Above, trucks haul dredging debris out of the Stony Clove in Phoenicia. Photo by Janet Klugiewicz.
Tom Rinaldo, who writes the Dispatches from Shandaken column for the Watershed Post, filed this story on September 6. We couldn't post it before now, because of a second round of flooding in the Catskills and some technical difficulties. Some of the details of this column, such as the 12-hour-a-day dredging of the Stony Clove, have been interrupted by the flooding this week. -- Julia Reischel
It’s still going on now, just outside my door on that formerly quiet block I wrote about a short while back. The overall bustle here is unending, with Shandaken’s Emergency Command Center located right on our corner, but most of the noise is coming from the Stony Clove Creek just 50 yards away. There work crews are working 12 hour days dredging boulders and debris out of the stream bed between the bridge over Route 214 that is a short block away and the firehouse across the street.
Dredging stream beds after a flood usually seems like an awfully good idea to those just affected by the flooding of those streams, but the science regarding it isn’t as favorable as local opinions of dredging tend to be. I will count on our esteemed publisher to enter a link here to some of the relevant research previously published on dredging by the Watershed Post.
I will say this, though. From where I now sit, the vigorous dredging of the Stony Clove Creek now going on seems like an awfully good idea to me.
Dredging the Stony Clove on September 6. Photo by Tom Rinaldo.
A short stroll outside today revealed three dump trucks sitting on partially-cleared stream bed waiting to be loaded with rocks and such -- and another driving off to dump its load and help reclaim washed-out Miller Road in Mount Tremper, and four more lining Route 214 waiting for their turns. The progress they have already made since the dredging began is obvious and impressive.
After a heavy night-long rain, though, something else was revealed: water calmly flowing, with plenty of head room to spare, under a bridge that Irene's floodwaters had easily topped just a few short days ago.
Above: Water flowing under the Route 214 Bridge in Phoenicia on September 6. Photo by Tom Rinaldo.
Granted, last night's rain wasn’t anywhere as bad as Irene’s, but it was hard and driving just the same. Across the street, above the firehouse, and for a couple of hundred yards downstream, the water boiled a furious brown just like it always does after heavy rain here. But something had changed. For 50 yards immediately above the 214 bridge, that turbulence subsided, the water there moving swiftly but calmly under the bridge's structure.
Now, that is different. Ever since I moved here water has never flowed smoothly under that bridge after a heavy rain, and never have I seen so much clearance at that bridge while water was raging elsewhere on the Stony Clove. They say (those nameless pundits) that the exception proves the rule. They may be right when it comes to dredging and the 214 bridge. It sits by the junction of two flood-prone streams. It sits by the junction of several essential roads. It provides a key entrance to the largest business district in Shandaken, within the most densely populated hamlet in our township.
When storms in the past raged and fallen trees rampaged down the waters of the swollen Stony Clove Creek, too many piled up at the base of that bridge, with its chronically low clearance above that stream bed. When trees did that they pummeled that valuable and expensive structure. When trees did that they partially damned the stream, which helped drive floodwaters onto Main Street in Phoenicia, a shopping district many depend on and a key aspect of Shandaken’s local economy.
Today, essentially all of Main Street in Phoenicia is open for business. If dredging in Stony Clove Creek helps it stay that way -- yup, it seems like an awfully good idea to me. I guess we will all know soon enough if it works.
Phoenicia lives. It may not be quite as idyllic today as Budget Magazine's 10 Coolest Small Towns in America title makes it sound, but it is nowhere near as beaten up as the New York Times' recent story about the wisdom of rebuilding on a flood plain makes it seem either. I’ll have more to say about that coverage of Phoenicia in the next dispatch from Shandaken.
Tom Rinaldo writes the Dispatches from Shandaken column for the Watershed Post's Shandaken page three times a week. Email Tom at tomrinaldo@watershedpost.com.
