Once again, the historic canal lies wounded.
Near Upper Black Eddy, a 40-foot section of its wall is gone, draining any water that passes. Farther south, in Lumberville, the stone wall of a lock has collapsed.
Elsewhere, long stretches of the Delaware Canal's once-smooth towpath are closed between Easton and New Hope, chewed by floodwaters down to a rocky subsurface.
"It's been without water most of the time we've been here," said Jack Donohue, who has lived along the canal in Lumberville for five years and serves as president of the volunteer organization Friends of the Delaware Canal.
A year ago, it had appeared all but certain that, for the first time in six years, the 58.9-mile canal finally would be filled with water from end to end. At long last, the ravages of three major mid-decade floods appeared to have been fully repaired.
Instead, more frustration ensued.
On March 11, the rain-swollen Delaware River overran its banks, submerging much of the canal with a damaging flow. It happened just as state workers were about to release water through the length of the onetime 19th-century conduit for mule-drawn barges carrying coal from Easton to Bristol.
On the New Jersey side, the Delaware and Raritan Canal escaped significant damage, blessed by more protective topography. And even when floods have breached the D&R in the past, its status as a money-producing source of drinking water for New Jersey residents has led to rapid repairs.
"If there is a breach, we are responsible for fixing it," said Henry Patterson, executive director of the New Jersey Water Supply Authority.
Not so across the river, where the canal is parkland beholden to state and federal assistance. By even the rosiest of timetables, another year of damage assessment, bid-letting, and repair work lies ahead, officials in Pennsylvania say.
"It's tough," Donahue said. "It's certainly a lovely asset for our area, and something that we really want to have back in business."
The good news is that last month's harm was a small fraction of the wreckage wrought by devastating floods in 2004, 2005, and 2006, said Rick Dalton, manager of Delaware Canal State Park.
No estimate of repair costs has been made; state engineers will be making assessments later this month.
But, Dalton said, "it's nowhere near what we've seen in the past. After the first flood in 2004, we were saying it was about $10 million. If I had to guess, $1 million or $1.2 million would be about it this time."
