Bwahahahaha!

New York City flooded entire communities to build its upstate reservoirs. Much to the satisfaction of its eight-plus million residents, it turns out that this is still happening today:

The endless tug-of-war between New York City, with its unquenchable thirst for clean water, and residents of the city’s upstate watershed, who fear they will be flooded whenever reservoirs overflow, gets played out daily in Angela and David Walker’s home here.

Mr. Walker is an operating engineer who works under the streets of Manhattan, digging New York’s third water tunnel. His father helped build the nearby Pepacton Reservoir dam 50 years ago. They know as well as anyone that the city relies for its very life on the one billion gallons of water a day it draws from 19 upstate reservoirs.

The Walkers’ home, a woodsy cabin just downstream from the mammoth Pepacton Reservoir, has been flooded at least five times in the last few years, and now they, like many others in this rural corner of Delaware County more than 120 miles from New York, blame the city for holding so much water in its reservoirs that a big rain or snowmelt can cause devastating floods.

“I’m not comfortable living here anymore,” said Mrs. Walker, 47, an aide in the local public school. Every time she hears it is going to rain, she makes sure her picnic table is chained to a tree and her oil tank is firmly anchored to the ground so they won’t wash away.

“To keep that reservoir at the level they keep it at,” she grumbled, “is ridiculous.” The city is beginning to listen. Slowly, against its will, New York is taking steps to prevent floods from ravaging the watershed, even if it means endangering its water level.