Water Quality
The Hudson Valley Regional Council (HVRC) is the recipient of grant funding to assist with Water Quality Planning in the region through the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and the Federal Clean Water Act program. Through this funding, HVRC provides education and outreach to local municipalities with respect to water quality planning and stormwater management. The current focus of the grant (2019-2023) is to assist municipalities with Drinking Water Source Protection Plans, 9 Element Watershed Management Plans, and education and outreach for MS4 communities.
Drinking Water Source Protection Program (DWSP2)
DWSP2 is a program created by DEC in collaboration with DOH to assist communities to protect their public sources of drinking water. The draft framework provides a step-by-step process towards a community's unique source water protection plan. The program breaks down the process into four phases: Stakeholder Group, Drinking Water Source Assessment, Protection & Implementation Strategies, and Progression & Maintenance.
HVRC is currently assisting communities in the Hudson Valley to protect source water, by providing technical assistance, education, and outreach for the program.
If you would like to work with a TA provider, complete an application and submit using the submit button at the bottom of the PDF. If you have any questions, reach out to the DWSP2 Team at source.water@dec.ny.gov.
DWSP2 Resources
DWSP2 Land Use Training
HVRC and Pace Land Use Law Center provided a training to New Paltz in December 2021 with help from DEC and DOH. The training covered governance, an overview of the DWSP2 program, land use techniques, and intermunicipal collaboration. Below are the recordings and resource guides prepared for participants of this training:
Video 1: Introduction & Governance 101
Video 2: Land Use Techniques
Video 3: Intermunicipal Cooperation
Watershed Planning
HVRC works with NYSDEC to provide technical assistance for watershed planning and coordinates how to best help communities and watershed-based organizations protect their watersheds.
For a list of HUC-8 and HUC-10 watersheds within the region, see our Watershed Inventory 2021
9 Element Watershed Plan (9E)
9 Element Watershed Plans (9E) are used by communities, watershed councils, and other stakeholders in order to determine how to best protect a watershed from a specific pollutant coming from a non-point source. Common pollutants addressed by 9E plans are nutrients such as phosphorus or nitrogen. The plan consists of these 9 elements:
- Identify and quantify sources of pollution in watershed
- Identify water quality target or goal and pollutant reductions needed to achieve goal
- Identify the best management practices (BMPs) that will help to achieve reductions needed to meet water quality goal/target
- Describe the financial and technical assistance needed to implement BMPs identified in Element 3
- Describe the outreach to stakeholders and how their input was incorporated and the role of stakeholders to implement the plan
- Estimate a schedule to implement BMPs identified in plan
- Describe the milestones and estimated time frames for the implementation of BMPs
- Identify the criteria that will be used to assess water quality improvement as the plan is implemented
- Describe the monitoring plan that will collect water quality data need to measure water quality improvement (criteria identified in Element 8)
