No Water Over The Dam

As I traveled over the Scudder Falls Bridge between PA and New Jersey this morning, I noticed a substantial rise in the Delaware River from recent heavy rains and hoped that residents who have been victimized by recent flooding will be spared further damage to their property.

That makes this Guest Opinion in the Bucks County Courier Times by former U.S. Representative Peter Kostmayer all the more important, published on December 30th (Kostmayer is also a senior EPA official and president of Population Connection, an organization formerly known as Zero Population Growth).

By the way, if Kostmayer seems a bit strident here, I’m sure it’s because he actually knows what he’s talking about.

Last spring, the Courier Times editorialized that the Tocks Island Dam, killed by Congress in 1978, should be reconsidered. Wrong.

The Courier said some might view my bill that killed the Tocks Island Dam and designated the 114 miles of the river as protected from all development under the federal Wild and Scenic Law “as one of Kostmayer’s biggest mistakes.” Wrong again. Here’s why.

Construction of the dam on the upper Delaware would cost $1.5 billion, according to the Delaware River Basin Commission. Ever hear of cost overruns for big government construction projects? With cost overruns, litigious delays and the passage of time it would more likely cost twice that - $3 billion.

According to the commission, that will result in a “small impact.” That’s a lot of money for a little impact. Flood stage at Trenton is 20 feet, somewhat lower at Yardley. The worst floods in recent history, those that occurred in 1955, brought the river to 28.6 feet. Tocks would reduce that, but not below flood stage. Better to ban all new construction on the flood plain starting now. All construction. And no expansions of existing structures.

Banning development on the flood plain is $3 billion cheaper than building a dam and protects open space at the same time. Much of the flood plain is rural and open and green. Let the flood plain, free of all structures, flood. But what about what’s already there? What about places that can’t be moved, like New Hope and Morrisville and the towns on the other side of the river?

A study should be made of property that can be bought and preserved as open space by the federal government. Such a proposal is not without precedent. When Tocks was first proposed, the federal government began buying up land that was to be flooded by the lake the dam would have created. That land is now part of the National Recreation Area. We can’t buy everything.

For those who remain, whose homes and businesses are in danger, the government (Which wrongly allowed building on the flood plain to begin with) should insure their properties with low cost insurance that otherwise might not be available. Even in areas away from the flood plain, development has made too much of the land impervious to runoff, increasing the likelihood of flooding.

The river isn’t the problem, we are. Ban construction on the flood plain, control development in areas just beyond the plain itself through zoning that recognizes that once the land is covered with shopping centers the soil doesn’t absorb the water anymore!

River towns like New Hope and Lambertville, Morrisville and Trenton and all the others large and small, up and down the Delaware must have hazard mitigation plans, which will qualify them for FEMA mitigation grants. Once a plan is in place and funding provided, towns hard on the river’s edge that have been there since before the American Revolution can qualify for structural projects to limit damage in addition to voluntary elevations, relocations and voluntary buyouts.

If I thought the dam would stop flooding I’d be for it. Who wouldn’t? The question is a simple one. What’s the best way to protect the lives and property of those who live on the river’s edge or nearby? People would like to believe the dam will bring an end to flooding. It won’t. Facts are stubborn things and as New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s task force he named to study Delaware River flooding last year said, “the flood plain should be expected to flood.” That’s why they call it a flood plain.

The Corzine report said, “No set of measures, alone or in combination will stop or eliminate flooding in the Delaware River flood plain.” If flooding is a fact of life we need to find the best ways to protect the lives and property of those who live along the river. Smaller dams on the Delaware’s tributaries from the big ones like the Lehigh, to middle-sized ones like the Neshaminy to the smallest like the Tinicum and Tohickon creeks (also given federal protection in my 1978 bill) can control the massive flow of water pouring into the main stem of the Delaware like a faucet being turned on and off making unnecessary the construction of a $3 billion pork barrel project upstream.

Leave the Delaware alone. Don’t dam it or build another bridge across it or a shopping center alongside it. Fight to keep it what it is, the longest stretch of un-dammed river protected by federal law east of the Mississippi.

I was right in 1978. I’m right in 2006.

I understand Kostmayer’s frustration and I respect it, but as much as I’d like to avoid any further construction along the river also, I should point out we need to plan for another bridge between PA and New Jersey in the Bucks County area due to the volume of vehicular traffic. Of course, the alternative is to actually get more serious about mass transit, but since apparently no one wants to go there (or consider mass telecommuting), then we have to look at the option of another bridge.

I’m glad Patrick Murphy will have a chance to revisit this issue; I hope he plans to secure FEMA funding so people living by the river or running businesses can do what they can to protect themselves. I know this involves dealing with the agency run by Mike “City of Louisiana” Chertoff, but at least this is an attempt at an actual solution as opposed to Mike Fitzpatrick’s “cotton candy” PR idea of trying to get New York City to lower its reservoir capacity to 85 percent (which, as noted previously, would likely result in decreasing water onto people’s property by about one inch).

I think Kostmayer is basically right, though (and I wish I had a nickel for every meeting I’ve ever attended where a residential or commercial developer said they were going to build some kind of drainage basin to capture runoff, and I’ve never seen that materialize once).

Pave over the flood plain, and it never drains again. That’s it.