DELAWARE RIVER BASIN — Water from the Delaware River and the wider basin serves many purposes, including providing drinking water for New York City, New Jersey and Philadelphia among other places. Now, it appears that a dispute over the water needs of New York City and New Jersey will lead to a move that will have negative environmental impacts on the Upper Delaware River, including the West Branch and East Branch.

This point was made in a PowerPoint presentation delivered at the Water Works event held at Gallery Eva last weekend by Peter Kolesar, a Columbia University professor emeritus who participated in the development of the math behind the current Flexible Flow Management Plan (FFMP). That plan has governed reservoir releases into the Upper Delaware River since 2007, and has been renewed several times since then. The current term of the plan expires at the end of May, and New Jersey is threatening to block renewal, which, according to Kolesar, would throw away decades of progress made by environmentalists and the fishing community in improving flows to the benefit of the river’s general ecology and its coldwater fishery.

The current impasse dates to the 1954 Supreme Court decree that determined how much water each “decree party” (New York City, New York State, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware) could divert from the system. The court said way back then that New Jersey could divert 100 million gallons a day from the Delaware, but could not divert more without developing more water infrastructure. But that water infrastructure would be very expensive. Furthermore, it accuses New York City of violating the “equitable apportionment” spirit of the decree, and would like to see an “overall re-assessment of regional water needs and supplies, essentially re-opening the 1954 decree….”

New York City, on the other hand, according to Kolesar's presentation, is happy with the way things are now. The city is allowed to take 800 million gallons a day (mgd) from the system. The city currently uses only about 500 mgd, but expects to use more in the future.

In order to avoid an expensive filtration system and retain a filtration avoidance determination from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, New York City uses water from the Delaware River during periods when the water in the Catskill Reservoirs is turbid. If New Jersey were allowed to divert more water from the river, that might put more pressure on the city to build a $10 billion filtration facility.

So, where does the Upper Delaware fishing community fit into all of this? For years, trout fishing enthusiasts and others pushed for plans for releases from the Delaware system reservoirs that would be healthier for trout and other aquatic plants and animals in the river. It was a heavy lift, because at least initially because the fishing community believed the representatives of the New York City Department of Environmental Preservation (NYCDEP) were not very interested in their desires. But there were also a number of municipalities along the river that were clamoring for flood mitigation after major flooding in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

The united voices of these interested parties finally led to the creation of the FFMP and its adoption by the Decree Parties in 2007. That plan has been extended by the Decree Parties and adjusted as the years have passed. To help implement the FFMP, the NYCDEP has developed an operations support tool (OST), and the plan that expires at the end of May is called 2016 FFMP/OST.

New Jersey’s threat to vote against extending the FFMP/OST, in Kolesar's view, arises out of frustration with the state’s failure to make progress in its dispute with New York City. That amounts to a veto, since the terms laid down in 1954 require that all five decree parties agree to any change to releases and diversions from the system.

Bob Considine, press director at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, responded to a question for comment, saying they can’t support the extension “for now.” He wrote in an email, “Perhaps with the use of mediators or more of a facilitator-type role we can help keep the parties focused on solutions and engaged in meaningful discussions. All we’ve said is a lot more can be done which would benefit the water resources of the basin.”

This statement came from NYCDEP: “New York City has listened carefully to the many reasonable ideas that have been presented by our Decree Party colleagues and downstream neighbors over the past several years. We have said before—and we will repeat it again—that the City is open to improvements to the existing FFMP. In fact, we believe that broad consensus exists to implement several of them now or in the very near future. A negotiation such as this requires all the parties to engage in constructive dialogue while striving for a mutually beneficial result. While some want to harm stakeholders by scrapping years of scientific work and thoughtful deliberation, New York City is absolutely committed to discussing and implementing enhancements to the existing program. The Decree Parties have been stuck in neutral for several years, but we hope that cycle can be broken soon.”

If the extension of the FFMP/OST is not granted, the plan for diversions and reservoir releases will revert to one adopted in 1983 known as Revision 1. According to a post on the website of Friends of the Upper Delaware River, such a move would not be good. The post says, “Revision 1 would be a devastating step backwards for the cold-water ecosystem of the Upper Delaware River. Water releases from the NYC Delaware reservoirs under Revision 1 would be significantly lower than current FFMP release levels at all times of the year.”

The FFMP/OST will be addressed with a presentation from Kolesar at the Upper Delaware Council’s Water Use/Resource Management Committee on March 21, at 7 p.m. in Narrowsburg.