A Plan to Protect Trout Upstate Fails to Meet Its Promise - New York Times

HANCOCK, N.Y. - When New York City agreed last year to release more water from its upstate reservoirs to protect wild trout in the Delaware River, people in this one-stoplight village were skeptical, but they hoped for the best.

As fly-fishing season opened in the spring, the local diner, the Circle E, featured a hearty "Sportsman's Breakfast" aimed directly at anglers, and the Grand Union hung a big banner over its entrance saying "Welcome Fishermen."

But almost no anglers are buying beer or frozen burgers at the supermarket, and the owners of the diner say business is down about 20 percent. At Jim Costolnick's Border Water Outfitters fly and tackle shop on East Front Street the other day, local businessmen gathered to complain about the same thing: the new plan is not working. Despite promises, there is still not enough water in the Delaware to keep the river from becoming as warm as bath water, which is bad for fish, and bad for Hancock, too.

Nearly every shop in this Delaware County village of 1,200 wrapped in a bearhug by the East and West Branches of the Delaware is suffering. When temperatures rise above 70 degrees, trout begin crowding into cooler parts of the river, fighting among themselves and even dying. Low water in the river this summer has consistently pushed the Delaware's temperature above 80.

The problem is not drought. There's plenty of water in the city's reservoirs, which are around 90 percent full. The fishermen claim the city is hoarding water. And that, they say, is wrecking the new plan, which they doubt would have worked anyway.

"We've been pointing out to them all along that the plan wasn't going to work, and it isn't working," said Craig Findley, the president of the Friends of the Upper Delaware River, which represents sportsmen on the river. "This is an emergency."

Mr. Findley's group has proposed several alternative plans that would use far more water than is now being released from New York City's mammoth reservoirs at the head of the Delaware. But officials have rejected them all, saying that although the city's upstate reservoirs are close to full, they are slightly below normal and there's still a lot of summer left.

Besides, they point out, releasing water is not up to them, but is governed by a complicated formula established by the United States Supreme Court more than 50 years ago.

Any tinkering with that formula requires the consent of all parties involved. That includes the States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, the City of New York and the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate agency that oversees the river.

All the parties did agree last year to an experimental three-year plan to increase the water in the reservoirs in case of drought, while also expanding separate banks of water that the State of New York can use to protect the trout and their river habitat.

This is the second year of the interim plan, and it seems apparent that changes are going to have to be made.

As part of the plan, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation can order New York City to release cold water from the special banks to keep the river at an average of no more than 72 degrees according to a temperature gauge at Hankins, N.Y., about 15 miles downriver of Hancock . But by the second week of June, the state had already used more than a third of the water in the special banks trying to meet that target, and it feared that the supply would run out before summer ended.

Gerry A. Barnhart, director of the New York State Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources, said that on June 10 he gave the order to abandon the Hankins temperature target altogether. Instead, he said, the state would concentrate on cooling the East and West Branches of the Delaware, and the Neversink River, which runs into the Delaware and is part of the New York City water system.

Mr. Barnhart said that abandoning the Hankins target will have a substantial impact on the Delaware, "but it's not going to be, in my judgment, catastrophic. It is something that the river system can recover from in better water years." While fishermen say that New York is hoarding water, officials say that it was an historic excess of water that set off this year's crisis. Snowpack melt and early spring rains produced the highest water levels on the Delaware in half a century.

The heavy rains damaged a dam at the Swinging Bridge Reservoir, in Sullivan County. It is owned by the Mirant Corporation, an energy company, and is used to generate hydroelectric power. Vast amounts of water had to be released from the reservoir so the dam could be repaired.

Here's where it gets really complicated. The Supreme Court ruling, established in 1954, ensures that a certain amount of water -1,750 cubic feet per second - always flows past a monitoring gauge in Montague, N.J. This protects the water supplies of Trenton, Philadelphia and other cities downriver that draw drinking water from the Delaware.

While the extra water from Swinging Bridge helped meet the target at Montague, New York State was not directed to release water from its reservoirs to compensate for the water flushed from Swinging Bridge. As a result, the upper Delaware dropped, and water temperatures rose.

The Delaware River Basin Commission recently considered another proposal by the Friends of the Upper Delaware River for a constant release of 482 cubic feet of water per second from one of the city's reservoirs throughout the summer. Mr. Findley, the group's president, said doing so would stabilize temperatures without endangering the city's drinking water.

But Fred Nuffer, assistant director of the New York State Division of Water, said computer models run by the state showed that the Friends' proposal would use far too much water. Smaller releases, down to 160 cubic feet per second, were also analyzed, but the states represented by the commission unanimously rejected the proposal.

Mr. Nuffer said there were concerns that changing the three-year experimental program "in midstream" would invalidate the data already collected.

Still, river conditions have improved lately. With Swinging Bridge stabilized, New York City was directed last week to release water above Hancock, raising the level of the Delaware and lowering water temperatures, at least temporarily.

And New York City has agreed in principle to expand the cold water banks so there would be enough water to control temperatures in the East and West Branches of the Delaware and the Neversink through the end of September. All the states in the commission would have to approve that as well.

Michael A. Principe, director of New York City's Bureau of Water Supply , said that including the Hankins temperature targets in the interim plan had been overly optimistic, and that efforts to regulate the river's temperature might need to be scaled back in any long-term management strategy.

"You have to make a decision about how much of the river you can manage," Mr. Principe said. "Are you looking to control temperatures all the way down to Hankins? If not, you've got to step back and make a decision about what you can actually manage."

New York Times by By ANTHONY DePALMA 8/3/2005