Schoharie Reservoir

The Schoharie Reservoir is a reservoir in the Catskill Mountains of New York State that was created to be one of 19 reservoirs that supplies New York City with water. It was created by impounding Schoharie Creek. Portions of it lie in the towns of Conesville and Gilboa in Schoharie County, Roxbury in Delaware County, and Prattsville in Greene County.

Even after the Ashokan Reservoir was created as New York City's thirteenth reservoir and the Kensico Reservoir was completed soon after to store its water, the water supply was still insufficient for the city's high population. A search for a new location led to the village of Gilboa, New York, which was purchased and its residents evacuated through condemnation.

Site preparation destroyed most of the area's trees and buildings up to the water line. The dam was built during the early 1920s out of stone bricks. Flooding was completed in 1924 and the reservoir put into service. The village of Gilboa was relocated to the west; traces of it can still be seen during a drought.

The resulting reservoir, the northernmost of the New York City system, is located 36 miles southwest of Albany and roughly 110 miles northwest of New York City. It lies at the southern end of Schoharie County, the northeastern end of Delaware County, and at the northwestern end of Greene County. It neighbors such towns as Gilboa, Prattsville, and Conesville. It is an impounded portion of the Schoharie Creek, a tributary of the Mohawk River, itself a tributary of the Hudson River.

The resulting reservoir consists of a single 6-mile basin, and holds 17.6 billion US gallons of water at full capacity, making it one of the smaller New York City reservoirs. Put into service in 1926, the Schoharie Reservoir provides nine million people with approximately 15-16 percent of their annual water supply needs. It is also the smaller of the two reservoirs which, along with the Ashokan Reservoir, in Olive, New York, make up the New York City Catskill Water System. Overflow from the Schoharie Reservoir tops the Gilboa Dam and runs back into Schoharie Creek, ultimately flowing into the Hudson River.

Water from the Schoharie Reservoir flows to New York City through the 16-mile-long Shandaken Tunnel, and empties into the Esopus Creek at Shandaken. Another 11 miles down the Esopus it empties into the Ashokan Reservoir. From there water enters the 92-mile Catskill Aqueduct to the Kensico Reservoir, thence to New York City.