New DRBC head promises a steady hand on the tiller
| December 17, 2024
Kristen Bowman Kavanagh is the new executive director of the Delaware River Basin Commission. So new, in fact, that her name is still on the door of her old office and not yet on her new office.
So, she’s still dividing her time between her new office at the DRBC’s headquarters in West Trenton, N.J., and her old one down the hall. She spent five years as deputy director, having been appointed to the new job starting on Dec. 1.
For this interview, I asked her to explain what the DRBC is, since it seems to confuse so many people.
“Well,” she said, seeming to grant permission to be a little confused, “I understand it differently than I did five years ago.” She explained that the DRBC has a complicated role to fill in the basin and one that is frequently misunderstood.
Likely the confusion arises since the commissioners are the governors of the four states (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware) and the commander of the North Atlantic Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, though none of those are usually in attendance at the meetings where decisions are made. Their representatives cast votes for the governors and for the federal government. Neither the executive director nor the staff at the DRBC make decisions — the commissioners do.
She likes to explain it as a wheel, with the DRBC at the center and the four states and the federal government (represented by the United States Army Corps of Engineers) as spokes in the wheel.
“The DRBC is not independent, rather it is a mediator for the states and federal government to look after the water resources of the basin for the good of all stakeholders.”
Put it another way, Kavanagh said: “They are not them. They are we.” (Think about it.)
“It’s as if we are a separate department of each state and of the federal government. We’re not a completely separate entity.”
Philly roots
She first came to the DRBC in 2019 as a another step in her homecoming. Born in Philadelphia, Kavanagh grew up and went to school in California. She has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering: environmental and water resources, and a master’s degree in civil engineering: environmental fluid mechanics and hydrology, both from Stanford University.
She now lives in Center City Philadelphia with her husband, an architect, two school-aged children, and two “Covid” rabbits.
In a previous interview, she said that growing up in California helped to make her aware of the value of water because years-long droughts were common. It was a part of everyday life that all residents were aware of leading to an understanding, for example, of “what time of day you water your plants.”
And that led to an interest in the state’s massive reservoir systems.
“Here, we’re more concerned about flooding but climate change will bring changes that will affect our water-supply systems,” she said. “We should expect changes in precipitation. Our job is to plan for that.”
At the time of this interview, the states were experiencing various level of droughts and Kavanagh saw that as her (and the DRBC’s) short-term goal: to manage the basin’s water resources through those water deficits.
Why did she want to work at the DRBC?
“’cause it’s a cool job,” she said with a smile.
She explained that she worked for about 20 years in the private sector, and she had clients in the water and wastewater sectors. So, she was dealing with the problems they had one at a time.
“Being here is a dream job — getting to work on watershed-wide issues, it’s more exciting, you can have a greater impact.”
As executive director, “I can take everything I’ve learned and work on the place where I live. I am attracted to an agency where good science is performed by good people across the board.”
Some of that good science led to a years-long process of figuring out how to remedy the low levels of dissolved oxygen in the lower river between Philadelphia and Wilmington, in order to protect the diminished population of Atlantic sturgeon, an endangered species.
The DRBC developed a hydrodynamic model of the river, to figure out the effects of tides, water, salt, etc. on dissolved oxygen.
That work was completed in May 2022. In December of that year, the Environmental Protection Agency stepped in, a surprising move, seeming to usurp the DRBC’s authority to complete the work.
And how did Kavanagh feel about that?
She’s careful in what she says about this 500-pound gorilla, which is clearly a valued partner — that care is to be expected and she deflects criticism by focusing on the good work done by the DRBC: “We’re proud of the work we’ve done,” adding, “The EPA could not make the progress they have if it had started from scratch without the DRBC’s work.”
But those rules, promised in 2024, have not yet been forthcoming.
Her response: “I don’t know what the EPA’s timeline is. We are running out of days in 2024. We continue to support them technically, and we look forward to helping our states in implementing whatever the final rule will be.”
So, what is the job of the DRBC executive director?
“My primary role is to be a trusted and effective manager of the basin’s water resources, guided by the compact; to maintain a good relationship with five bosses; to keep them apprised and up to date without bombarding them with too much information. And to provide day-to-day leadership of the DRBC staff.”
Big changes afoot?
She’s full of praise for the former executive director, Steve Tambini, and is happy to follow in his footsteps.
“If there was a need to change what we’re doing,” she pointed out, “likely the commissioners would not have appointed an internal candidate.”
She also noted that being assistant director for five years has allowed her to get a solid understanding of the DRBC, but she’s still new enough to have “fresh eyes.”
In the coming years, issues of climate change and sustainability are likely to become even more contentious. How are you preparing for that?
She pointed out that the DRBC has been working on the impact of climate change on the basin’s water resources for “a dozen, maybe 15 years: flow management, sea-level rise, precipitation.”
This work is “not new,” she said and pointed out that this past June the commissioners approved a resolution directing the staff to develop a Climate Resilience Plan that includes elements related to planning, consultation, outreach, education and rulemaking concerning climate change.
“There’s no ‘plan’ per se, but rather it will be developing an understanding of how to think about the impacts of climate change and the first phase, which is happening now, is discovering our vulnerabilities and doing a gap analysis. We’re working across the DRBC to get different perspectives.
“We could come up with recommendations to look at regulations or figure out if there is a way that climate change impacts might be part of our project review process.”
Does that mean it — project review process — will be evaluated for water withdrawal in the context of climate change?
“They already are!’ she said, with different levels of withdrawal having different responsibilities.
As of now, with various stages of drought being declared by different states, the private or public entities that draw water from the river might have some special requirements that they decrease the amount of water they take — either from the river directly or from rivers or streams in the watershed or from groundwater.
She emphasized that the DRBC’s approach to the effects of climate change is always science-based, and that rules — if there’s a recommendation to look at regulation — are built on that.
The commission also launched a new Advisory Committee on Climate Change in 2019; Kavanagh has been the DRBC’s liaison.
She applauded the various advisory committees, noting that although they cannot make rules, they are a “wonderful resource” where many different stakeholders can come together and share knowledge.
Other long-term goals or problems?
“Yes, those (problems) we don’t yet know about as well as those we do.”
“In the last five years, we’ve had 1,4-dioxane and 6PPD-q — the flecks of rubber and dust that flake from worn tires. These are all toxins of emerging concern. (There’s a Toxics Advisory Committee.)
“In the future, it’s going to get increasingly complex — it’s not getting simpler,” she said. “And if water becomes more scarce, the stakes get higher. In many ways, we’ll be trying to balance the needs of habitat as well as people.”
What are your concerns about the new administration in DC?
“We will do what we’ve always done well — good work in science and water resource management. And really, we have to wait and see.”
Any chance that the federal government might overturn the fracking ban put in place for the basin in 2021?
“I don’t know what could happen, I’d have to check with our legal team,” she said, “But our heads are not in the sand. We read articles and headlines. We’ll have to see what happens.”
And what about funding for the DRBC?
Note: There was an agreement in 1988 that the “signatory parties” (the four states and the federal government) would commit to annual funding for the DRBC. To date, the $2,859,000 total has rarely been achieved.
“We are still working to that end,” Kavanagh said. “Though we much appreciate U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman’s (D-NJ 12) support of the DRBC and the federal dollars she was able to bring for the past two years, that’s not a long-term solution.
“We need a consistent reliable source of funding,” she said.
An innovation brought about by the pandemic are Zoom meetings. Is that likely to continue? If so, what are the advantages of hosting Zoom meetings?
Kavanagh said that this has allowed more people to attend both the full DRBC meetings as well as the advisory board meetings and that was very welcome.