A guided walk along the dried-up Delaware and Hudson Canal in the hamlet of Cuddebackville in the Town of Deerpark on Oct. 8 brought bittersweet feelings to the two dozen or so participants.
Heather Staerker, a longtime Cuddebackville resident, still remembered the opening day of the canal boat ride. Her 3-year-old daughter joyfully took her turn, and a local paper put a picture of her having fun on the front page.
She used to walk by the canal to relax, but not so much after it dried up more than a decade ago.
“I think everybody wants water back into the canal, especially those who remember the way it was when it was filled with water,” Ms. Staerker told The Epoch Times.
Matthew Dloughy, a Sparrowbush resident who organized the walk to continue raising awareness of the decade-long grassroots efforts to water the canal, grew up in Cuddebackville and always could find something to do on the canal regardless of the season.
“Fishing, swimming, ice skating, and all that stuff,” he said. “Now, you don’t see any kids outside at all—you could blame cellphones for that, too, but I think the dry canal plays a part.”
Much of his advocacy campaign is based on a Facebook group called “Save the D&H Canal”; it has more than 750 members and is one of several local grassroots groups dedicated to watering the historic canal.
Ronnett Whitlock, another Cuddebackville resident, told The Epoch Times that it was the first time she took a guided walk with Mr. Dloughy and that she supported the cause.
“If they fixed it up, it would bring more people back walking and hanging out here,” she said.
Michael Singer, a Cuddebackville native who recently moved back to the area from the Bronx, also joined the guided walk for the first time, which brought back memories of a general store that rented rowboats and a World War I veteran farmer who lived by the canal and was buried in the same cemetery as George Washington’s bodyguard, Benjamin Eaton.
Back in the days when the canal had water in it, children could hop on a boat, take a ride, and learn how the canal had helped coal, timber, and cement flow down south to build up the world’s largest city, he added.
Cost and Benefit
In 2020, more than 10 years after the canal dried up, Orange County commissioned Fusco Engineering to estimate the cost to repair and rehabilitate its structural components.The Orange County government has owned and managed the canal park area since the 1980s.
Three alternatives were studied, with restoring the canal in its original image—the most popular option in the public’s eyes—as the most expensive solution, carrying an estimated price tag of $5.7 million at the time.
The report also identified a dam removal on the Neversink River in the early 2000s without properly protecting the continued flow into the canal feeder as a key reason why the Cuddebackville stretch dried up years later.
Nature Conservancy advocated the dam removal in a claim to protect rare mussel species.
“It is not financially responsible to restore the canal as it once was,” County Executive Steve Neuhaus told The Epoch Times on Oct. 10. “We look forward to working on other important county preservation projects in the area with partners such as the Open Space Institute and Orange County Land Trust.”
County Legislature Majority Leader Tom Faggione, whose district encompasses Cuddebackville, told The Epoch Times, “My focus has always been on respecting the history here in our country, and we can find a way to balance the preservation of history and not overwhelm the taxpayers.”
He said he was also for preserving open space and cited an in-the-works “Bikeway Vision” plan as an example, which depicts a future countywide connected trail system and is slated to be added to the county’s comprehensive plan by the end of the year.
Cliff Robinson, executive director of Neversink Feeder and Canal Conservancy, who has worked on maintaining and improving the D&H canal in various functions since 2006, said much more could have been done for the upkeep of the historic canal.
“The canal area near the Neversink River was marked as a National Historic Landmark because of the feeder system, which doesn’t work anymore,” he told The Epoch Times during the guided walk, adding that he was confident based on personal knowledge that the system could be fixed to feed water into the canal again at a cost much lower than the county estimate.
“If they don’t want to do it, give it to us, and let us do it.”
