The New York City Watershed is the largest unfiltered surface water supply system in the United States. Every day this region in upstate New York’s Catskill Mountains provides more than a billion gallons of clean drinking water to the more than nine million people residing in New York City and upstate counties. The system includes 19 reservoirs, three controlled lakes, and a watershed that spans more than a million acres. In some cases, water travels more than a hundred miles to reach New York City.  While other large US cities typically own the land that drains into their reservoirs – New York City’s lands are unique:  Nearly 75 percent of the watershed lands are privately owned with NYC and the State of New York owning a mixture of the remaining lands.  Consequently, New York’s water quality depends in large part on the actions of the 30,000 landowners who live, work, and recreate on watershed lands.  Overall, nearly 70% of the watersheds are forested with the remaining lands in predominately agricultural use.

The Watershed Agricultural Council (WAC) is one of two primary watershed partners (Catskill Watershed Corporation being the other) locally-based not-for-profit corporations specifically created to assist New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP) with the administration and implementation of watershed protection and economic development programs in its water supply lands. The WAC is involved primarily with natural resource and land conservation programs, whereas the Catskill Watershed Corporation primarily oversees community infrastructure and economic development programs. Many other watershed partners serve in various capacities, such as oversight, advice, public education, and communication.

WAC Geospatial

WAC GIS and geospatial applications are built to support four major program areas within the NYC watershed lands:  Forestry, Agriculture, Conservation Easements, and Economic Viability.    Managing these applications and infrastructure in their three offices [(Walton,  Hamden , and Yorktown (East of Hudson)]  is the responsibility of Nadine Trahan who joined WAC three years ago after having attended both undergraduate and graduate school in New Zealand.  Nadine developed and maintains a ESRI Geodatabase to support enterprise geospatial applications.  She notes wireless connectivity and high speed internet connectivity can be a “challenge” in the rural Catskills which plays into the deployment of the enterprise applications.  Given the connectivity issues, Nadine uses ArcGIS Portal to design and download applications to mobile devices for in-field deployment:  Data collected remotely is synchronized with the enterprise geodatabase when field devices are connected to the network upon return to the office.  She currently supports approximately 40 users involving everything from high-end client software apps to browser-based applications for the more casual user.  This later category of user being staff which use an internal web map to edit point locations of Pure Catskills members as part of the Economic Viability focus.
Continue reading →