Schoharie Reservoir
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The Schoharie Reservoir is a small reservoir in the Catskill Mountains of New York State that was created to be one of 19 reservoirs that supplies New York City with water. It was created by impounding the Schoharie Creek.
[edit] History
After the Ashokan Reservoir was created to be the 13th reservoir that supplied New York City with water, and the Kensico Reservoir was completed soon after for holding the water, the water supply was still insufficient for the city's high population. So the City of New York started to search for a new place to put a reservoir, and they eventually stumbled across the village of Gilboa, New York. They purchased the village and the surrounding area, and started to forcefully evacuate the citizens.
They evacuated all of the citizens of the village, and destroyed most of the trees and buildings up to the water line. They completed the dam in the 1920s out of stone bricks, and finished flooding the reservoir in 1924, when it was put into service. The village of Gilboa was relocated west of the reservoir, and the original town only shows up when there is a drought.
The resulting reservoir is located about 36 miles (57.6 km) southwest of Albany and roughly 110 miles (176 km) northwest of New York City. It is the northernmost NYC reservoir, located at the southern end of Schoharie County, the northeastern end of Delaware County, and at the northwestern end of Greene County. It neighbors such towns as Gilboa, Prattsville, and Conesville. It is an impounded portion of the Schoharie Creek, which is a tributary of the Mohawk River, which in turn is a tributary of the Hudson River.
It was finally put into service in 1926. The resulting reservoir consists of a single 6-mile (9.6-km) basin, and holds 17.6 billion gallons (66.5 million m³) of water at full capacity, making it one of the smaller New York City reservoirs. Despite its size, it is the main reservoir in the Catskill Watershed, eventually providing the citizens of New York City with 40% of their drinking water, along with the Ashokan Reservoir. Water that doesn't end up in a tap will flow over the Gilboa Dam into the Mohawk River watershed, ultimately flowing into the Hudson River.
The drinking water that flows from the reservoir into New York City flows 16 miles (25.6 km) through the Shandaken Tunnel, and empties into the Esopus Creek at Shandaken. Another 11 miles (17.6 km) down the Esopus it empties into the Ashokan Reservoir in Boiceville. The water then flows halfway through the reservoir to Olivebridge, where it flows through the 92-mile (147.2-km) Catskill Aqueduct to the Kensico Reservoir, and then flows into New York City.
[edit] Gilboa Dam
The 120-foot high Gilboa Dam, which holds the water in the reservoir back, was completed in 1926, and was made out of concrete and reinforced with stone bricks. Ever since then, the dam has eroded to the point that it poses a potential threat to the citizens that lived downstream from the reservoir. There is a safety plan devised by the New York City Department of Enviromental Protection (NYCDEP, also locally referred to as the DEP) that tells people what to do if the dam breaks (it can also be found on their website). To give the dam less time to collapse, strong steel bars have been placed into the dam to keep it up.
However, as of 2006, work has started on the repair of the dam. The reservoir itself currently stands at approximately 1/5 of its normal capacity, as the water behind the dam was drained out through the Shandaken Tunnel before work began, subsequently removing the threat that the dam will break while work on the dam is in progress.
