Watershed Update
Vol. 2, No. 3
May-June 2004
Management of New York City Water Supply Lands:
A Component of a Comprehensive Watershed Protection Program
John R. Potter
New York City Department of Environmental Protection
71 Smith Avenue
Kingston, NY 12401
Email: <[email protected]>
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has the responsibility
of delivering a dependable supply of high quality drinking water at a low cost to the people
of New York City and surrounding communities. It manages a surface water supply
system that yields an average of 1.3 billion gallons per day of unfiltered drinking water to
approximately nine million consumers. This system depends on a 2,000 square mile
watershed that spans eight upstate counties in New York State. This watershed area of
1.26 million acres is about twice the size of Rhode Island and is 73% forested. Figure 1
shows the watershed region in relationship to the City including the three major parts of
the system: the Delaware system (about 1,000 square miles of drainage area) which
includes impoundments on the two upper branches of the Delaware River, one on the
Neversink River, and one on the Rondout Creek; the Catskill system (about 600 square
miles) which includes reservoirs on the Esopus and Schoharie Creeks; and the Croton
system (about 400 square miles) which has multiple impoundments on the Croton River
and its tributaries.
The City of New York currently owns over 107,000 acres of land, including its
33,000 acres of reservoirs (with a 578 billion gallon available storage capacity), in the
three parts of the watershed. This land holding is 8.6% of the total area. It has also
purchased Watershed Conservation Easements on 3,492 acres of private land which is
0.3% of the total area. Although the City owns a sizable portfolio of lands and easements
(and although New York State has protected an additional 20% of the area in State Forest
Preserve), the extent of private land ownership and residency by over 207,000 people
within the watershed necessitates other special measures that together with City ownership
constitute a comprehensive watershed protection program.
A series of complex negotiations between the City, United States Environmental
Protection Agency, upstate communities, New York State agencies, and environmentalists
resulted in a filtration avoidance determination (a waiver from the filtration requirements
of the federal Surface Water Treatment Rule), a water supply permit from New York State,
and a memorandum of agreement between the parties which was finalized in 1997.
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
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Watershed Update
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May-June 2004
Figure 1: New York City's Water Supply System
For the past
seven years, various
programs and
deliverables defined by
this determination,
permit, and agreement
have ensued. These
include a new set of
Watershed Rules and
Regulations with landuse restrictions, an
enhanced water quality
monitoring effort, a
major land protection
program, and numerous
Water Quality
Partnership Programs
such as wastewater
upgrades, stormwater
retrofits, sand/salt
storage upgrades,
stream restoration
projects, whole farm
planning, and forest
management assistance.
More information about
this comprehensive
watershed protection
effort and its many
components is available
at:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/watershed/home.html.
Land Ownership
Land ownership is considered an important part of the City’s strategy for protecting
its water supply. First, it is important to support necessary infrastructure such as the
Ashokan Reservoir pictured in Figure 2.
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
<[email protected]>
Watershed Update
Vol. 2, No. 3
May-June 2004
Figure 2: View looking north over the east basin of the 8,000 acre Ashokan Reservoir (128 billion
gallon capacity) located in the Catskill Mountains, Ulster County, New York
This was the original
purpose of land acquisitions
starting with the construction
of the Croton system in 1842
and continuing into the
twentieth century with the
completion of the Delaware
system in 1967. The second
important role that land
ownership plays is to buffer
the water supply from land
uses
that
could
have
undesirable impacts.
The
City’s presumption is that the
control of harmful activities in
the watershed is best achieved when the City has actual ownership (or other direct control)
over activities on the watershed land.
The protection of land through land ownership is best explained with an
understanding of the land protection continuum that exists within the New York City
watershed. Table 1 provides a representative explanation of where City lands and
easements fit into this continuum with an estimate of the approximate percentage of the
watershed within each category. The continuum begins with “primitive” on the one side
(characterized by an essentially unmodified natural environment with minimal on-site
management) proceeds through “working lands” (characterized by a cultured landscape
and occasional modifications to the natural environment for economic purposes) to
“uncommitted” on the other side (characterized by an uncertainty about the future land-use
or a currently strong cultural element, intensive use, and/or high predominance of
impervious surfaces – i.e., developed).
Each category (and the gradations within each) fulfills the different needs of the
different types of landowner. Together they provide a range of values that is important to
the people and communities that depend on these lands. The resulting land-use pattern and
its potential future manifestation has been an important focus of the overall watershed
protection program.
