SHOKAN – In the New York City DEP’s continuing effort to maintain clean drinking water for the eight million residents of the five boroughs and the thousands of Hudson Valley and Catskills residents who access their drinking water from the New York City system, an assessment of bridges and culverts over streams in the Ashokan watershed is underway.
Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County Project Manager Tim Koch said the Ashokan Watershed Stream Management Program is being funded by the DEP.
“The idea is to go take a look at each one and measure it and assess
it for four different metrics and then afterwards, we are going to score
them all and find the worst of the worst and prioritize those for replacement
and/or retrofitting, basically upsizing them to pass bigger flows,”
Koch said.
The ability for wildlife to pass through a crossing is being evaluated using the North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative protocol. In the Ashokan watershed, poor conditions at crossings make it nearly impossible for trout and other organisms to reach habitat or spawning areas further upstream.
It is expected that between 400 and 500 culverts will be assessed.
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