Delaware River Master Parts the Water

December 27, 2011 | 1:00 PM

By Susan Phillips

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A stale­mate con­tin­ues when it comes to gas drilling in the Delaware River Basin.  The four states that share the basin can’t agree on how to reg­u­late the indus­try.  This is just one in a long line of inter­state con­flicts over a river that begins as a trickle in the Catskills, flows through Penn­syl­va­nia, New Jer­sey and meets up with the ocean in the Delaware Estu­ary. As it runs its 330 mile course, com­mu­ni­ties along its path rely on it for fresh water.

And it takes a lot of water to quench the thirst of 15 mil­lion people.

Stand­ing on the banks of the Delaware River in Mil­ford, Penn­syl­va­nia, look­ing across to Mon­tague, New Jer­sey, geol­o­gist Gary Paula­chok talks about his job as the Delaware River Mas­ter for the past 12 years.

“Now, right now in the river we have stage of ele­va­tion of about 6.3 feet,” says Paula­chok. “[That] cor­re­sponds to a flow of about ‚oh, about 3,500 cubic feet per second.”

• Delaware River Mas­ter Parts the WatersQuench­ing the Thirsts of 15 Mil­lion Peo­pleDown­load

Paulachok’s offi­cial title is Deputy Delaware River Mas­ter. He works for the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, which also employs a Delaware River Mas­ter sta­tioned in Reston, Vir­ginia. But Paula­chok is the guy who makes sure all that thirst doesn’t make the river run dry. Or more pre­cisely, he makes sure the salt water line doesn’t creep up to Philadelphia’s intake pipes in the North­east sec­tion of the city.

“And that is a very sig­nif­i­cant rea­son why this flow is main­tained at 1750 [cubic feet per sec­ond], says Paula­chok.  To keep the salt front down far enough down in the [Delaware] Estu­ary, so it doesn’t effect the city of Philadelphia’s water sup­ply or the water sup­plies in New Jersey.”

From his tightly packed room in an office park in Mil­ford, he tracks the vagaries of weather, the water releases of a nearby nuclear power plant, and other unwel­come surprises.

A 40-foot tall cement tower that sits by the river in Mil­ford, Pa. gauges river flow, and sends data out via satel­lite trans­mis­sion. The tower was built in 1939, as a way to medi­ate that era’s water wars among New York, New Jer­sey and Penn­syl­va­nia. At that time, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to mit­i­gate, and their edict still stands today.

“So this river is flow­ing at twice the rate that the Supreme Court Decree calls for,” says Paula­chok. Record rains in the area have kept the river full.

“If it were to drop below 1750 cubic feet per sec­ond here,” he says, “that’s when we would call for releases of water to bring it back up to 1750.”

Those water releases would come from one of three New York reser­voirs oper­ated to serve res­i­dents of New York City.

Back in the 1920’s and 1930’s, as New York City’s pop­u­la­tion grew, offi­cials looked for a clean source of water. Although the city does not lie within the Delaware water­shed, it decided the river pro­vided good water that could run down­hill to Manhattan.

So New York began build­ing reser­voirs and aque­ducts still in use today. The sys­tem now pro­vides 9 mil­lion New York state res­i­dents with unfil­tered water.  That’s a rar­ity for urban areas.

But when New York City started draw­ing water from the river 80 years ago, New Jer­sey and Penn­syl­va­nia objected. They wor­ried the Big Apple would hog all the good water. New Jer­sey wanted city res­i­dents to drink from the Hud­son River. But New York­ers said the Hud­son was too dirty.

The issue twisted its way through the courts and in 1931, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decree gov­ern­ing water with­drawals. In 1954, the court weighed in on a new chap­ter of the con­flict. It set up the post of River­mas­ter to over­see water flow, and make sure New York didn’t hoard all the good water.

Paula­chok is quick to show all the type­writ­ten tables and hand drawn sketches of river infor­ma­tion pre­sented to the Supreme Court. On the wall of his office, he’s posted the map used by the Court appointed Spe­cial Master.

Every year, Paulo­chok sends thick reports to the Supreme Court with the daily river flow fig­ures. Stand­ing by the river, he mar­vels over its health.

“As you can see, it’s a beau­ti­ful river,” says Paula­chok. “We have excel­lent fish­ing here, we have excel­lent recre­ation, the river is very clean. We have a thriv­ing bald eagle pop­u­la­tion here that’s depen­dent upon the river for its food source. And I would really just hate to see any­thing hap­pen to the water qual­ity for any rea­son, by any type of activity.”

Paula­chok says one thing the River­mas­ter hasn’t had to worry about was large water with­drawals for industry.

But when gas drilling begins in the Delaware River Basin, he says that could change. That’s because nat­ural gas wells can use up to 4 mil­lion gal­lons of water a day.

“What would con­cern one from a water sup­ply stand­point, is that water leav­ing the river basin,” says Paula­chok. “The con­cern in a num­ber of quar­ters is the cumu­la­tive effect. When we’re look­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of maybe 10,000 wells drilled in the Mar­cel­lus Shale alone, what is the total cumu­la­tive effect of all those tak­ing. We expect it would be significant.”

Water, com­bined with sand, and chem­i­cals is used to extract the gas in a process known as hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or frack­ing. Much of that water comes back up the well and needs to be treated. But Paula­chok says if the treat­ment takes place out­side the basin, that water won’t ever be returned.

Paula­chok says he also wor­ries about the cumu­la­tive effect drilling may have on water qual­ity. The bat­tle rag­ing among mem­bers of the Delaware River Basin Com­mis­sion has as much to do with the poten­tial water pol­lu­tion impacts of gas drilling, as it does with water usage.

Paula­chok has no reg­u­la­tory power and does not set pol­icy. His job is to make sure enough water flows down­river to com­mu­ni­ties in New Jer­sey, Penn­syl­va­nia and Delaware.

And his tenure comes to an end this month, when he’s set to retire. In the mean­time, gas drilling along the Delaware river remains in limbo while the Basin Com­mis­sion strug­gles to come to an agree­ment on new regulations.