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
<[email protected]>
Watershed Update
Vol. 2, No. 3
May-June 2004
Table 1: Land Protection Continuum in the New York City Watershed
Land Protection Category
“Primitive”
Management Setting
Area
New York State Forest Preserve
(public land)
Legislatively mandated “forever wild” lands
with passive recreation objectives and no active
vegetation management
Primarily parks or nature preserves with
primarily passive recreation objectives and
limited vegetation management
~20%
Other Open Space
(public or quasi-public land)
~1%
“Working Lands”
City of New York Water Supply
Lands (quasi-public land)
City of New York Watershed
Conservation Easements
(easement on private land)
Watershed Agricultural Council
Watershed Conservation Easements
(easement on private land)
Active vegetation management for water supply,
ecological protection, and community benefits
goals
Active vegetation management permitted to
limited degree on predominantly vacant,
forested land with development rights removed
~9%
<1%
Active farming and other vegetation
management permitted with development rights
removed
<1%
No direct protection or control on management
as with an easement, but guidance and support
in the way of whole farm plan, forest
management plan, and/or stream management
plan
Management subject to market forces with
limited controls from local bylaws and/or
Watershed Rules and Regulations
~22%
“Uncommitted”
Private Land benefiting from Water
Quality Partnership Programs
(private land)
Private Land
~47%
Figure 3: A view of the Platte Kill from a 72-acre Delaware County property purchased in April
2003 by the City of New York for watershed protection
The protection of areas in
the watershed through land
ownership has been viewed by the
City as one of the most effective
means of watershed protection.
The purchase of undeveloped
private lands through the City’s
Land Acquisition Program has
added
considerably to the
ownership of water supply lands
over the past seven years. This
willing seller program seeks to
purchase
lands
whose
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
<[email protected]>
Watershed Update
Vol. 2, No. 3
May-June 2004
maintenance in an undeveloped condition will help protect water quality from future
degradation.
With such a considerable amount of watershed land in private ownership, it is
necessary for the City to target its acquisitions to properties that are situated in the
landscape such that they have the highest contributory value to the overall watershed
protection effort as possible. Thus, all new City land purchases must meet certain land
feature criteria such as a 300 foot proximity to a stream; presence of wetland, floodplain,
or steep slope; or a 1,000 foot proximity to a reservoir. Since large portions of the private
lands in the watershed meet these criteria, further prioritization guides land acquisition
towards those particular basins and sub-basins with short travel times to distribution and/or
with water quality data suggesting an existing threat.
It is important to note that the City sees land ownership as just a part of sound
watershed management which as a whole is an ongoing and evolving process of guiding
land-use so that it helps protect water quality, but also accounts for the sometimes
competing needs and priorities of all parties involved. Those involved include not only the
many water consumers and watershed residents, but also the visitors to the watershed and
water supply distribution areas, public officials mandated with protecting resources and
public health, the environmentalists concerned with the protection of the area’s ecological
communities, and others. The City’s acknowledgment of this reality is evidenced by the
strong reliance on the work of partnership organizations to help implement watershed
protection programs. These include private, community-based, non-profit organizations
such as the Catskill Watershed Corporation and the Watershed Agricultural Council as
well as County Soil and Water Conservation Districts. There is common ground between
the watershed organizations and communities and the City that includes support for a
“working landscape” model of watershed management that sees both private and public
lands managed for economic benefit and high water quality including when necessary the
implementation of pollution prevention measures.
Land Holding
The extent of the role that local watershed communities play in the management of
City water supply lands is suggested by the fact that the City owns greater than 1,000 acres
in 23 separate municipalities. There are City water supply lands in a total of 47 towns
across eight counties in the watershed region. Figure 4 illustrates the City’s ownership
pattern near the Schoharie Reservoir where four towns (Gilboa, Roxbury, Prattsville, and
Conesville) and three counties (Schoharie, Greene, and Delaware) meet.
Activities such as road maintenance and intake dredging, as well as view
management and recreational use offerings, impact each community to a greater or lesser
degree. Successful management, however, requires a constant attention to local concerns
and the diversity of opinion (and even competing interests) of those involved.
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
<[email protected]>
Watershed Update
Vol. 2, No. 3
May-June 2004
Figure 4: City land ownership near the Schoharie Reservoir, Schoharie County, New York (green
parcels are City-owned, red parcels are under contract, and cross-hatched parcels are
conservation easements)
Figure 4 also reveals
some interesting aspects about
the pattern of ownership that is
developing for water supply
lands. While a thin buffer of
land was typically acquired at
the
time
of
reservoir
construction (the Schoharie
Reservoir was completed in
1927), surrounding lands were
left in farms or (often) steep
forested tracts.
Over time,
considerable subdivision has
occurred in many areas of the
watershed.
Recent
land
acquisitions while clustering
near intake structures due to
acquisition priorities have also
resulted in a somewhat
“scattershot” distribution –
especially farther up in the
basins. There are 893 separate
clusters of City-owned land.
