U.S. Water Woes – Northeast – Watts Up With That?

Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 18 December 2024 — 2000 words

For the last couple of months, the press in the United States has been hammering on about drought conditions, in front page stories such as:

In a Record, All but Two U.S. States Are in Drought

and

What’s Going On in This Graph? | Drought

All of these claims about drought are based on the U.S. Drought Monitor, which itself is mostly just a metric based on rainfall – above or below normal. 

When one digs down to discover “what’s going on…?” one discovers that the fact is that October 2024 was a dry month across most of the country, and it followed on September, which was likewise a bit  less rainy than “normal”.  That’s it, the whole story.

What results from that is a US Drought Monitor graphic, touted far and wide, that looked like this:

Climate.gov attempts to make hay out of this:

“The average temperature of the contiguous U.S. in October was 59.0°F, 4.9°F above average, ranking second warmest in the 130-year record. October precipitation for the contiguous U.S. was 0.95 inch, 1.21 inches below average, tying for second driest with October 1963.”

So, yes, looking at a continental average – if such a thing is real and reasonable – October was dry.  But claims, made in almost all press articles about the October droughtiness,  include things like:  “Drought conditions are driven by abnormally high temperatures that can quickly suck moisture from the atmosphere and the ground.” [source ].  The silly assertion that 59°F (15°C) is “abnormally high” doesn’t quite make the grade as plain language explanation.  That may be  “warmer” for  Octobers across the United States, but it is not high.  Those temperatures are cool temperatures.  [ source ]

But the deficit of rainfall in many areas of the country does cause concerns.

U.S. Northeast 

For the city of New York, which derives almost all of its drinking water from reservoirs in the Catskills and the Croton Watersheds, dry weather in late summer leads to low reservoir levels:

Mayor Adams Issues Citywide Drought Watch, Orders City Agencies to Develop Water Conservation Plans, Urges New Yorkers to Start Conserving Water — November 2, 2024

The beleaguered Mayor is worried:  “we’re doing everything we can to make sure that we can water our parks and fill our pools come summer…”

Where does NY City’s drinking water come from? 

It should be clear from the maps below that New York City takes water from far upstate (as they call any part of the state above Westchester). The Delaware System of three reservoirs feeds water to the Rondout Reservoir which then sends the water to the Croton Watershed system via the Delaware Aquaduct while the Catskill Watershed feeds all the way south to the Kensico Reservoir from the Ashokan Reservoir.

If this water was not being diverted to NY City, where would it go?   Three of the reservoirs in the Delaware System would flow to the Delaware River, past Philadelphia, and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean where it forms the border between New Jersey and Delaware, at Cape May.  In the north of the Catskill System is the Schoharie Reservoir on the Schoharie Creek, which naturally flows into the Mohawk River (which runs west to east across central New York State) which feeds the Hudson River near Albany, NY.  Rondout Reservoir has its own watershed, but also receives the water from the Delaware System reservoirs enroute to NY City.  The Rondout Creek flows northeast and empties into the Hudson River at Kingston, NY, while the Ashokan Reservoir spills into the Esopus Creek which flows into the Hudson at Saugerties, NY.    All of the Croton Reservoirs would also naturally flow into the Hudson River.

Reservoir levels, at the end of October 2024,  were lower than usual, at 63% of capacity:

They still are a little low in early December 66%, 16% less than what is usual for this time of year:

But notice, just above, in the lower left corner, the precipitation figures.  Both November and December (so far) have had above normal rain

Below we see the situation for NY City Reservoirs in September 2024, at the end of the long so-called hottest ever summer:

Total water storage was a bit over normal at 78.2% of capacity, even after a poor rainfall in September.  So, we can see that it is the combined rainfall deficits of September,  down 2.5 inches,  and  the 3.3 inch deficit in October that was the source of the problem.  That’s a total of  5.8 inches less rain in just those two months.   But the rebound in November and December has not quite made back the shortfall.

Important Note:  Reservoirs such as these are best visualized as buckets with a hole in them.  The outflow  is more or less constant (in the larger sense).  Usually, the inflow depends on rainfall.  But in the NY City system, some reservoir outflow becomes inflow into other NY City reservoirs.  Two of the major rivers that flow into the Hudson River from the west in the Central Hudson Valley (the Esopus and the Roundout) have their streamflow determined by “releases” and spillage from NY City Reservoirs.   Reservoir storage is not a measure of available water – only of what is allowed to remain in the reservoir. 

NY City consumes, on average, 1 Billion Gallons of fresh water daily, not including the estimated leakage of 35 million gallons per day lost in transit.

What effect does NY City’s water system have on Philadelphia?

