Stroud Water Research Center: Water for Gotham

As the Catskill mountainsides turn golden-red, Stroud Center scientists and technicians are racing to finish their first season of sampling the streams and reservoirs that give clean water to some nine million New Yorkers. For the Stroud Center, this is a massive and consuming undertaking. The work involves all staff members in addition to the six new scientists and technicians hired for this job.
The story of how the Stroud Center became involved with one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated city water systems goes back more than a year. A visiting nephew of Stroud board co-chairman John Fisher saw the Center’s video "Every Drop Counts." Impressed, he took the video back to show his colleagues at Hudson Riverkeeper. Among them was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chief prosecuting attorney for the environmental organization that played a leading role in the cleanup of the Hudson. The video stirred him enough to call and order several hundred copies. A trade was made - Riverkeeper got the videos and Mr. Kennedy drove down to Chester County, Pa. to open the Stroud Center’s research streamhouse last fall. This also gave him a chance to see and hear first hand about drinking water projects the Stroud Center has been doing elsewhere. One thing led to another, and by December of last year Stroud director Bernard Sweeney was in Albany presenting water quality monitoring ideas to senior officials of New York state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. Also impressed, they asked the Stroud scientists to submit their ideas in the form of a proposal, which they did.		Hundreds of streams feed the system's 18 collecting reservoirs and three lakes that hold about 548 billion gallons.
In April, after several informational meetings with New York and federal officials and other interested parties, funding was approved and the Stroud Center was contracted to do a three-year research project. The following month the weekly trek to the Catskills began. By summer’s end the field workers were on intimate terms with picturesque trout streams — or ‘kills’ as they were named by early Dutch settlers. The job is immense. New York City draws its water from a network of rivers, streams and reservoirs in the watersheds of the Hudson and Delaware rivers. Hundreds of streams feed the system’s 18 collecting reservoirs and three lakes that hold about 548 billion gallons. The system watersheds cover 1,969 square miles, with the outer edges lying 125 miles from Manhattan. The water flows by gravity through underground aqueducts to two balancing reservoirs and four distributing reservoirs, from which an average of about 1.2 billion gallons are used daily by New York City dwellers. Fifty-six upstate cities, towns, villages and water districts draw another 123 million gallons. New York City’s water, considered among the cleanest and best tasting of any city in North America, is internationally envied. What’s more, the water is unfiltered. And most interested parties want to keep it that way — which is why the Stroud Center is involved. The problem New York faces is that federal regulations now insist on filtration for communities that use surface water sources. But a water authority can avoid filtration if it demonstrates to the EPA that it can "maintain a watershed control program which minimizes the potential for contamination by Giardia cysts and viruses in the source water." (Giardia are microorganisms that cause painful intestinal sickness.) One part of the system is already beyond filtration avoidance. The once rural East-of-Hudson Croton watershed is fast turning into a sprawling suburbia, and the Environmental Protection Agency has ordered New York to filter this section which provides only 10 percent of the city’s water. A Croton filtration plant will cost $687 million — relatively cheap next to the estimated $6 billion cost (plus $300 million a year to run) of filtration for the Catskill-Delaware system, which provides 90 percent of the city’s water. Not surprisingly, the city has decided it would rather spend $1.5 billion over 10 years to implement a watershed management strategy than to face the high costs of filtration.
	The management plan is part of a Memorandum of Agreement signed in 1997 by the city, Catskill-Delaware watershed communities, EPA, New York State and environmental organizations, including the Hudson Riverkeeper. Agreement notwithstanding, implementation of the watershed management plan remains an uphill battle for New York City. Residents of the watersheds are historically hostile to a city whose reservoirs have displaced thousands of families – living and dead – and disrupted lives since the first reservoir was built on the Croton more than 150 years ago. Farms and whole towns were taken over by forced condemnation, cemeteries were moved and communities were destroyed. Now, any action the city takes is often greeted with deep hostility and suspicion, as the Stroud sampling crews have experienced in the field.	The water flows by gravity through aqueducts to two balancing reservoirs and four distributing reservoirs, from which an average of 1.2 billion gallons are used daily by New York City dwellers.
The management plan is part of a Memorandum of Agreement signed in 1997 by the city, Catskill-Delaware watershed communities, EPA, New York State and environmental organizations, including the Hudson Riverkeeper.
Agreement notwithstanding, implementation of the watershed management plan remains an uphill battle for New York City. Residents of the watersheds are historically hostile to a city whose reservoirs have displaced thousands of families – living and dead – and disrupted lives since the first reservoir was built on the Croton more than 150 years ago. Farms and whole towns were taken over by forced condemnation, cemeteries were moved and communities were destroyed. Now, any action the city takes is often greeted with deep hostility and suspicion, as the Stroud sampling crews have experienced in the field. Although most property owners have readily allowed Stroud research teams to cross their land, some have refused, expressing their anger at interference with their land and lives by "outsiders." Obstacles aside, Stroud field workers are bringing in thousands of New York water samples. Now the lab work begins.

Table of Contents