October 11, 2019

Oct. 21 talk will focus on stream management, community planning, and climate change

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced that it will host a public lecture in the Catskills by nationally acclaimed hydrologist Dave Rosgen, Ph.D., widely recognized as one of the foremost stream-management experts in the world. The free public lecture will happen at Belleayre Mountain at 7pm on Oct. 21. Because seating is limited, those who wish to attend are encouraged to register or find the event on DEP’s NYC Watershed Facebook page.

The talk by Rosgen, “Living with Mountain Rivers in a Changing Climate,” will focus on making river communities resilient to more frequent flooding as a result of climate change. He will share best practices for river management, including his approach to river restoration, known as Natural Channel Design, which works with the natural tendencies of rivers to reach equilibrium within the landscape they pass through.

A professional hydrologist and geomorphologist with field experience in river work spanning 49 years, Rosgen has designed and implemented more than 70 large-scale river restoration projects. Following a 20-year career with the U.S. Forest Service, Rosgen developed methods that have been used to restore rivers throughout the United States. His work has been featured in national publications, including National Geographic and The New York Times, and he has authored more than five dozen reports, journal articles, federal agency manuals and books. Rosgen has taught short courses in watershed management and river restoration for river managers throughout the country for the past 25 years.

Since the mid-1990s, DEP has provided about $200 million to fund the restoration of nearly 50 miles of streams in the Catskills, including more than 400 individual projects. These stream management projects are selected by local advisory committees that include watershed residents and officials from the towns, counties and the state. The projects, many of which have used Rosgen’s methods, are coordinated through unique partnerships with county soil and water conservation districts in Delaware, Greene, Sullivan and Ulster, along with the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County. These local organizations develop stream management plans to identify priority projects in their communities. These partnering agencies are co-sponsors of the Rosgen lecture, with funding provided through an agreement with SUNY Ulster.

This collaborative stream-management effort in the Catskills has yielded wide-ranging benefits to local communities and water quality. The restoration projects help protect roads and bridges by restoring floodplains that reduce the risk of erosion during large storms, improve habitat for fish and other wildlife, and help minimize erosion and the suspension of sediments that can harm water quality in the streams that feed New York City’s reservoir system.

DEP manages New York City’s water supply, providing more than 1 billion gallons of high-quality water each day to more than 9.6 million New Yorkers. This includes more than 70 upstate communities and institutions in Ulster, Orange, Putnam and Westchester counties who consume an average of 110 million total gallons of drinking water daily from New York City’s water supply system. This water comes from the Catskill, Delaware, and Croton watersheds that extend more than 125 miles from the City, and the system comprises 19 reservoirs, three controlled lakes, and numerous tunnels and aqueducts. DEP has nearly 6,000 employees, including almost 1,000 scientists, engineers, surveyors, watershed maintainers and other professionals in the watershed. In addition to its $70 million payroll and $168.9 million in annual taxes paid in upstate counties, DEP has invested more than $1.7 billion in watershed protection programs—including partnership organizations such as the Catskill Watershed Corporation and the Watershed Agricultural Council—that support sustainable farming practices, environmentally sensitive economic development, and local economic opportunity. In addition, DEP has a robust capital program with $20.1 billion in investments planned over the next decade that will create up to 3,000 construction-related jobs per year. For more information, visit nyc.gov/dep, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.