Now that is an interesting question.  Philadelphia and surrounding cities take their drinking water from the Delaware River.  Philadelphia is a major U.S. seaport: “Delaware River port complex to collectively refer to the ports and energy facilities along the river in the tri-state PA-NJ-DE Delaware Valley region. They include the Port of Salem, the Port of Wilmington, the Port of Chester, the Port of Paulsboro, the Port of Philadelphia, and the Port of Camden. ^“  

Those ports combined create one of the largest shipping areas of the United States.  Most of these ports are clustered long both sides of the Delaware River in a 20 mile stretch from River Mile 80 to River Mile 100 (a River Mile is generally the distance from the mouth of the Delaware River).

Unlike NY City, whose adjacent Hudson River is saline,  the water in the Delaware River at Philadelphia is fresh and the major drinking water intake is located at about River Mile 110 (upstream from the ports and their potential polluting activities).   But, the Atlantic Ocean is only 110 miles downstream from the intake. 

Salt water naturally flows upstream from the sea and is held at bay by the downstream flow of the fresh water coming down the river.  The leading edge of that salt water intrusion is called the Salt Front (sometimes the Salt Wedge).

“What is the Salt Front?

“One important metric for understanding salinity concentrations in the Delaware Estuary (the tidal Delaware River & Bay) is the seven-day average location of the salt front, the 250 mg/L chloride concentration based on drinking water quality standards.”

“The salt front indicates water that is not safe to be used for drinking water because it is too salty. Because there are no dams on the Delaware River, ocean derived saltwater can move up the Delaware River from the Delaware Bay. While you cannot see the salt front, its location fluctuates in response to changing freshwater inflows, which either dilute or concentrate chlorides in the river.”

The average location of the Delaware River Salt Front is around Wilmington, Del. (see below graphic) but in times of extreme drought, such as in 1960,  has been as far north as Camden, NJ (River Mile 102).

So, what does this have to do with NY City?  Three of the major inflow streams for the Delaware River are controlled by releases of water from three NY City reservoirs.  Much of the natural flow of the Delaware is diverted to deliver water to NY City.

Why is this important?

For Pennsylvania Climate Crisis advocates, the advance of the Salt Front is always blamed and predicated on the wildly exaggerated predictions of Sea Level Rise.  And, it is true, as sea level rises at the mouth of the Delaware, it does have a tiny effect on the upstream movement of the Salt Front.   But The Delaware River is tidal, with a tidal range of 6 to 7 feet at the Delaware-Pennsylvania border and at Philadelphia, where sea level has been rising at a steady 3⁺ mm/year since 1900, equivalent to a change of 1.02 feet in 100 years.

The evidential argument against the cry of “Sea Level Rise” is the simple fact that it is the downstream flow of fresh water that regulates the position of the Delaware Salt Front and the overall river flow needed to keep the Delaware Salt Front at bay depends natural rainfall and on NY City allowing water to be released from its three Delaware System reservoirs.  In times of drought (less rainfall) NY City tends to hoard water and releases it grudgingly – never a drop more than required by long-standing policies set by the a rather long list of agencies and legislatures, mostly controlled by the Delaware River Basin Commission.

Down there at the bottom, near the red arrow, is what water flow remains to keep the Salt Front downriver, after the Out-of-Basin Diversions of up to 900 million gallons of water daily, 800 million of that to NY City.    

Bottom Lines:

1. Megalopolises need fresh clean drinking water – a lot of it.  NY City needs a billion gallons a day.

2. NY City ‘steals’ much of that water from the Catskills – at least in the opinion of the people that live there and are subject to arbitrary rules made and enforced by armed officers from a NY City agency, the NY City Department of Environmental Protection.

3.  NY City, to fulfill its water needs, also takes water that should supply New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania cities such as Philadelphia via the Delaware River.

4.  The solution to “not enough drinking water” for these dense population and industrial centers is and has always been build more fresh water storage and to waste less of the fresh water. 

5.  The planet Earth is not short of water, 70 some percent of the surface is covered by it.  Proper nuclear power plants could both provide fresh water and electricity to coastal cities – as well as centralized heating in dense city centers.

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Author’s Comment:

I grew up in Los Angeles, California. Then a rapidly growing megalopolis in a very dry climate, some say ‘a desert’, but it is more correctly a Mediterranean climate.   It too steals its water from other places (see the movie “Chinatown”). 

My youth was one continuous sunny day, interrupted occasionally by too much rain, atmospheric rivers, that flooded the city, washed homes down the hillsides,  filled its concrete  ‘flood control canals’ and turned our local park into a lake (by design).  (To see the blue canals, zoom in on any part of the city.)

The US Drought Monitor is a misleading tool and often used to intentionally mislead the general public.  See my earlier essays on Drought.

If one were to believe the main stream media, we live in a madding maelstrom of crises.  Hold onto your hats and turn up your critical thinking skills knob to full blast.

Thanks for reading.

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