Open Public Comment Session (Second Quarter 2024)
The Delaware River Basin Commission will hold an open public comment session Wednesday June 5, 2024, after its scheduled business meeting.
Date and time
Location
Tusten Theatre
210 Bridge Street Narrowsburg, NY 12764About this event
- 1 hour
Organized by
A breakthrough in water resources management occurred in 1961 when President Kennedy and the governors of Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York for the first time signed concurrent compact legislation into law creating a regional body with the force of law to oversee a unified approach to managing a river system without regard to political boundaries.
The members of this regional body - the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) - include the four basin state governors and the Division Engineer, North Atlantic Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who serves as the federal representative.
When the DRBC was created, some 43 state agencies, 14 interstate agencies, and 19 federal agencies exercised a multiplicity of splintered powers and duties within the watershed, which stretches 330 miles from the Delaware River's headwaters near Hancock, N.Y., to the mouth of the Delaware Bay.
The Compact's signing marked the first time since the nation's birth that the federal government and a group of states joined together as equal partners in a river basin planning, development, and regulatory agency.
The five members appoint alternate commissioners, with the governors selecting high-ranking officials from their state environmental agencies. Each commissioner has one vote of equal power, with a majority vote needed to decide most issues. Exceptions are votes to apportion among the signatory parties amounts required to support the current expense budget and votes to declare a state of emergency resulting from a drought or catastrophe, which require unanimity.
Commission programs include water quality protection, water supply allocation, regulatory review (permitting), water conservation initiatives, watershed planning, drought management, flood loss reduction, and recreation.
The DRBC is funded by the signatory parties, project review fees, water use charges, and fines, as well as federal, state, and private grants.
The commission holds business meetings and hearings on policy matters and water resource projects under regulatory review. These sessions, along with meetings of the commission's various advisory committees, are open to the public.