As NYC endures drought, more of its water is coming from driest part of the state
As New York City endures a historic drought, half of its usual water supply is shut down until June for repairs.
The city Department of Environmental Protection last month began the final phase of a $2 billion project to fix leaks in the world's longest tunnel: the 85-mile Delaware Aqueduct. The work involves building a 2.5-mile-long bypass tunnel around a decades-old leak under the Hudson River that's losing 35 million gallons of water per day. As part of the project, the city has temporarily shut down the aqueduct, which provides about half the water supply.
For now, the city is drawing more water from Croton Watershed, the city's oldest upstate water supply.
"We are particularly focused on the rainfall in the Croton reservoir system in Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties. And that has actually been one of the absolute driest parts of the state," DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala said in a recent interview with WNYC's local news podcast, NYC Now .
"So, it's hitting us at our most vulnerable point right now," he added. "Nobody need worry ... we are planning for all sorts of different scenarios. But that is the issue."
The Croton Watershed only received 0.81 inches of rain in October, compared to historical averages of 3.81 inches for that month, according to an agency newsletter published last week. The Croton system was at 83% capacity on Monday, but four days later, it dropped to 81.2%.
October marked New York City's second-longest dry streak since 1869, according to City Hall. Mayor Eric Adams last week imposed a "drought watch," which requires city agencies to prepare to implement water conservation efforts. Over the weekend, brush fires in New Jersey, Brooklyn's Prospect Park and elsewhere highlighted the danger of the lengthy dry spell.
Aggarwala urged New Yorkers to immediately call 311 if they see an open fire hydrant. He also urged people to take shorter showers and not to water lawns.
According to the National Weather Service, the rest of this month will continue the trend of above-average temperatures and below-normal precipitation, though there was rain in the forecast for Sunday evening.
Experts said residents shouldn't panic — yet.
"It's difficult here in this part of the country to literally get to the point where you run out of water in a large area and you have to literally ration to the point where some people turn on a faucet that doesn't turn on," said Richard Tinker, a drought specialist at the National Weather Service. "We're a long, long way from having to worry about anything like that."
The reservoirs that serve New York City are typically at 79% overall capacity. As of Nov. 8, they are running well below that level, at 63.6%. Upmanu Lall, director of the Water Center at Columbia University, said there was no reason for alarm at the moment.
"It's not scary," Lall said. "The bottom line is that if the rest of the winter is normal rather than in drought, I don't think there's much of an effect."
The National Weather Service predicts cooler and wetter days ahead, but it will take a while to make up for the more than seven-inch deficit in precipitation affecting the water supply's watershed.
"We are cautiously optimistic heading forward that we'll begin to see a pattern that starts to bring increasing precipitation into this region, " Tinker said.
Lall said reservoirs work in cycles. The reservoir is at peak use during the summer, when human and plant consumption are at their highest and hot temperatures cause evaporation. In the fall, temperatures drop and evaporation slows. Water consumption by humans and plants also drops. Reservoirs depend on snowfall in the winter and rain in the spring to replenish in time for the hotter days.
"That period between January and May is what leads to the filling of the reservoirs every single year. That's the part that we have to wait and see how it transpires," said Lall. "If the drought persists through May and the reservoirs are not filled, then it's time to get quite concerned."
Early predictions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration currently favor a mostly average winter and spring.
"We really need multiple slow, steady, soaking rainfalls to really dig out of these big deficits," said Samantha Borisoff, a climatologist at NOAA's Northeastern Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.
The Catskill system is the city's primary water source during the Delaware Aqueduct shutdown. In the past, its two reservoirs, the Ashokan and Schoharie, provided about 40% of the city's water. The Ashokan Reservoir is already projected to be at lower capacity as a result of the aqueduct repairs. As of Friday, the levels were at 73.6%. The backup reservoir of Schoharie was at 32.1% capacity.
The danger zone for overall capacity is when the reservoirs collectively dip below 45%. New York City uses about a billion gallons of water every day. That's 0.6% of what's in the city's operating reservoirs.
"While there is plenty of water in our reservoirs now, we are working to start public conservation efforts now in case this drought continues," the Department of Environmental Protection wrote in a statement.
