New Hope woman fights to keep floodwaters at bay

For 19 years of her adult life, Gail Pedrick was unable to walk. Having gone through so much to get back on her feet, she says she isn't going to walk away from a fight.

Going on 74, Pedrick has been taking on four states, New York City, and the Delaware River Basin Commission in her quest to save her New Hope property, and those of others along the river, from the Delaware's fury.

"I'm not about to quit," she said recently at her Waterloo Road house, close enough to the Delaware to look like a docked ship. "I have a picture of Winston Churchill in my basement for a reason."

While invoking the World War II icon might seem a stretch, "this has been battle," she said, a fight lapping into the lives of about 15 million people. "We're little Davids down here."

The Goliaths, to complete the metaphor, would be New York City and the Delaware headwater reservoirs that supply its drinking water.

Pedrick and her group, Aquatic Conservation Unlimited, want the reservoir levels lowered to dilute potential flood dangers downstream.

She holds that for selfish reasons, the city wants to keep those manmade lakes brimming as hedges against drought; thus, during heavy rains, they behave like full bowls of water carried by drunks. The overflow spills into the river, flooding towns downstream.

The DRBC and the four basin states - Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware - are expected to sign off on an agreement this month for periodic water releases to manage the levels, said Bob Tudor, the commission's deputy executive director. The reservoirs, which hold about 271 billion gallons, would be kept at 5 to 10 percent below capacity.

That's not enough, say Pedrick and Elaine Reichart, the head of the conservation group. They want it to be 20 percent. They also complain that the deal was reached without public input and that its real aim is to protect New York's water.

They took their case to Harrisburg on Tuesday, meeting with John Hines, deputy secretary for the Department of Environmental Protection, and to Trenton on Wednesday.

Various experts maintain that the group's fears don't hold much water, that the reservoirs likely would have minimal impact - if that - on flooding 200 miles to the south in New Hope and Lambertville, N.J.

"It is inconsequential, perhaps not even measurable," said Jeff Featherstone, director of Temple University's Center for Sustainable Communities and a former DRBC top official. That conclusion is supported by computer-model analyses, says Tudor. Besides, half of the 10 worst floods on record occurred before the reservoirs were operating.

Pedrick counters that reservoir levels were under 50 percent when the remnants of Hurricane Floyd arrived with record rains in September 1999 and the Delaware didn't flood.

Gary Szatkowski, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, noted that Floyd came by after a prolonged drought that not only depressed the reservoirs, but weakened flows along the Delaware and the tributaries feeding it.

Pedrick isn't persuaded. She points out that the three most recent major floods all coincided with full reservoirs. Added Pedrick: "I don't care what they say."

Hard experience, she says, is the counterpoint.

She grew up across the river, in Lambertville. She recalled crossing the same bridge she can see today from her front window to get to work at the New Hope Diner. It was August 1955, in the aftermath of Hurricanes Connie and Diane. Along the way, she had to step over trees ripped asunder and intercepted by the bridge during the worst flooding in 50 years. The river crested 11 feet above flood stage at New Hope.

In 1985, she purchased her New Hope property, which dates to 1830, expecting a flood every 50 years or so. By then, she had been unable to walk for 11 years because of a spinal condition. While directing the rebuilding of her house, she moved about by crawling.

After four surgeries, she regained the ability to walk in June 2003, 18 months before a rampaging flood took out her heating, electrical, and plumbing systems. She would experience that trifecta two more times in the next 21 months as water poured through her living room and into her kitchen.

"It was up to here," she said, indicating a spot halfway up her dishwasher, about 25 feet from the front window. She lost a treasured wood floor, "hand-hewn by my cousin and his buddy."

The disruptions persuaded her to organize her neighbors and to learn about the basin commission, the four-state water-management agency created in 1961, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. "I didn't know there was a DRBC to complain to," she said.

She helped lead a petition drive that collected 10,443 signatures demanding that the commission keep the reservoirs at 80 percent capacity and presented the petition in person to Tudor in 2008.

Featherstone is also a veteran of the capacity debate, having worked for the basin commission for 20 years starting in 1981. Although, in his era, the challenge was different.

"The goals always had been to keep water in the reservoirs," he said. "We had droughts all the time." Future droughts, he said, are inevitable.

Not only are robust water levels important for New York, said Szatkowski, in drought they would be critical to Philadelphia's water supplies - but in a very different way.

Enough has to be available for release so that the river flow is strong enough to keep the contaminating salt line at bay. If saltwater came too far north up the Delaware, it would endanger the city's water supplies.

Szatkowski said he sympathized with Pedrick and others wary of full reservoirs.

"I get the point that they're trying to make," he said. "Anything that could be reasonably done to mitigate the impacts of flooding should be done."

But the choices, he said, might involve protecting "thousands impacted by flood vs. millions affected by a public-health crisis."

Featherstone said the real problem is obvious: "There are too many people who live in the floodplain. There was a period of 20 to 25 years when we didn't have any serious flooding, and then the floods came and people realized how vulnerable they are."

"You're not going to move New Hope," said a defiant Pedrick. Walking still requires tremendous effort, and she needs to take frequent rests. She has her bed set up so that she can watch the risings of the sun and moon outside the picture window that overlooks her lap pool and the river.

But after 26 years, she finally has decided it's time to get out of her house. She's selling it and moving - two doors down the street on Waterloo, still right on the river.

"I love Waterloo," she said. "I just don't like the flooding."

Historical crests for the Delaware River at Trenton.

30.6 ft., March 8, 1904

28.6 ft., Aug. 20, 1955

28.5 ft., Oct. 11, 1903

25.3 ft., April 4, 2005

25.0 ft., June 29, 2006

24.4 ft., March 19, 1936

23.6 ft., March 2, 1902

23.4 ft., Sept. 19, 2004

22.2 ft., Jan. 20, 1996

21.1 ft., May 24, 1942

SOURCE: Delaware River Basin CommissionEndText