| Muscoot Reservoir | |
|---|---|
| Location | Westchester County, New York |
| Lake type | reservoir |
| Catchment area | 76 sq mi (200 km2) |
| Basin countries | United States |
The Muscoot Reservoir is a reservoir in northern Westchester County, New York. It is located directly north of the village of Katonah, New York, and is over 25 miles (40 kilometres) north of New York City, which the reservoir eventually supplies with tapwater. It was constructed at the beginning of the 19th century by impounding the Muscoot River, which is a tributary of the Croton River, which in turn is a tributary of the Hudson River. The reservoir itself was once much smaller, but the other side of the original dam was intentionally flooded to make the reservoir bigger, when a new dam was built downstream. The original dam is still standing, and divides the reservoir in two.
During construction, the New York Central Railroad moved an old bridge from the Rondout Creek near Kingston to carry it's Mahopac Branch across a section of the reservoir near Goldens Bridge. It remains today even though service on the branch ended in 1960. In 1978 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places since it is the only remaining double-intersection Whipple truss railroad bridge in the state.
The reservoir was finally completed in 1905. The resulting body of water is the main collecting point for all of the reservoirs in the Croton Watershed, except for the New Croton Reservoir. It is almost 8 miles (almost 13 km) long, can hold up to 4.9 billion US gallons (19,000,000 m3) of water at full capacity, and has a drainage basin that covers 76 square miles (121.6 km²) of land.
The drinking water from the reservoir flows down the rest of the Muscoot River, and then enters the Croton River to flow into the New Croton Reservoir, and enters the New Croton Aqueduct. It then flows south towards New York City, and flows through the Jerome Park Reservoir in The Bronx. It continues through Manhattan, where it mixes with water from the Catskill Aqueduct, and finally flows through Brooklyn and Staten Island, where the water from the aqueduct finally comes to a stop.