The Promise of Water

Have you ever been so frustrated over a particular situation that you just want to strangle someone? Of course you have. Well being a fishing guide certainly has it's rewards, but I am sure all guides working the Salmon River will agree that dealing with the ridiculous mismanagement of the water flow is enough to drive a man insane. First I want to once again commend the DEC for all the positive things they have done for this fishery. I have to believe they are doing the best with what they have to work with. (Just imagine the politics involved).

This time I am pointing the finger at Niagara Mohawk. If you were to write a book on how to mismanage a hydro river, you would write down exactly what they do.

Of course the good old days of pulsing the water is gone, that's fine. Now we have flow management committees, water meetings, computerized control valves, and they are based in Watertown, 40 miles north of the dam. This will sound like a broken record to locals but wouldn't you think they would control the flow from the same location that the water is coming from? This way they could look out the window, say yes it is raining, yes the water will be rising, and maybe we should increase the outflow to compensate for the increased inflow.

You must be kidding! Apparently it takes over 48hrs. to register the rise on their computer system, because it will pour down rain, and every stream in the area will be raging, but the Salmon River will not rise for two days.

Well you better be hanging on when it does come up, because they just increased it about 2000cfs because the reservoir is about to spill out of it's banks. Duh?

It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out, but after all this time, you would think that even those college graduates would catch on. Maybe they don't care how often the river floods. We are told that we must have minimum flows all year and we must reduce erosion by slowly ramping the water up and down which will also protect aquatic life. Eg.bugs.

We have been screaming over this for years but seems that it always falls on deaf ears. I would like a straight answer over why the water is handled in this way. We need to put the common sense back into controlling our water flows. Maybe this piece will irritate someone enough to respond. Time will tell.