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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
How the Good Guys Won a River Battle, June 14, 2000
Okay, this book isn't for everyone. The price alone tells you that. But if you are a policy maker or an environmentalist interested in a success story, it could be a great investment. It is the tale of how one river remained damless, despite an authorized Army Corps of Engineers project. I liked the book because I am a canoer who has paddled the Delaware and a river activist who can use lots of tips.The author, Richard Albert, provides an insider's perspective. Most recently, he was a supervising engineer and basin planner for the Delaware River Basin Commission. He's been involved in river studies for three decades. The Delaware is a fairly small river, draining only four-tenths of one percent of the continental U.S. Yet almost ten percent of the nation's population relies on its basin for water, and Delaware Bay is within a day's drive of about 40 percent of the entire U.S. population. Various groups have wanted dams on the Delaware to provide water, electrical power and flood control. As Albert explains, no dams have been built because New York City, New York State, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware could never fully agree on a project. At the top end of the river, New York City wants to protect its drinking water supply, which is based on huge reservoirs near the headwaters of the Delaware in upstate New York. At the bottom end, fishermen and others want to assure clean, regular water flow, something that could be diminished by one or more dams. In between, there are many opinions about the potential impact of one or more dams on the river. Albert provides a long historical perspective, beginning in the colonial era, when navigation was the primary use of the river. States along the river agreed to prohibit dams, and this perspective ruled until the early twentieth century. Water supply, hydrological power, flood control and recreation became important issues in the twentieth century, and Albert gives them detailed treatment. His description of the 1960s and 1970s includes some bizarre twists to the story. Two examples stand out for me. First, there's eutrophication. That's the overproduction of algae and plants caused by too much phosphorus or nitrogen in water. It stinks, too. Environmental studies suggested that the large number of poultry farms upstream of the proposed Tock's Island Dam would turn the new reservoir into "one gigantic cesspool." I call this segment of the story, "How Chicken Poop Saved the Delaware." Second, the whole land acquisition process went sour. The Corps of Engineers began acquiring land for a huge National Recreation Area above and below the Delaware Water Gap in 1964. By 1970 the project was still on hold, and "hippy" squatters began settling on the new public lands. Local residents were already concerned about the impact of tens of thousands of visitors on their roads, water supply, power supply, etc., and they were none too happy to see Haight-Ashbury move its act into rural New Jersey. In the end, unpaid local activists played an important role in helping to achieve the 1982 "Good Faith Agreement" among the mayor of New York and the governors of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Everyone agreed to leave the river free-running until after the year 2000 - and then reconsider the dam as a water supply source. A friend and I canoed from Port Jervis, New York to the Delaware Water Gap in August 1999, and we camped right where the dam was proposed. Those who want to enjoy the Delaware as a free-flowing river after 2001 might want to pick up a copy of this book.
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