Galusha to Present on Watershed History

CATSKILLS REGION — Local author and historian Diane Galusha will be presenting about the history of the New York City water system and the Catskills Watershed this Saturday, March 22.

She is the author of Liquid Assets: A History of New York City’s Water System and is president of the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown.

Galusha will be presenting “Esopus Dreams: How New York City Reshaped the Catskills,” at the Morton Memorial Library in Pine Hill at 3:00 p.m March 22 for World Water Day. The presentation will include a broad overview of the water system, then focusing on the Esopus Creek and the Ashokan Reservoir in Ulster County.

Galusha said that New York City “reconfigured” the Catskills “stream by stream.”

The Esopus Creek originates on Slide Mountain, the tallest peak in the Catskills and meanders through the Oliverea Valley and Big Indian where it is joined in Shandaken with waters from the Schoharie Reservoir, delivered through an 18-mile tunnel. The combined waters then flow into the Ashokan Reservoir.

The reservoir was built between 1907 and 1915, displacing 2,000 people and “wiping out” or relocating twelve communities. This is similar to later takings in which communities were leveled as the city built five more reservoirs through 1965.

“New York City basically owes its life to the Catskills,” she said, calling it a “pretty incredible system.” In addition to New York City, Catskill water flows to Putnam, Westchester, and Ulster Counties. Approximately 60 communities, water districts and institutions use this water, including about 85% of people in Westchester.

Many people do not realize that the Catskills and Delaware Aqueducts which carry water from the reservoirs to the delivery system in New York both tunnel under the bed of the Hudson River.

“Think about how that was constructed,” in the age of mules and without tunnel-boring machines, she said. This included blasting vertical shafts to solid bedrock before tunneling horizontally with dynamite, picks and shovels. 

“The Ashokan is known as the last of the hand-made dams,” she said, calling it a “marvel of engineering. The work camps were “little cities,” she said, including churches, sewer and lighting systems, recreation centers with libraries, and mess halls. Workers sometimes bought their families for the duration of the project.