Basin commission will back off permanent ‘flex-flow'

New and ‘less prescriptive’ reservoir operations regulations coming next year WEST TRENTON, N.J. — The Delaware River Basin Commission is expected to withdraw proposed regulations that would codify the Flexible Flow Management Program for New York City’s reservoir releases at its Dec. 10 meeting. Eliminating “banks” of reservoir water used in past to cool warming summer river waters and protect wild trout populations, the flexible flow program has put environmental and fishing elements in opposition to property owners who favored the flex plan’s releases based on reducing high reservoir storage to help in flood control. The plan came in response to serious downstream flooding in 2004 and 2005. The regulations were proposed last December to make permanent a Sept. 2007 agreement that now runs out in June 2011. Executive Director Carol Collier said that she expected the commmission would “direct staff to develop new proposed amendments to the Water Code aimed at facilitating adaptive water resources management within a regulatory framework.” While no action to approve the Water Code amendments is scheduled, the panel will discuss the proposed code and a status report on the flex-flow operation at their afternoon business meeting. A conference session will begin, Dec. 10, at 10:30 a.m. at the commission’s office building, at 25 State Police Drive, in West Trenton. Both the morning session and the 1:30 p.m. business meeting are open to the public. In accordance with the Delaware River Basin Compact, the statute that created the Commission, the commission cannot take action except at a public meeting. What will be changed Those proposed new amendments to the Water Code, which will not be released before the summer of 2009, are expected to provide flexibility in “addressing additional data and information as it becomes available from a variety of sources,” a commission statement stated. The Commission statement said new Water Code amendments will contain standards for operation of the NYC Delaware Basin reservoirs but will be less prescriptive than previous proposals, which included detailed operational requirements. The amendments will allow for flexible, timely adjustments to reflect real-time conditions and new information, including the annual review of flexible-flow implementation, model simulations, and other sources. Such adjustments may include modifications to the release schedules to reflect climactic, river flow and temperature conditions, as well as short-term operating changes to accommodate maintenance and repair needs on a timely basis. The anticipated rule proposal will provide for public notice and comment with respect to any major modifications of the reservoir operating program. The flexible-flow agreement agreed to by the parties to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Decree, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York State, and New York City, continues to be implemented on a temporary basis through May 2011. It can be viewed on the Delaware River Master’s web site at http://water.usgs.gov/osw/odrm/. What is flexible flow? The Decree Party’s flexible-flow agreement was developed to provide a more adaptive means than the previous operating regime for managing the Cannonsville, Pepacton, and Neversink reservoirs for competing uses, including: water supply; drought management; flood mitigation; protection of the downstream fishery; a diverse array of habitat needs in the main stem river, estuary, and bay; recreation; and salinity repulsion. The 1954 Supreme Court Decree, which resolved an interstate water dispute centering on the three NYC reservoirs, made no provision for spill mitigation, conservation or ecological releases. The flexible-flow agreement eliminated of the reservoir storage “banks” previously used for habitat protection purposes and instead bases releases on storage levels, resulting in larger releases when water is abundant and smaller releases when storage is at or below normal. Its spill mitigation component is intended to reduce the likelihood that the three reservoirs could be full and spilling coincident with a major storm or thaw. The law allows the commission to allocate the basin waters, but prohibits its adversely affecting any decree conditions. This includes the reservoir releases in the decree, without the unanimous consent of the five Decree Parties. For more information, visit the commission’s web site at www.drbc.net .