Schoharie Reservoir
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| Schoharie Reservoir | |
|---|---|
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| Location | Catskill Mountains, New York |
| Lake type | reservoir |
| Primary inflows | Schoharie Creek |
| Primary outflows | Schoharie Creek |
| Basin countries | United States |
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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.
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[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; the location of the original town is now only visble when water levels recede during a drought[citation needed].
The resulting reservoir is located about 36 miles (58 km) southwest of Albany and roughly 110 miles (180 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, the Schoharie Reservoir provides nine million people with approximately 15-16 percent of their annual water supply needs. It is the smaller of the two reservoirs that make up the New York City Catskill Water System. The other reservoir in the Catskill system is the Ashokan Reservoir, in Olive, NY. Water that doesn't end up in a tap and instead overflows will go over the Gilboa Dam into the Schoharie Creek, ultimately flowing into the Hudson River.
Water from the Schoharie Reservoir flow to New York City through the 16-mile-long (26 km) Shandaken Tunnel, and empties into the Esopus Creek at Shandaken. Another 11 miles (18 km) down the Esopus it empties into the Ashokan Reservoir. From there water enters the 92-mile (147 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. Since then, the dam eroded to the point that it posed a potential threat to the citizens that lived downstream. In December 2005, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection began a $24 million project to bring the dam up to New York State safety standards. That project was completed in December 2006, after 80 post-tensioned anchoring cables were installed through holes drilled into the dam and into bedrock below. The Gilboa Dam now meets New York State safety standards.
There was particular alarm that the Dam could collapse. [1]
A larger, full-scale reconstruction of the Gilboa Dam is supposed to begin in 2008. Estimated to cost $315 million, the project will add significant mass to the dam, will install floodgates at the top of the dam, and will include a large tunnel bypass of the dam so that water can be released safely from the reservoir and into the Schoharie Creek below.
