=NT Times / Upper Delaware River=

New York Times / Metro / Friday June 25 2004

Today at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/ny...5delaware.html

Do Fish Have Water Rights?

June 25, 2004
By ANTHONY DePALMA

HANKINS, N.Y. - The Delaware River runs low and lazy around
here, an unspoiled stretch of wild water that in some spots
is little more than ankle deep. But it is widely recognized
as one of the premier fly-fishing streams in the country
because trout seem to love it, especially when the water is
cold enough to make many ankles turn blue.

Trout are so sensitive to temperature that they can sense a
change of one-half of one degree. That's why Joe McFadden,
a professional fly caster who has fished these waters most
of his life, posts the river's temperature every day on a
white board outside his fly and tackle shop.

Trouble is, despite a wet and cool spring, water
temperatures have been spiking at around 75 degrees several
times this season, enough to nearly boil the life out of a
rainbow or a brown trout. Mr. McFadden blames New York
City.

Although Hankins, a village on the Upper Delaware, is 120
miles and a universe away from the city, it lies within the
New York watershed. Recent changes in the way the city
manages its water supply have caused ripples here,
splitting the usually close community of fishermen and
raising concerns about the impact on the region's economy.

For a half-century, since three huge New York City
reservoirs were completed on tributaries of the Delaware,
fishermen have pleaded with the city to release enough cold
water to satisfy the trout that have flourished in the
river's headwaters from Hancock to Callicoon, about 25
miles south. New York City, focused on meeting the drinking
water needs of its millions of users, paid little attention
to anglers' concerns.

That finally changed in April when a plan was adopted that,
for the first time, takes both the fishery - an environment
and economic activity that is important to this region -
and the citizenry into account as the city manages the 271
billion gallons of water in its three Delaware reservoirs.
Protecting the city's drinking water remains the top
priority, and the plan makes more water in the reservoirs
available for use in case of drought. But in years when
there is no threat of drought, like this year, the extra
water can be used to cool the Delaware and its tributaries
so that the trout can thrive. Christopher O. Ward,
commissioner of New York City's Department of Environmental
Protection, considers this an important achievement. He
told the City Council recently that the plan would
"establish a new standard for fostering ecological benefits
through water management decisions" without jeopardizing
the city's drinking water supply. But some fishermen have
reservations about the plan, while others have rejected it
outright.

"This whole new agreement stinks," Mr. McFadden said from
behind the counter of his shop, surrounded by boxes of
fishing line and dozens of hand-tied flies. While he
welcomes the city's willingness to take the fishery into
account, Mr. McFadden said that word had already spread
that fishing on the Delaware is not as good as it used to
be. "I've got no more than two people a day coming into the
store, and I get calls constantly asking about the water
temperature," Mr. McFadden said. Business, never booming,
has fallen off so dramatically that this month he put his
shop up for sale.

"I know they're not going to tell anyone in the city,
'Don't wash your car' just so I can fish up here, " Mr.
McFadden said. "But all I want is to get a common ground so
both of us can utilize this unique system."

There is no easy common ground when it comes to water
rights on the Delaware. It took decisions by the United
States Supreme Court in 1931 and 1954 to uphold New York
City's right to divert as much as 800 million gallons of
water a day from the river.

But to guarantee that Philadelphia, Trenton and other
downriver communities get their fair share, the court
required the city to make sure the river keeps flowing at
1,750 cubic feet a second as it leaves New York and enters
New Jersey.

If the Delaware is flowing strongly enough to meet that
target on its own, the city does not have to do anything.
But when the level of the river drops, the city has to
release water from its reservoirs to bring the flow up to
the court-mandated minimum.

Those releases come most often from the bottom of the
Cannonsville Reservoir in Delaware County, where the water
can be as cold as 42 degrees. Those irregular releases make
the river temperature swing from hot to cold back to hot
again without warning. The colder it is, the more the trout
like it. But as temperatures rise, the fish tend to
congregate in cooler eddies and sink holes, where they are
so easy to catch that fishing is no longer fun for purists
like Mr. McFadden. Above 70 degrees, the trout start to
show stress. If it gets much hotter than that, they can
die.

When fishermen complained about the erratic water releases,
the city generally ignored them, and resentment grew. But
things are about to change.

As part of a new drought plan, PPL Corporation , which
operates a hydroelectric plant at Lake Wallenpaupack in
Pennsylvania, agreed to release more water from the lake
during dry months. That water flows into the Lackawaxen
River, which finds its way into the Delaware about 25 miles
south of Hankins.

The Lake Wallenpaupack water can be used to meet the
court-ordered 1,750-cubic-feet-a-second flow requirement.
New York would then catch a break and not have to release
its supplies to satisfy the court order.

That extra cushion of water has also enabled officials to
do something else the fishermen had asked for many times
over the years - set guaranteed levels downstream from the
dams on the east and west branches of the Delaware, and on
the Neversink River, which runs into the Delaware. In the
past, levels fluctuated wildly, which harmed the trout and
interfered with the hatching of insects on which they fed.
The target flow levels, based on historical records, are
intended to make the river flow far more consistently. And
those records will be updated over the next three years and
lay the groundwork for a long-range water management plan.

All this might have been expected to please even the
grumpiest fishermen. But, in fact, it divided them into two
camps. Trout Unlimited has conditionally endorsed the
interim plan. Rocci Aguirre, a representative of the state
and national Trout Unlimited councils, said that while the
plan was not perfect, it was "a step forward."

But another group, the Friends of the Upper Delaware, sees
the interim plan as "the most severe threat to the river in
over 35 years." The basic problem, said Craig Findley, 59,
president of the group, is that the plan does not make
enough water available to keep the Upper Delaware as cool
as the fish and the fishermen would like.

Mr. Findley's group wants the city to release 600 cubic
feet per second of cold water consistently from April
through October, regardless of whether the water is needed
to meet the court's mandate. This would keep the river cold
and extend the trout season by several months.

Mr. Findley said he was worried about what would happen if
there is another summer as hot and dry as it was in 2001.
Under the new plan, water released from Lake Wallenpaupack
would eliminate the need for the city to pour any cold
water into the Delaware. Without that extra amount of cold
water, he said, the river could heat up fast.

"And if that happened," Mr. Findley said, "it would
devastate the Delaware fishery."

Such a calamity would shake the already weakened economy of
places like Hankins, population 250, where tourism and
fishing are the only viable future.

The New York City official most responsible for drawing up
the interim plan, Michael A. Principe, director of the
Bureau of Water Supply, said he understood the pressing
need to ensure adequate flows in the river.

"The last thing any of us wants to see is a fish kill," Mr.
Principe said.

But, he said, the fishermen must understand that nothing
can put New York City's drinking water supply at risk. What
they are asking for, Mr. Principe said, is enough water to
create an optimal habitat for the trout. The city's
reservoirs simply do not hold that much water, he said,
which means the fishermen will have to learn to be content
with a river that is good for trout, but not ideal.

For now, Mr. McFadden still watches the river carefully,
and every day he records temperatures and flows on the
board outside his shop. He worries that if the water
temperatures stay high, and the trout end up huddled in
sinkholes, he may have to add another note.

"If it gets too hot out there," Mr. McFadden said, "I'll
put up a sign that says 'Please do not fish. Leave 'em
alone.' "

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/ny...5delaware.html