Just Watchin’ the River Flow
The Delaware River is the largest free-flowing river east of the Mississippi.
Some 15 million people rely on the Delaware, and most of New York City and all of Philadelphia use it for drinking water. Additionally, millions use it for recreation; 5 million people alone visit the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area each year. Then there are the fish, birds and other wildlife who live in the river and along it.
But very fact that the river is free-flowing — which is to say that it is not dammed at any point from its upstate New York headwaters until it empties into Delaware Bay — has caused substantial destruction in the residential communities along the river in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania after each of the three major floods since 2004.
Those floods took lives, displaced several thousand people and cost millions of dollars in damage, primarily along the stretch of river in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania.
Enough is enough, say these residents, who are begging the Delaware River Basin Commission for relief. That would be in the form of a plan to manage discharges from three reservoirs upriver from flood-prone areas.
Trouble is, these long-suffering residents have some pretty formidable competition: All of those people who drink the river’s water, boat and fish on it and use its wildlife habitats, not to mention the wildlife itself.
The history of the Delaware River since Colonial times looms large in whether the contradictory interests of the residents and everyone and everything else can be balanced. That history – notably a decade-long war over an immense dam project that attained international notoriety — is a cautionary tale.
There has been no greater disaster in the modern history of the Poconos than the battle over that project – the Army Corps of Engineers plan to dam the Delaware River at Tocks Island. Not even the deadly twin hurricanes of 1955 can compare.
Tocks Island would be a lightning rod for the nascent American environmental movement. It would destroy the careers of some politicians and bring success to others. It would be the cause of suicides, arsons and violence. It would expose deep tears in the social fabric of the Poconos, unleashing a deep bitterness against the Corps and the dam’s powerful, politically connected backers that seems just as intense today as it was three decades ago.
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8 Responses to “Just Watchin’ the River Flow”
It has to be said Shaun: you’re a great, impressive writer. Enjoy reading your longer columns. You’ve got this thing that you’re really fascinated by what you write about: it shows.
Well done.
Michael:
I’m blushing.
Well, don’t. It is the truth. Thanks for sharing this.
Just to ask…. who has paid for the clean up and repairs to damaged homes and communites after 3 major floods since 2004?? It better not be FEMA….. The reason for that statement is that FEMA has ordered many towns in the Midwest to be moved and/or bought out and the town demolished. With the claims that they flood too frequently. Well, guess what if it’s ok to remove two towns in Iowa that flooded two years ago, then it’s ok to remove towns elsewere. These two towns flooded in the Great Flood of ’93 and again in 2004/05, now they no longer exist.
Christine:
Residents have been able to apply to FEMA for aid. But in this instance entire communities have not been in the flood zone, only relatively small portions of them, so this apparently is not a case of FEMA being able to order them moved or bought out.
Yeah, I have sympathy for people whose homes get flooded, but it only goes so far. Living near a river, like living near an ocean, carries inherent risks and I see no legitimate reason for the federal government to spend tax dollars to make every property near a river safe from flooding.
It was interesting reading about the history of this area because it reminded me a lot of western water law and dam controversies along the Colorado, Yampa, Green, and other western rivers. Thanks for the good article.
Entropy:
Thank you.
By my reckoning, the best book by far on Western water battles is “Cadillac Desert” by Marc Reisner. Having read it for my research into the Corps of Engineers and a companion agency, the federal Bureau of Land Management, I can heartily recommend it.
You assert “But (sic) very fact that the river is free-flowing — which is to say that it is not dammed at any point from its upstate New York headwaters until it empties into Delaware Bay — has caused substantial destruction in the residential communities along the river in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania after each of the three major floods since 2004.”
It is not the fact that the river is free-flowing which caused the destruction, but rather the fact that people built in the floodplain. Ultimately there is no way to keep a river out of its floodplain. If a dam fails, as sooner or later they all will, the destruction is far greater than that of a periodic flood.
The floodplain was created by the river as its own relief valve and it belongs to the river. It can not be safely occupied with permanent structures, certainly not structures which make human lives vulnerable. Dams are no guarantee against floods.