Dam
(1/5/06) When the integrity of a structure like the City’s Gilboa Dam is in question, there is no real choice as to how to prioritize between protecting life and property; people are what matter. So we take no issue with DEP’s decision to utilize the upper Esopus as its safety valve to draw down the Schoharie Reservoir and permit the dam’s permanent repair. This certainly looks like an emergency, many lives could be at risk in the Schoharie River valley downstream from the dam, and the agency appears to be responding with the urgency and seriousness required. Although up to 9 months will be needed to permanently stabilize the dam, the first stages may be finished before the height of spring runoff. That’s of course dependent as the saying goes, on God willin’ and the creeks don’t rise.
Experience of course, tells us they do. Mystery of mysteries, fifty and hundred- year floods it seems, hit regularly around every ninth year. And while it sometimes looks as though that’s almost predictable, there are parts to the equation that definitely don’t fall under the heading “Acts of God,” the big one being the general state of the Esopus and its banks. There’s nothing “natural” about the creek’s water level today, when four-fifths of its volume, over half a BILLION gallons daily is water that, per divine plan, was supposed to leave the northern Catskills via the Mohawk River, wherever that runs. Now of course it leaves through our towns via the giant tunnel that turns the Esopus the color of Greene County mud.
So strictly speaking it’s totally bogus to even talk of the kinds of water volumes we’re seeing now in the Esopus creek bed as a natural phenomenon. And the fact is that hydrologically our Esopus is less a creek than the open-air portion of the City’s Ashokan-Schoharie conduit system. Oh, it’s prettier for sure than most of that system’s pipes but basically it’s a rock-bottomed New York City water supply tunnel that’s simply missing its top. And while that description may lack both poetry or apparent respect for the creek’s finer qualities, it is precise. What bothers us though is that for all the Esopus’ critical necessity to the millions of New Yorkers who drink it, the City continues to take no responsibility for anything its water does along the way. And it’s always the same logic they employ. “Well sure it’s our water and we control the system” they basically say. But as for maintaining the creek portion of the conduit, “Nah, we don’t do that, that’s the state’s problem. That open-air section of the pipeline was installed by the contractor you had before us, the one who melted the glaciers. We can’t help it if he installed a channel too unstable for the water volumes we need to move through it. If some of your homes and businesses fall in, you have our sympathy but don’t bug us about it.”
To be fair, when things actually do flood, the city’s extra 550 million gallons doesn’t really represent much of the total volume. Still, here along the upper Esopus, we pay a price when a creek that’s supposed to normally carry 1,000 cubic feet of water per second carries 5 or 6 times that volume. And nobody understands this better than DEP, with some of the world’s best hydrological engineers to think it through. So we’re not saying they shouldn’t have the portal wide open now, they have basically no choice. But we’re also saying, as we have been for years, that it’s time for DEP to step up and finally begin to manage to creek with everything that entails. They can do that. They can solve the problems their water creates as it fills their reservoirs. They can stabilize streambanks as needed and protect private property here. It’s just easier for them not to, because we, collectively, don’t insist they do. And because we don’t, they get away with it year after year. And as for the pretext they can’t because DEC technically holds administrative authority, that doesn’t hold water. The agencies work fine together, and DEC lacks the financial resources to do what the city has no problem financing, and ultimately no choice but to find ways to make work.
We encourage prayer that winter and spring will pass without disaster. But the threat of disaster is the only thing that appears to hold meaningful promise for change to what’s been a lousy status quo. Our job, should we choose to accept it, is to make sure the ultimate fix includes proper stabilization of the Esopus and its banks.
BP