Community Notebook

The Wings of Roy Jensen

It’s summer. The place: a New York City sidewalk. Somebody has unleashed a fire hydrant, and a dozen boys in old-fashioned swimming costumes collect under the downpour. Most are bouncing with happiness, but one boy neither smiles nor moves. He stands straight, stick arms outstretched, face solemn, so grateful for the man-made deluge that it never occurs to him to show off for the motion-picture camera.

This long-ago moment, from a 1927 silent film celebrating New York City’s bountiful water supply, opens a brand-new documentary film called Deep Water, which airs on PBS-station WMHT Friday night, February 8, at 8 pm. Produced and directed by Tobe Carey, Robbie Dupree, and Artie Traum, Deep Water takes a judicious look at the city’s water sources—specifically Ulster County’s Ashokan Reservoir, built in the first years of the 20th century.

The Ashokan Reservoir came into being because New York City water officials were worried. In 1898 the boundaries of the city expanded when the

outer boroughs joined Manhattan to make New York City. Metropolitan neighborhoods, home to more and more immigrants, were bulging at the seams. The Croton Reservoir, which had supplied water to Manhattan since 1842, no longer contained enough water to serve the city.

So in 1906, the city commandeered 10,000 Ulster County acres by eminent domain, and work began. The Esopus River Creek was dammed, 10 towns leveled, and 2,000 people forced to abandon their homes. By 1914 the building of the Ashokan Reservoir was complete.

“Deep Water really tells two stories,” says co-director/-producer Robbie Dupree. “One story is about the brilliance of the design of the reservoir. The scale of the project was amazing, considering that now it takes a year and a half to pave a little road. It’s incredible that Ashokan waters run through miles and miles of pipe, under the river, up tall buildings, and out of apartment faucets in the city. And it’s all done by gravity.”
“The other story is about human sacrifice,” Dupree says. “Ten towns disappeared, people dispersed. Nobody can really understand the enormity of the loss who didn’t live through it.”
One of the most affecting moments in Deep Water comes when Eleanor Arold, of the Reservoir United Methodist Church, remembers how much her mother’s generation resented the evacuation. “They never really got over the hurt of losing their lands and their homes and their friends,” she says softly.

“People are still quite angry,” says filmmaker Artie Traum, “They see the city as an occupying force, an entity that just takes what it wants. You have to remember that these people are descended from colonial settlers who couldn’t understand why they had to sacrifice everything for newcomer upstarts in the city.”

Documenting this second, human story in Deep Water presented the filmmakers with a bit of a challenge—the people whose lives were dislocated are now dead. “Sometimes,” says co-director/-producer Tobe Carey, “we just knocked on doors and asked ‘Can we look at your pictures?’”

The finished film, 44 minutes long, sets narration and locally-grown music over a montage of old photographs and postcards, archival films like the 1927 silent feature that provides the opening image, and present-day interviews with authors, experts, and Ulster County residents like Eleanor Arold.
“I’ve edited hundreds of films,” says Carey, “but this one is the most complex. We had to marry research with narrative and treat the archival records with reverence. We ended up with lots and lots of footage.

“I’m surprised my computer didn’t blow up,” he adds with a laugh. It’s also surprising that Deep Water, a film with almost no budget, got made at all. For example, the filmmaking trio wanted to buy some wonderful old footage—until they discovered that three minutes of an old motion picture cost three times more than the film’s total budget. Last-stage grants from the Catskill Watershed Corporation and the Woodstock Chimes Fund helped the filmmakers complete the project.

Old friends Carey, Dupree, and Traum may seem unlikely chroniclers of Ashokan Reservoir history. Only Carey makes his living in filmmaking; Dupree and Traum are in the music business. And though they have lived in and around Woodstock for years, two hail from New York City, the other from Massachusetts. It’s easy to imagine them as incurious about city water sources as those long-ago boys in the silent film.

Plus, the idea of Deep Water didn’t exactly announce itself directly, in thunderclap manner. Traum’s wife Beverly, an antiques dealer, happened upon a clutch of tiny houses that had once belonged to a miniature representation of the pre-reservoir Esopus Valley. Fashioned by an old resident of Woodstock and kept in his basement, the display was open to the public every Fourth of July.

How does someone have that kind of passion? Traum remembers thinking. Now Traum knows why, and so do Carey and Dupree.

—Jane Smith

Deep Water will air on the Albany PBS affiliate WMHT on Friday, February 8 at 8 pm. To order a copy of Deep Water, call (888) 731-4237.