For the final Source to Estuary field trip of 2023, we headed south to Kingston and the Catskills. We took a walk along the dam of the Ashokan Reservoir, one of the six reservoirs in the Catskill/Delware watersheds that provides drinking water to New York City. We considered the politics, land management choices, and infrastructure that made such a massive project possible, and compared it to our own much smaller, more localized water system in Troy. Then we headed into Kingston for a swim at Kingston Point Beach. This beach is the closest public beach to Troy where it is safe to swim in the Hudson, as verified by Riverkeeper’s water quality data. Both stops on this final afternoon provided additional context for our ongoing explorations of our local drinking watershed in Troy, and water politics in the great Capital Region.
