Four Delaware River conservation and citizen groups boycotted a March 7 meeting at which the New York City Department of Environmental Protection was slated to showcase its latest water-flow plan.
The groups say the plan is “fatally flawed” in that it fails to adequately address flooding concerns.
”DEP Deputy Commissioner Paul Rush has all but ignored attempts to have their concerns heard,” said a spokesman.
”I will no longer participate in meaningless glad-handing appeasement and patronization,” Dr. Michael Caccavella, of Yardley, Pa., and president of the Delaware Riverside Conservancy, wrote to Mr. Rush.
The other groups that planned to boycott the meeting included Aquatic Conservation Unlimited, Drowning on the Delaware, and Residents Against Flood Trends (based in Bucks County).
”After hearing the scathing analysis of their new plan and witnessing the DEP’s lack of response to questions based on that analysis, I had to conclude that this meeting was a public relations stunt,” said Chuck Schroeder of Drowning on the Delaware, a NJ based group. “This is nothing more than an attempt by the DEP to show critics that the agency is actually responding to public outcry.”
The meeting was scheduled for Monday in Grahamsville, NY. “ Mr. Rush and his staff wanted to showcase their new water-flow plan, known as the Operations Support Tool (OST), a $5.2 million computer-based monitoring and modeling system.”
But, like all other plans in the history of New York City’s water hoarding, this plan “focuses on water for the city while disregarding the deadly flooding that regularly destroys lives, property and infrastructure downstream from New York City-owned reservoirs,” a spokesman said.
”The object of OST is not to keep us safe from flooding,” said Elaine Reichart, president of the Aquatic Conservation Unlimited, “New York City’s sole intent is to monopolize the Delaware for its drinking water.” The ACU has members in the Lambertville area, as well as Bucks County.
”They are doing this at our expense,” said Ms. Reichart. “Residents below the Croton, Catskill and Delaware reservoir systems and along the Delaware all the way past Trenton and Yardley are placed at peril from flooding so that New York can try to outrun the desperate need to filter its water.”
”About 100 billion gallons of water spilled over the Delaware reservoir dams during the terrible flood of June 2006,” said Scott Burgess, of Residents Against Flooding Trends, a resident of Upper Makefield Township. “That led to devastation downstream that taxpayers are still paying for.”
”The NYC DEP has been criticized for many years for mismanaging its reservoirs and water releases. Conservation and citizen groups have long advocated a common-sense approach that takes into account the city’s water needs, the safety of river residents and the wellbeing of fish and aquatic life. The groups had hoped that upcoming changes to a roundly criticized water-release plan — the Flexible Flow Management Program — would address flooding concerns, particularly after new scientific analyses suggested improvements,” said a spokesman.
Those hopes have been dashed. “Anti-flood advocates deserve and demand involvement and access to transparent government processes that formulate life-affecting regulations,” Ms. Reichart said in a letter to Mr. Rush. “These changes in the regulations should be structured to provide real protection from flooding and should be spelled out in plain language, with calculations easily identified and measurable by the public.”
She said Mr. Rush has been unresponsive to the most basic information regarding the update to the water release plan, failing to provide answers to questions asked in two earlier e-mails. Ms. Reichart said it has become clear that Mr. Rush and the DEP “have no real intention of addressing our concerns in good faith.”
In his letter to Mr. Rush, Caccavella said: “We will continue to pursue each and every possible mechanism to overcome the political obstacles that stand in the way of safe, humane and ecologically sound water management of the Delaware River Basin.”

