The 1997 Watershed Agreement is a landmark document that sets the ground rules for protecting New York City’s water supply. Because it is about 2,000 pages long, we have not reproduced it here. The Agreement is available to download here.

As a chief architect of the 1997 New York City Watershed Agreement, Riverkeeper managed to leverage a $1.4 billion government program designed to protect a vast 2,000 square mile landscape. This plan was a coup, and a bargain for the City, as estimates for a filtration plant ranged to $8 billion in capital construction costs alone.

Although the 1997 Watershed Agreement is an historic accomplishment with the potential to permanently protect New York’s drinking water from decline, the agreement is not self-enforcing. Absent aggressive efforts by New York City and the other signatories to implement and enforce its provisions, the agreement will fail. As a signatory to and author of the agreement, Riverkeeper has a unique public role to ensure that the agreement succeeds and special authority to enforce and oversee its implementation.

• In 1997, the U.S. EPA issued the City a Filtration Avoidance Determination (FAD), which allows the City to avoid filtering the Catskill/Delaware water supply.

• The Watershed is protected by the historic 1997 Watershed Memorandum of Agreement, which was negotiated by New York City, New York State, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, watershed municipalities, and five environmental groups: Riverkeeper, New York Public Interest Research Group, Catskill Center, Trust for Public Land and Open Space Institute. The Watershed Agreement provides a framework by which the City can meet the requirements of the FAD. It is divided into three components: watershed regulations, land acquisition, and partnership programs.

• New Watershed Regulations were issued as part of the Watershed Agreement. These regulations are intended to limit activities that could threaten water quality. In general, activities affected by the regulations include septic system installation, wastewater treatment plant operation, and construction activities. For example, a septic system absorption field cannot be located within 100 feet of a wetland or watercourse or 300 feet of a reservoir.

• The Safe Drinking Water Act requires that the City "demonstrate control over all human activities that could adversely impact water quality" through ownership or control of adequate buffer lands. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP's) Land Acquisition Program is a vehicle for the City to purchase property or enact conservation easements within the watershed. Under this program, DEP must solicit land purchases from willing sellers, rather than relying on its powers of eminent domain.

• The Watershed Agreement establishes several Partnership Programs between the City and watershed municipalities and organizations. Through these programs, the City funds projects to address such issues as septic system upgrades, infrastructure repair and extension, and non-point source pollution. The Watershed Agricultural Program, managed by the Watershed Agricultural Council, is among the most successful of these programs, leveraging City, state, federal and private funds to reduce agriculture-related pollution in the Catskill/Delaware watershed. Similarly, the Catskill Watershed Corporation has been extremely successful with septic system repairs and community development programs.