Fishermen versus Landscapers: An Analysis of Water Release Policies on the Upper Delaware River
<-- Return to the list
Date: 04-18-2006
Start Time:
1:00pm
End Time: 2:00pm
Speaker: Peter Kolesar, Columbia University, DRO
Location: Uris 333
Abstract
The Upper Delaware River is the source, via dams at its headwaters, of approximately 50% of New York City’s drinking water. Beginning in New York’s Catskill Mountains, the Delaware touches the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware before it enters the sea. Environmentalists are seeking to increase the summertime releases of cold water from New York City’s dams in order to improve the habitat for the wild trout that live there. On the other hand the city seeks to keep as much water behind the dams as possible at all times for fear that "tomorrow is the first day of the drought of the century." The down basin states require that constant flows of water be available to them. The river is managed under terms set out in a Supreme Court decree written in 1932 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which gives the several states and the New York City veto power over changes in the Delaware’s operating rules. We seek policies that could benefit the fishery without excessively increasing drought risk to the city and we propose a hierarchical "adaptive release policy" to replace the current cumbersome and dysfunctional system. Simple computer simulations of water flows in the upper Delaware show that the increased summertime water releases desired by the fishing community are more feasible than one might have thought. Moreover, it appears that the decrease in end-of-the-summer reservoir storage levels due to our "fish friendly" policy as compared to the current release policy is much smaller in "dry years" then in "wet years." In wet years the storage difference is larger, but it matters less since reservoir levels are much higher. A side benefit is that our proposed release policies would be considerably simpler to administer than the existing Byzantine rules. The mission of this analysis is to influence the upcoming 2007 revision of the Delaware operating rules. Hence, the presentation will focus as much on the complex political environment as on the modeling and analysis. Infighting among several conservationist groups and conflicts between the down basin states and New York City have been serious problems, and the speaker has expended as much effort politicking as analyzing. While the reservoirs are deep, the results are not: there will be no theorems.
Bio
Peter Kolesar is a professor in the decision, risk, and operations division of the Columbia Business School. He specializes in applied operations research and in quality and productivity management. His research on the deployment of police and fire fighting resources has been widely implemented—especially in New York City. The algorithm he developed with Warren Walker for the emergency relocation of fire engines is still in daily use in the New York, some 30 years after its design. This dynamic fire engine relocation algorithm was credited by the FDNY as contributing to the department’s ability to handle the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy without degrading fire protection in the rest of the city. Peter Kolesar is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science.