• Commissioner's Statement
• History
• Reservoirs
• Towns Served
• Regulatory Context
• Maps
• Reports
• Current & Historical Data

Sign up for Email Updates

Email a Friend

Filtration Avoidance Annual Report

In 2006 New York City celebrated its fifteenth year of watershed protection. The City first applied for its first waiver for the Catskill/Delaware system from the filtration requirements of the Surface Water Treatment Rule in 1991. Since then New York City, under the auspices of the Department of Environmental Protection, has committed hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of staff hours to preserving the pristine quality of the source waters of the Catskill and Delaware water supply system. DEP’s multi-faceted watershed protection program is based on exhaustive research by DEP scientists into existing and prospective sources of water contamination.

As part of DEP’s source water monitoring program, tens of thousands samples are collected throughout the watershed annually. Each year, DEP performs hundreds of thousands of laboratory analyses. Based upon the information collected through its monitoring and research efforts, DEP has crafted a comprehensive watershed protection strategy, which focuses on implementing both protective (antidegradation) and remedial (specific actions taken to reduce pollution generated from identified sources) initiatives.

DEP’s early assessment efforts pointed to several key potential sources of pollutants: waterfowl on the reservoirs; wastewater treatment plants discharging into watershed streams; failing septic systems; farms located throughout the watershed; and stormwater runoff from development. DEP’s protection strategy targets and has had significant success targeting and controlling these primary pollution sources as well as a number of secondary ones.

In 2006, DEP set forth the framework to continue its efforts in sustaining the high quality of New York City’s Catskill/Delaware water supplies with the publication of its Long-Term Watershed Protection Program (PDF) document. This document outlines the City’s programmatic commitments to continued watershed protection for the next five years and serves as the framework upon which the 2007 Filtration Avoidance Determination is based.

Other noteworthy strides in protecting the quality if New York City water supply in 2006 include completion of Phase II of the Catskill Turbidity Control Study; completion of the Tannersville Wastewater Treatment Plant in the town of Hunter; completion of the Esopus Creek Stream Management Plan, a draft of which was submitted to EPA on January 31, 2007; implementation of the Ashland Connector stream restoration project in the Batavia Kill watershed; and continued success and participation of watershed residents in various waste- and stormwater programs, land acquisition, and the Watershed Agricultural Program. Details of programmatic activities that took place during 2006 are found in the following report.

Filtration Avoidance Annual Report
For the period January 1 through December 31, 2006

Part 1 (4 Mb)

Part 2 (3 Mb)

Complete Document (8 Mb)

These files require the Adobe Acrobat Reader