3/28/2025
Sarah Thiessen
 Drinking water questions? Give us a call at 877-52-WATER (877-529-2837), or email info@wtny.us
Monday, March 31, 2025 315 pm EDT
Safe Drinking Water Profile: NYC Department of Environmental Protection - Kensico Reservoir
NYC Department of Environmental Protection supplies half the population of New York with drinking water, this is how it's done
New York City Department of Environmental Protection supplies 8.8 million residents in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Putnam and Westchester Counties with drinking water from two waterhseds in the Lower Hudson Valley. Within the Catskills/Delaware watershed on the west side of the Hudson, and the Croton watershed on the east side of the Hudson River estuary are a total of nineteen drinking water reservoirs, feeding two main drinking water treatment facilities that together produce one billion gallons of drinking water per day for thirsty New Yorkers and all the visitors to the area.
Within NYC is Central Park, a donation-funded 843 acre conservancy known to be a masterpiece of landscape and architecture worldwide. Central Park sees over 42 million visitors each year to take in the breathtaking park inside of a concrete jungle, New York. "Regularly monitored by NYC's Department of Environmental Protection, "Central Park's water fountains are perfectly safe to drink from."
Even though Central Park sees as many tourists and locals as it does, it is still home to many different types of wildlife and ecosystems. The ponds and lakes are home to different species of fish and turtles. This park was placed where it is to aid in helping the air quality to its surroundings. More than 18,000 trees cool and clean the air, along with reducing the amount of storm water run off into Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.
There are 8,180 licensed public drinking water facilities in New York State. See more New York Drinking Water Facility Profiles, here.
DWF Profile: NYC Department of Environmental Protection - Kensico Reservoir
Watershed: Atlantic Ocean - Long Island Sound
Status: Violations Identified
Owner: local government
Location: Valhalla, NY
County: New York County
Active Permit: NY7003493
System Type: community water system
Population Served: 8271000
Source: surface water
Treatment: From the 2023 Annual Water Quality Report, "The Croton supply is filtered at the Croton Water Filtration Plant, located underground in the Bronx. Treatment includes coagulation, filtration, dissolved air flotation and disinfection. During coagulation, chemicals are added to untreated water, causing any particulates to bunch together and become a mass of particles called floc. Then injected air bubbles float the floc to the top where it is skimmed off using a process called dissolved air flotation. Finally, the water flows through a filter bed of granular activated carbon and sand removing any remaining particles. Just like the Catskill/Delaware supply, Croton water is disinfected with chlorine and UV light to protect against potentially harmful microorganisms, and is treated with food grade phosphoric acid, sodium hydroxide, and fluoride."
Daily Capacity: up to 290 million gallons from the Croton Water Filtration Plant
Admin Contact: NYC Department of Environmental Protection
EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Hotline 1-800-426-4791
Latest Compliance Inspection: no record returned
No data records returned - will update when information becomes available
The following information gathered from federal EPA pertains to the quarter ending Sept 30, 2024 (data last refreshed on EPA database Jan 11 2025)
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Non-compliant inspections
(of the previous 12 quarters)
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with Significant Violations
(of the previous 12 quarters)
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Informal
Enforcement Actions
(last 5 yrs)
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Formal
Enforcement Actions
(last 5 years)
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12 out of 12
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0 out of 12
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Violations and Non-compliance History:
Treatment Technique Violation - Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule - noted Feb 1 2017 - present - addressed
*Note that drinking water information provided on this site is aggregated from the federal EPA database, state resources and local government sources where available.
EPA publishes violation and enforcement data quarterly, based on the inspection reports of the previous quarter. Water systems, states and EPA take up to three months to verify this data is accurate and complete.
Specific questions about your local water supply should be directed to the facility.
The EPA safe drinking water facilities data available to the public presents what is known to the government based upon the most recently available information for more than one million regulated facilities. EPA and states inspect a percentage of facilities each year, but many facilities, particularly smaller ones, may not have received a recent inspection. It is possible that facilities do have violations that have not yet been discovered, thus are shown as compliant in the system.
EPA cannot positively state that facilities without violations shown in ECHO are necessarily fully compliant with environmental laws. Additionally, some violations at smaller facilities do not need to be reported from the states to EPA. If ECHO shows a recent inspection and the facility is shown with no violations identified, users of the ECHO site can be more confident that the facility is in compliance with federal programs.
The compliance status of smaller facilities that have not had recent inspections or review by EPA or the states may be unknown or only available via state data systems.
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