fighting to lower reservoirs with safety voids. We have not won the war yet. To be truly effective, the FFMP must include changes to the water code that treat drought and flood equally.”
Dr. Green, a psychologist, maintains the DRBC focuses solely on New York City’s fear of drought while “hoarding water in its three reservoirs.”
He said, “However, after three ruinous floods, this paradigm must change. If the DRBC does not address downstream flooding in its regulations, this would be criminal. There is much left to be accomplished.”
The conservancy felt so strongly the proposed changes should not be implemented, it publicly had threatened legal action if the plan were passed.
”The proposed FFMP will significantly alter and impact water flows, regulation, reservoir levels, fish and wildlife, repetitive flooding, endangered species, etc.,” the conservancy said in a prepared statement when it announced its intent to sue. “The current form of the FFMP will have devastating consequences to river residents, river communities, local economies, river ecology and the river as a whole.”
Over the past year, the conservancy has presented more than 10,000 signatures to lawmakers, demanding the lower reservoir levels. Ms. Pedrick caught the attention of Gov. Ed Rendell at a New Hope parade last spring, gaining a private audience. The result was a 97 percent limit on the reservoir levels through April.
”Now we’re at 75 percent,” Ms. Pedrick said of the reservoir levels. “But it only takes 4½ inches of rain to fill them up to the brim. I feel like Noah without the arc.”