Thirty-seven of these clusters
exceed 1,000 acres in size (56% of land area), while 437 are less than ten acres (1% of land
area). The average parcel cluster size is 126 acres. What this means for land management
is an explosion in the length of City boundary, number of neighbors, and road frontage -with associated challenges for each. For example, there are nearly 7,000 tax lot parcels
that directly adjoin City property, and each is a potential source of encroachment, oil spill,
septic system contamination, concern about falling trees (planned or unplanned), objection
to a recreational guest, or question about a City activity (or lack thereof).
The City’s terrestrial land holding is predominantly wooded with over 61,000 acres
of forest cover. Preliminary forest inventory results indicate an average of 180 trees per
acre with predominant species being red maple (Acer rubrum), eastern hemlock (Tsuga
canadensis), and northern red oak (Quercus rubra). Approximately 57% of these trees are
considered to be in good condition capable of maintaining a healthy and vigorous growth
over the next ten years. The remaining 43% are in poor condition and are either impaired
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
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Watershed Update
Vol. 2, No. 3
May-June 2004
by pathogens, are significantly damaged or rotten, or exhibit a form that would prohibit
maintenance of a healthy, vigorous condition over the next ten years.
Age class distribution of City forest stands is a particular concern for the holding as
a whole. There is some indication that due to the pattern of development of the water
supply system and subsequent failure to tend or initiate regeneration episodes, there is a
homogeneity of age classes especially in particular basins. For example, 72% of the stands
on City lands in the Ashokan basin were initiated in the thirty year period from 1905 to
1935. These 70 to 100 year old stands are dominated by tree species that typically live for
100-120 years which suggests a period of mortality and stand turnover during the next 20
to 40 years that will impact large and noticeable areas of land and water resources. Table 2
summarizes plot data randomly collected from City forest stands across the entire
watershed. While some stands do have multiple age classes, the period of stand initiation
refers to the years that the majority of dominant, overstory trees germinated and became
established at the particular site.
Table 2: Age-class of forest stands on City water supply lands
Period of Stand Initiation
# of Plots
Percent
Before 1860
1860 to 1879
1880 to 1899
1900 to 1919
1920 to 1939
1940 to 1959
1960 to 1979
Since 1980
2
4
12
46
71
53
20
1
1.0%
1.9%
5.7%
22.0%
34.0%
25.4%
9.6%
0.5%
TOTAL
209
100.0%
There are many other characteristics of the City’s water supply land holding that
are of significance. The integral nature of local communities, the pattern of parcelization
and general condition of forest vegetation are described above as examples of some of the
issues facing the City in the management of its lands in the watershed. These and other
considerations such as the condition of riparian buffers, impacts from recreational use, and
extent of newly acquired agricultural land are all addressed in the City’s recent efforts at
land management planning.
Management Planning
There is a presumption that the control of harmful activities in the watershed is best
achieved when the City has actual ownership of land. It is important to note that this can
only be the case if those lands are subsequently well-managed. This is even more apparent
when consideration is given to the need to meet multiple objectives such as encouraging
preferable land uses on public land through modeling them on City land as part of a
“working landscape” approach. While simply buying land and locking it away is one
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
<[email protected]>
Watershed Update
Vol. 2, No. 3
May-June 2004
potential strategy (that could be preferable from a water quality perspective than many
other possible alternatives), the opportunity exists to leverage the ownership of water
supply land to meet a wider range of goals. This wider range of goals derives from
thinking at a different scale -- a watershed management scale. Efforts to protect the water
supply through land acquisition are worthy as a protection measure even if the City never
took an active management approach to its lands, however a comprehensive land
management planning strategy that builds even further on the land protection foundation
will benefit the water supply to a much greater degree.
Such a planning strategy has been proceeding with recent completion of a draft
General Land Management Plan that identifies broad goals for the City’s land holdings.
The four major goals for management of City water supply lands are to:
· protect public health,
· maintain ecosystem integrity,
· provide community benefits, and
· promote increasing knowledge.
In addition, the draft plan calls for City land managers to meet land ownership
responsibilities and to use a land planning process. This plan (while currently under
internal review) will be the framework in which additional land management efforts will
be directed on City lands.
