Environment & Energy

The Final Christmas of 4 Catskills Villages Flooded to Create Reservoirs
You can take a shower in NYC today because the city sank a few hamlets.

BY ANDY WRIGHT DECEMBER 20, 2016

On November 3, 1955, anyone observing the east branch of the Delaware River, about two miles downstream from the New York town of Dunraven, would have been treated to an unusual sight: Katheryn Dickson’s stately 12-room home sailing across the water with the aplomb of a steamship. Dickson’s two-story house was once a showstopper on the main street of Arena, the tiny upstate New York town where she was postmaster for 32 years.

Soon the valley hamlet, nestled in the Catskill mountains, would be under about 200 feet of water. The Dickson home escaped this fate: It was loaded onto a 21-wheel trailer, hauled by two Caterpillar tractors across the river, up the east bank, and transplanted in Dunraven. These are the sorts of improbable things that can happen when you have several years to prepare for a flood.

New York City is famous for its tap water. In July it scored the top prize (again) in a regional tap water taste test sponsored by the EPA. And this water is hard won; it arrives in Manhattan via a massive network of aqueducts, dams and reservoirs. Parts of this system, which comprise one of the world’s largest water supply networks, are more than a century old and were carved into being through feats of engineering astounding for their time. Sometimes, of course, the march of forward progress marches over people’s lives. This is one of those instances.

The city of New York started designing its Catskill water network in 1905; the Catskill Aqueduct System was finished by 1924, and by 1931 the city of New York had won the blessing of the Supreme Court to expand its upstate infrastructure. It was accepted that rural towns who stood in the way of the city’s water supply would be submerged. Pepacton, Union Grove, Shavertown and Arena were the four hamlets that resided in a valley slated to be transformed into the Pepacton Reservoir, the largest ever built by the city.

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