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 Phoenicia Times, 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