The General Land Management Plan includes goals and objectives which will be
familiar to many watershed managers such as minimizing point and non-point sources of
pollution of surface and ground water and maintaining over time a diverse, vigorous,
different-aged forest cover as the predominant vegetation type. These types of protection
measures will lead to on-site improvement projects like riparian buffer plantings, road
infrastructure re-locations, and forest stand thinnings that will directly benefit water
quality. Other goals tend more towards maintenance of the important relationships that the
City has within the watershed community and especially where such goals might meet
multiple needs. For example, the City seeks to encourage widespread public participation
in its deer impact control strategy and thereby provide benefits of recreational hunting to
the local watershed economy as a by-product. This popular, regional activity is now
available on over 32,000 acres of City water supply lands. The opportunity was
appreciated by more than 6,300 hunters in 2003. While the community benefits from
recreational use are important, there are also results that are desirable for a water quality
including control of deer herds that are overbrowsing understory vegetation.
Likewise, the potential water quality problem of an unbalanced age-class
distribution across City forest stands can be resolved through active regeneration of
younger stands, which in turn provides a wood by-product. Harvesting wood on City lands
helps keep the rural economy – the loggers, truckers, and mills – in business which means
that private landowners will continue to have land-use options apart from residential
development. In addition, since the production of timber is not the driving force of forest
management on City lands, harvest activities are structured in a careful and deliberate
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
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Watershed Update
Vol. 2, No. 3
May-June 2004
manner through contracts and other controls such that water quality is scrupulously
maintained. The use of best management practices, and even extensive road re-locations
away from water resources, ensure that harvests meet the primary goals of public health
(water quality) and forest health. One result is that the demand for wood is met at least in
part by a landowner that has the desire, motivation, and luxury to do a careful job. It is
better for timber to enter the marketplace from forests well-managed for water quality than
from lands where protection is not an issue for the landowner. This is the essence of the
“working landscape” model of rural land-use and why it is such a powerful concept for
long-term water quality protection. Tourism, agriculture, forestry, and recreation
conducted in a sustainable manner are key elements of a healthy rural economy. A healthy
rural economy is important for maintaining a land use pattern that is the most compatible
with water supply protection.
The next step for management of City lands is the development of specific Basin
Management Plans for City properties within each of the twenty-one drainage areas in the
water supply system. These plans will be the primary guide for coordinated management
of the City’s lands within a basin. They will include among other things an inventory of
water resources, vegetation cover types, wildlife habitat, soils and geology, ecological site
potentials, public access opportunities, areas of concern, threats to City goals, species of
concern, roads and infrastructure, principal plant and animal species, and other significant
natural resources. There will be an analysis of this inventory information which will look
at basin land-use in general, water quality status, condition of vegetation, relevant trends,
and other considerations to determine and prioritize projects and management activities. A
series of management prescriptions and a schedule of management activities will result for
each area.
Figure 5:. Screen shot from the City’s Watershed Land Information System
In order to
address the complexity
of
managing
a
widespread
land
holding with multiple
objectives
and
considerations, the City
has been developing a
computer
database
called the Watershed
Land
Information
System
to
help
coordinate things. This
is a geographic-based,
client-server, relational
database
that
is
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
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Watershed Update
Vol. 2, No. 3
May-June 2004
distributed to remote field locations as well as used extensively in main offices. The key
objects within the application are parcels, resources, people, activities, documents, and
plans. These objects are interrelated and integrated through multiple views of the data.
Figure 5 is an example of a screen shot from the application that shows some of the
different functionalities of the system including diverse map views, organizational
structures, attachment of surveys and photographs, cataloging of contacts, and tracking of
management activities.
Comprehensive land management plans and technology to help implement them
are essential to guide activities, review land-use proposals, and learn from past initiatives
and events. They are the tool for decision makers in the City to chart a course for a land
asset that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They are also an opportunity to
demonstrate to the public, water consumers, upstate communities, and other concerned
groups that a thoughtful and responsible approach is taken with respect to the water supply
and its source.
Conclusion
It is the combination of ecological considerations with people and economy that is
at the root of New York City’s Watershed Protection Program. Management of City water
supply lands is one way for the City to achieve its community-based approach. Merely
preventing a series of residential subdivisions from occurring close to a reservoir achieves
the City’s priorities for watershed protection. However, if City land managers can at the
same time support and enhance the rural communities that have contributed high quality
water for many years, then the watershed management cause is also advanced at a higher
level and everyone comes out ahead with a sustainable future for both communities and
ecosystems.
More Information
There are many places to learn more about the watershed protection efforts in the
New York City Water Supply system. The New York City Department of Environmental
Protection has a website dedicated to watershed protection:
New York City Watershed Protection Program:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/watershed/home.html
At that website, there is a link page to the websites of many of the partners
involved in the effort which can lead to differing perspectives and additional detail:
Watershed Partners: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/watershed/html/partners.html
Finally, additional information about the New York City Department of
Environmental Protection and its many responsibilities is available at:
Agency Homepage: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/home.html
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AWRA Hydrology & Watershed Management Technical Committee
<[email protected]>