3/30/06
An
Opening For Progress, Late Winter Lessons
It was, to be sure, a victory for the Watershed communities
when New York City’s deputy mayor stood at the dilapidated
Gilboa Dam recently and said “we recognize the cost
of not having done the appropriate maintenance” and
“we’re not going to make that mistake again.”
And when he acknowledged that “the City hasn’t
always been the best neighbor” it hardly came as a revelation
to most of us. Still and all, the significance of his actually
saying it publicly wasn’t lost on us either. The surprise
to many is that city government isn’t actually deaf,
it’s just in the habit of comporting itself as if what
the Watershed Communities have to say about the Watershed
communities isn’t actually audible. It is audible but
also, they’re not deaf.
Partly because they are capable of hearing us and of responding
when they really need to, we may be entering a period now
when we can negotiate on genuinely equal footing with DEP,
and when we may be able to accomplish many things we’ve
tended to view as unattainable or at least, less than realistic.
Few of these things that are really needed actually are unrealistic.
That’s because the City can’t really afford not
to do them. Some examples? Full DEP funding for the operation
& maintenance of every wastewater treatment plant in the
watershed. Adequate funding as needed to repair every residential
septic system that needs it. Streambank stabilization programs
funded at a scale necessary to actually stabilize the streambanks
that need stabilizing. And so on. But just those three alone
would be an excellent start. And all of them aren’t
just possible, they’re possible now because timing is
everything.
What makes them possible is two things. The first is that
the cheap solution for the City, continued unfiltered water,
is peace in the watershed. And the price of peace is simple,
it’s doing the right thing and funding what they need
to here for our communities, for our ecosystem, and for the
quality of the water. Even if they do these things for the
wrong reason - because we’ll scream bloody murder if
they don’t - they will do them if they have to. Just
like they’re fixing the Gilboa Dam, just like they’ve
opened up the Ashokan’s overflow channel, and just like
they’re dropping the reservoir levels so the rains don’t
wash us away.
The second reason these things are possible is that the City
frankly can’t afford a watershed range war, fought in
the light of national media and in full view of the US Environmental
Protection Agency with its final blessing authority over the
City’s FAD. Should the issues come to political blows
we would kick their asses, it would cost them thousands of
dollars per New York City household and they know this perfectly
well. But that would require a political solidarity in the
watershed we’ve yet to see, and won’t unless we
start working at it seriously.
Our political army, should we need it, is the Coalition of
Watershed Towns. And because we want to be supporters of the
Coalition we’re constantly exhorting them to fight smart,
not stupid battles. In recent years they haven’t listened
much, shilling for the Titanic Belleayre Resort project for
instance, wading in on divisive issues like large parcel,
or focusing on tertiary things like hunting and trapping rights
on city-owned lands. These campaigns are like trying to sack
Rome by striking Mongolia. But they’re also things that
divide our towns, piss off lots of our people, and render
us impotent for the union of our common interests. DEP loves
it when we do that, pick our political battles so shortsightedly
we never even get close to the objectives we need to take
hold of. And as long as we keep doing it, we’re not
going to get what we need. Our hats are off by the way, to
Supervisor Jerry Fairbairn and the town board of Hardenburgh
for calling things by their right name and opting out of the
Coalition until it gets its act together. We certainly hope
it does. But it’s going to take more public input into
the organization’s direction, better leadership, and
the inclusion of perspectives reflecting those prevalent east
of Delaware County.
At The Olive Press, we’ve taken a certain amount of
flak over the years for encouraging a grown-up acceptance
of DEP and the legitimacy of its mission, irrespective of
its historically corrupt and brutal origins. But that is the
past and not the present reality of the agency’s charge.
The present reality is not, to be honest, all that bad. No,
they’re not always the best neighbors but they can hear
us, they are listening, and when they have to, as with flood
control issues, they have proven they’ll respond. To
us, that’s proof of a working relationship and an acknowledgement
of the mutual self-interest it serves for both parties. That’s
a major shift that began under the agency’s previous
commissioner and a testament to the wisdom of its new one.
Still, it’s our job to establish the dialogue we need
with them, and if we fail to do it now we’ve no one
to blame but ourselves.
BP
