NJFred
Trout Hunter
I defer to the knowledge of people like Jim and Joe and Jeff, and others on the site who have been thinking about these issues for a long time. But I want to put a few points out there. I apologize in advance if these are stupid ideas.
The first point is that this was an abnormally dry and hot spring after an extremely cold winter. Not in any way normal. Anchor ice and snowpack, followed by a rapid heat up and no rain. In April and May of this year, the weather station in Hancock reported .01 inch of precipitation. On average, those months will have at least 2 or 3 inches of rain. (The mean is actually close to 15 inches for those two months, but it's pulled upward by extreme rainstorms.)
Of course the rivers are suffering. Of course the economy is suffering. This is almost a "worst case scenario" for the trout season. As JC and others have pointed out, FFMP is meant to protect the system during times of low flows, i.e. winter and summer, and anticipates some early spring rain, which we did not get at all.
No rainfall whatsoever in March and April is not a "new normal" - it's a test case and an opportunity to show the state and the city what happens when the Upper Delaware system doesn't have enough water in spring. A few emails back, somebody said "you broke it, you bought it" to Jim. The way I read this is that he is now somehow responsible for the weather. Wrong. Bigger releases would have helped this year. Smaller releases would have made things even worse. But you have to keep things in perspective. No flow plan is going to entirely anticipate and moderate the effects of extreme weather.
Second point. There are a couple of possible arguments that FUDR and others could use in pushing for an adjustment to the flow plan. They each have different implications.
The health of the fishery: Seems like the crucial issue here is avoiding really low flows when there are prolonged periods of high ambient temps. These are likely to happen in the summer. The Montague target releases will take care of some of these situations, and the FFMP scheduled releases will take care of others, but not all. Thermal protection releases, which Jim has been arguing for, and which the DEP explicitly said they were open to last week, seem to be the answer. When the reservoirs are above X% full, the rivermaster will release enough water to keep temps below 70 at Y location (Let's say Lordville). This doesn't seem unreasonable to me. And might not require huge amounts of water, though I really have no idea.
The health of the economy:This is related to the health of the fishery but not the same thing. Thermal releases won't make the river floatable during a dry spring like we're having. Recreational boating of all sorts (kayaking, canoeing, pontoons as well as drift boats) has been way, way down this year. And that's what a lot of people come to the Upper Delaware for, not just to hire guides and cast from a drift boat for a rising trout. Keeping more of the system floatable during peak season for the fishing industry up there would require bigger releases during the spring when the freestones are not supplying enough water. Like now. This seems to me like a tougher case to make. The city will want to hold on tight to its water during a dry spring, not knowing what summer will bring.
In my mind, the thermal releases are the low hanging fruit. They might not help the boating, but they'll keep the fish healthy and keep more water fishable longer, which will also help reduce the pressure on some parts of the system and will put money in the pockets of guides who can convince clients to wade from time to time. And the powers that be, whoever they are, seem more likely to agree to an increased release during, say, an occasional five day heat wave, than increased baseline releases.
my two cents as basically an outside observer of this debate.
Good points... It is an unusual weather pattern this year. However the point you left out is that the reservoirs are basically at normal levels. So why not cover the situation with a little more flow? FYI.. as I write this, Hancock is at 69 degrees and certainly the lowest reaches are at 70 dumping into junction. All this when the reservoirs are above 95% filled.
You share my view on thermal releases... They can spar water rather than 100% fixed releases. This is why they need to become part of the solution.
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