TRR photo by David Hulse Vast mud flats have now appeared at the Cannonsville Reservoir in Delaware County, as the 7,000-acre reservoir water levels continued to sink to levels unseen since its completion in 1965. (Click for larger image)

Drought impact apparent at Cannonsville

By DAVID HULSE

DEPOSIT — At the rate that it is draining, the 7,000-acre Cannonsville Reservoir could be technically empty by early next month.

Storage at the New York City reservoirs dropped inches below the formal drought line on November 26 and should it stay there until week’s end, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) will likely declare the basin to be in a drought.

If you want to see drought impacts, take a drive to Delaware County and look at the hole where some 96 billion gallons of water filled the reservoir to overflowing last spring. Today there are mud flats and the eerie sights of roads and foundations of communities drowned by the reservoir’s construction.

On November 27, Cannonsville stood at 3.4 percent of capacity.

Cannonsville has been taking the brunt of the drought for the system, which includes the Pepacton, Neversink and Rondout reservoirs. System storage Tuesday stood at 58 percent of normal, down some 152 billion gallons from this time last year.

Why has one reservoir been so completely drained?

Those familiar with New York City policy say that Cannonsville’s West Branch waters are of a lower drinking water quality than those of the other three reservoirs in the system. “We prefer to think that we’re providing the best drinking water for people in New York City, rather than saying we’re dumping the lesser quality water downstream,” said a spokesman who chose not to speak for attribution.

Cannonsville has the largest watershed—450 square miles—of the Delaware reservoirs and this statistically provides it the opportunity to refill the fastest, the spokesman added.

Without those releases the impact on the downstream main stem of the Delaware would have been much more apparent. With tributaries below the reservoirs drying up, “our releases have been making up about three-quarters of the Delaware’s flow this fall…. There’s not much you’re going to do about a winter drought. You just have to get through it,” the spokesman concluded.

Bill Douglass, executive director of the Upper Delaware Council (UDC), said council members have been debating taking a position about the massive pull-down at Cannonsville. “We’re going to bring it up at the monthly meeting in December,” he said.

	TRR photo by David Hulse A drowned road resurfaces at Cannonsville Reservoir. (Click for larger image)

Douglass said UDC staff believe that they need to know what impact that reservoir draw down will have on the downstream areas. “The lower it gets, the more concentration there is of any pollution that enters the river,” Douglass said.

There is also a question of de-oxygenated “dead water” at the reservoir bottom, along with  nutrients concentrated in effluent from remaining flow, he said.

“Is there going to be a negative impact of the low volume going into the reservoir in winter season?” Douglass asked. “There are a lot of fish there. What are they feeding on.… There’s a lot of questions that need to be asked,” Douglass said.

A basin-wide drought declaration would further reduce federally directed releases that maintain downstream Delaware flow levels. At drought, the flow target at Montague, NJ, is reduced from 1,750 cubic feet per second (cfs) to as low 1,100 cfs, and New York City drinking water withdrawals shrink from 800 million gallons daily (mgd) to 520 mgd.