Ice rescue practice on the Ashokan Reservoir. Photo via the NYC Water/NYC DEP website.
Adam Bosch of the Times Herald-Record spent Thursday on the ice at the Ashokan Reservoir watching NYC Department of Environmental Protection police officers don bright orange neoprene suits and pratice dragging each other out of the frigid water. It's a neat little story about how ice rescues work:
Their drill begins when Officer Chuck Chapman jumps into the Ashokan's west basin and lets out a yell — "Arf!" — to avoid respiratory spasm. Officer Paul Dwon, attached to a 150-foot rope, crawls toward the edge of the ice. Both men are wearing orange-red, neoprene suits that keep them warm and increase their buoyancy ...
Dwon lowers himself into the water, attaches a rope to Chapman and boosts the victim onto the ice. Their partner James Feldbauer pulls the victim about 15 feet across the ice — far enough to assure he doesn't break through again.
When the DEP plugged Bosch's article on its Facebook page, however, it prompted an argument in the comments section about its presence in the watershed. Burr Hubbell, a member of an old Delaware County family, kicked off the debate:
DEP a police force run by one municipality, enforcing laws against another. It's as if Boston sent police down to run Yankee stadium. What an undemocratic, unjust system.
The DEP responded:
Environmental Police Officers are on the front lines protecting the water supply system for half of New York State, roughly nine million people. We have invested billions of dollars in the water supply system, and the officers take on the duty to protect this irreplaceable resource against terrorism and other threats.
Just an illustration of how old tensions between watershed authorities and the upstate communities that supply their water are always simmering just under the surface.
