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DEP’s monitoring program helps manage the system to provide the best possible water by identifying the characteristics of the water as it moves from source to tap. Because of the extensive monitoring system, DEP and its water consumers can know with certainty just how good the water quality is. The monitoring program provides the quantitative data required by federal law to demonstrate that the Catskill/Delaware supply doesn’t need to be filtered. Findings of the monitoring program have served as the scientific basis for the watershed protection program, and they’re used to assess its effectiveness as well as develop a database to discover water quality trends. DEP routinely monitors a comprehensive roster of physical, chemical and biological elements. Since 1995, DEP has also been checking for two pathogens, Cryptosporium and Giardia lamblia, sources of waterborne intestinal disease known to survive in water for a long time. Samples are collected and tests conducted throughout the watershed, including sites at aqueducts, reservoirs, streams and wastewater treatment plants. Every year, DEP gathers more than 35,000 samples from 300 sites and performs more than 300,000 laboratory analyses. The vast majority of the water samples are analyzed at DEP’s three upstate laboratories. One reason is that results are often needed immediately for operational decisions, especially during an event, such as elevated turbidity –– the brown, cloudy water full of sediment runoff that follows a big rainstorm. DEP also performs many specialized analyses that commercial labs generally don’t do, and, by operating our own laboratories, DEP can maintain very tight control on the quality of the data and take extra steps to get the most refined data possible for key substances, like phosphorus. The monitoring program doesn’t stop at the watershed’s edge. DEP monitors water quality continuously as the water enters the distribution system and tests it regularly at some 1000 fixed sampling stations throughout the City. These 4-foot high stations are a metal box with a collection tap connected to a City main below the street. DEP conducts analyses for a broad spectrum of microbiological, chemical, and physical measures of quality, both regulated and unregulated. Each year, DEP collects more than 45,000 samples and performs approximately 560,000 analyses on water drawn from the City’s distribution system. DEP uses this data to manage treatment and to ensure that all water quality standards are met.
Using highly-sophiscated computer technology, DEP is developing and applying land (terrestrial) and reservoir models to support long-term watershed management and ongoing reservoir operations. Terrestrial models simulate water and nutrient loadings from the land area draining into the reservoirs, and apply relevant site conditions such as weather, watershed soils and topography, land use and watershed management. Reservoir models simulate in-lake water levels and flows; vertical temperature ranges; and nutrient and chlorophyll levels as a function of weather, reservoir depth, and nutrient loadings. Linking the two models provides a powerful tool for simulating the effects of weather, land use, watershed management, and reservoir operations on water quality in the City’s 19 reservoirs. The reservoir models can also predict the short-term effects of contaminant spills or runoff events, which guides decisions on short-term reservoir routing operations to minimize and contain any contaminants found after such incidents or occasions. DEP conducts many specialized research projects to better understand the physical, chemical and biological processes in the reservoirs and watersheds, and their impact on water quality. Some projects are designed to address a specific water quality issue, while others are more broader, intended to provide key information or management tools to improve watershed protection. The research ranges from assessing the effectiveness of stormwater management practices to forest ecosystem health; from the impact of wetlands on water quality to better laboratory methods for measuring Cryptosporidium and Giardia oocysts/cysts.
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Watershed
Protection
aror.pdf