A bus tour of the water system on June 19, led by Kingston Water Department Supervisor Judith Hansen, enabled a group of city officials and other interested folks to see for themselves where the water comes from and how it is filtered and delivered. The tour traced the system from its origins at Mink Hollow to the Binnewater Reservoir in the Town of Ulster. The system consists of five reservoirs — Cooper Lake, the Binnewater, plus three back-up reservoirs located off Zena and Sawkill road — five dams, over 15 miles of 24-inch main pipe, and 100 square miles of cast iron pipes and mains under the city itself. The city water department employs 27 and is regulated by a five-person independent board. Set up by a special act of the state Legislature in 1895, the department operates independently of the city, raising its own revenues through customer rates, which are set each year by the board. The 2012 annual budget is $3.86 million.
The Kingston Water Department owns about 1,000 acres inWoodstock, Hunter and Town of Ulster, many of them the forest bordering Mink Hollow up to its headwaters in Tannersville. (Timber harvesting three years ago of the land along Cooper Lake was not motivated by revenue — although the department did reap $10,000 — but rather “to improve the health of our forest and maximize the run off,” said Hansen.)
Hansen noted that being within theNew York City watershed is an advantage. “We adjoin the Catskill State Forest line as well as New York City Department of Environmental Protection lands and are very fortunate in that our watershed is very lightly populated,” she said.
To meet federal and state requirements, each day the intake dam starts withdrawing water from the creek only after half a million gallons has flowed over it. The stream’s 8.6-mile watershed has the capacity of delivering 6 million gallons of water a day to the system, well above the average daily usage of 4 million gallons.
The new intake facility includes a small building containing a land-line telephone (there is no cell phone service in the area) and electricity; a staff employee visits the site daily to clear away debris and, in winter, chop ice off the dam. The water is piped a mile to CooperLake, which at full capacity holds 1.2 billion gallons. Right now, the reservoir is down to the level it would normally be in October, due to shutdown of the intake from Mink Hollow during construction last fall and the abnormally dry spring. It has been filling up in the last month, however.
Kingston’s water demand has gone down since usage peaked in the 1950s at 5.5 million gallons. Hansen attributed the decline to the drastic reduction in manufacturing and the aging population, which has resulted in smaller households and less water usage.
CooperLake, which was originally a natural lake, was acquired by the department in the 1920s and was last raised in 1927; it has three outfalls and two intakes. It consists of two basins, with a depth of 40 feet. It reached its lowest level in 1957, when a terrible drought caused the water to drop 17 feet, leaving only a month’s supply. In 1981, during another bad drought, the Kingston Water Department acquired the rights to take water from the Ashokan Reservoir. It purchased pipes to do this but never implemented the connection, said Hansen.
The Department recently invested $250,000 in improvements to better regulate the dams to conform to new rules issued by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. They include installation of a piezometer, which measures the water level to help ascertain the stability of the dam. The old spillway, which is targeted for an upgrade, sends water to the Sawkill Creek.
The water department controls the growth of algae on the lake. It also owns a white farmhouse on Route 212 that used to house a caretaker who groomed the grounds (he is now retired).
From Cooper Lake the water travels through an 11-mile cast-iron 24-inch main to the treatment plant. The plant is staffed by 12 employees and has a capacity of 8 million gallons a day. Its filtering system consists of 16 stainless steel tanks, many of them original, half filled with sand and a layer of anthracite.
The filtration tanks are monitored 24-7 for turbidity. (Hansen explained that turbidity, which refers to tiny particles in the water, is an on-going concern for any water system because the particles could shield harmful bacteria and protozoa from the disinfectant.) To measure the turbidity and ensure the levels conform to the state standard, beams of light are projected through a column of water, with the results posted on a computer monitor.
The filter control cabinets, which control the opening and closing of valves to accommodate the flow of water, line both sides of a long room with wood floors and clerestory windows; some of them date from the 1920s and would make a great set for an old movie, with their large knobs and old-fashioned lettering. The filters of the tanks are occasionally backwashed with water pumped from a water tank to keep them clean.
