Managing water quality in a New York City watershed

Abstract

Currently economic growth in a New York City watershed is limited due to phosphorus concentrations exceeding standards. The phosphorus concentration in the Cannonsville reservoir in New York State must be reduced to safeguard New York City's drinking water supply, and to enable economic growth to continue in the reservoir's watershed. In Delaware County, where the reservoir is located, the problem of finding and selecting promising measures to reduce phosphorus loads is extremely complex and involves numerous stakeholders. A two-level modeling approach based on Visual-Interactive Decision Modeling (VIDEMO) was used to analyse the problem, using game theory and optimization. The analysis resulted in practical guidelines for land use management, taking into consideration the possible strategies by other parties and stakeholders.

Water and Agriculture

“…So far, an explicit and transparent assessment of water values and the way they are impacted is often absent in the process leading up to economic arrangements. In the case of New York City, the costs of building a filtration plant were very clear and high enough to trigger action, but even here, the agreed package of US$ 1.5 billion does not offer a guarantee that the activities under the agreement will be sufficient to meet official water quality standards within the time frame of the filtration avoidance granted by the EPA (NRC, 2000;Hermans et al 2003). In Quito, the contributions to the fund by the constituents are set rather arbitrarily, based on their individual willingness and ability to pay, and the eventual impacts of projects funded by the FONAG on water availability downstream remain, as yet, largely unknown.…”