The Downhill Winds

Although it is surrounded by water, Manhattan Island has always had water problems. In 1664 Peter Stuyvesant surrendered New York (then called Nieuw Amsterdam) to the British partly because of a shortage of potable water. In 1881 a drought forced New York firemen to learn how to extinguish blazes with dynamite instead of water. In 1949 the city declared a Dry Friday, when residents were asked to stay out of their bathtubs and showers and go unshaven to ease a water shortage. Last week, in the midst of the worst drought they have faced in this century, New Yorkers could get a glass of water in a restaurant only if they specifically asked for it. Residents were forbidden (on pain of fines) to water lawns or gardens, wash cars, turn on fountains. In Manhattan men's rooms, signs cautioned: DON'T FLUSH FOR EVERYTHING.

So far this year, New York City's 1,500-sq.-mi. watershed system has received only 131 in. of precipitation, well below the 80-year average of 23 in. for the first half of the year. In normal times, the city's industries and 8,000,000 inhabitants use a daily per-capita average of 154 gal. By dint of the restrictions imposed, that average is now down to 125 gal. and may be cut even more. As of last week, New York City's 476.5 billion-gal.-capacity reservoirs held only 240.7 billion gal.

Lost Atlantis. The drought that afflicted the big city was plaguing a widespread area of the Northeast U.S. and parts of Canada. Anglers on New Brunswick's Kedgwick and Restigouche rivers went home salmonless because the rivers were so low that the fish could not make it upstream to spawn. At the Quabbin Reservoir, near Springfield, Mass., the water level dropped so far that a long-submerged race track came into view like a relic of some lost Atlantis. In Maine the 30 million-lb. blueberry crop was nearing its critical growth period in need of moisture. And the city of Concord, N.H., was draining water from a pond at a nearby private boys' school. All along the Northeastern Seaboard, the most thickly populated area of the U.S., suburban lawns were browning and trees and shrubs parching.

Cause of all the trouble is a meteorological phenomenon that began four years ago and so far has given no sign of abating: a predominantly dry air mass that is stuck over the north eastern U.S. Under normal conditions, the prevailing winds that sweep from west to east across the U.S. at altitudes ranging from one to five miles fluctuate between downhill (northwest-southeast) and uphill (southwest-northeast) courses, which produce alternating dry and wet weather. On the uphill course the air rises, eventually cools off enough to produce condensation, clouds and rain. Just the opposite happens on the downhill cycle: air flowing from northwest to southeast moves lower as it reaches the east coast, becomes warmer, drier, and loses its rainmaking potential. Since 1961 the downhill flow has persistently hugged the northeastern U.S., producing the prolonged dry spell. Why? There are theories but no firm answer.

Do More. One effect of the crisis was to make public officials conscious that more must be done to assure adequate water supply. New York's Mayor Robert Wagner ordered a Hudson River pumping station (built after the 1949 drought but subsequently dismantled) rebuilt as an emergency measure. The Hudson pours hundreds of millions of gallons of water a day past New York City, but no one has ever adequately dealt with the problem of tapping the polluted stream for public use.

New York City Water Commissioner Armand D'Angelo last week went to Philadelphia for an emergency meeting of the four-state (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware) Delaware River Basin Commission. Under a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decree, New York City is allowed to draw 490 million gal. daily from the Delaware but must release enough water from its own reservoirs to keep the river's level at a certain minimum. At last week's meeting, the commission found that New York had not been doing this and that unless quick action was taken the water supply of Philadelphia (pop. 2,000,000) and nearby Camden, N.J. (pop. 116,000), would be contaminated in four weeks by the encroachment of salt water from the Atlantic Ocean into the depleted Delaware. Under emergency powers, the commission decreed that New York henceforth must draw 75 million gal. a day less from the Delaware and release an additional 200 million gal. from its own reservoirs into the river, for an overall loss of 275 million gal. Said Commissioner D'Angelo gamely: "We can live with it."

The big question was: How long can the Northeast live with drought? Meteorologists hold out little hope of immediate relief. The U.S. Weather Bureau's Wayne C. Palmer says that the drought is "spreading and intensifying, building and getting worse." Palmer is confident that "sooner or later" the atmospheric wind patterns will change, bringing the Northeast "normal or wetter-than-normal weather." But he adds:

"At this time last year I was expecting this to be over. I thought it really should be over. But it isn't, and I'm getting cagey about predicting when it will be."

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