NYC DEP's Land Acquisition Program in Sullivan County, New York

Why NYC owns and controls land in a Catskills county 90+ miles away

New York City's drinking water for roughly nine million downstate residents comes largely from a system of Catskill and Delaware watershed reservoirs, rather than any local city source -- and Sullivan County hosts a real piece of that system. The Neversink Reservoir sits entirely within the Town of Neversink in Sullivan County; its water flows through the Neversink Tunnel to the Rondout Reservoir, itself split between the Town of Neversink (Sullivan County) and the Town of Wawarsing (Ulster County), where it's pooled with water from the Pepacton and Cannonsville reservoirs to form the west-of-Hudson component of the Delaware Aqueduct system. Because the quality of that drinking water depends directly on how the surrounding land is used -- development, septic failures, and runoff can all degrade a reservoir's water quality -- NYC has a direct, decades-long interest in controlling land use in the watershed well beyond city limits.

The Land Acquisition Program: fee purchases and conservation easements, not just one or the other

Under a 1997 Memorandum of Understanding with New York State, NYC committed to actively solicit the purchase of watershed land -- an original target of 355,000 acres across the whole Catskill/Delaware watershed area, backed by a $250 million city funding commitment, later extended and expanded in subsequent program phases (New York State separately authorized up to 105,000 additional acres of watershed land purchases). The program uses two distinct legal tools: fee-simple purchase (NYC buys the land outright and becomes the owner) and conservation easements (the current owner keeps the land and keeps farming, forestry, or other permitted uses, but permanently sells away the right to develop it, with DEP paying full fair market value for whichever right it's acquiring). Both tools are still active; which one applies to a specific parcel depends on DEP's own priority-area maps and the individual landowner's preference and eligibility.

This program is participation-based, not a forced taking: landowners choose whether to sell land or an easement to DEP, and DEP has published solicitation and priority-area maps identifying where it's actively seeking acquisitions across the watershed counties, including Sullivan. As of late 2024, reporting indicated NYC was moving to wind down or significantly slow most new land purchases in parts of the Catskill watershed after roughly three decades of the program -- a genuinely relevant, recent development for anyone assuming NYC land-buying activity here will continue indefinitely at its historical pace, and one worth confirming directly with DEP for current status rather than assuming from this page alone.

What this research could NOT confirm -- and why that matters

The watershed-wide totals above (355,000-acre target, 105,000-acre state authorization, roughly 110,000 acres actually acquired across the whole Catskill/Delaware/Croton watershed system since 1997 per NYC's own general program reporting) are well documented. What this research pass could NOT find, despite a specific search, is a Sullivan-County-specific breakdown -- how many acres NYC actually owns in fee within Sullivan County specifically, how many acres are under DEP conservation easement in the county specifically, or what percentage of the county's total land area that represents. Rather than estimate or imply a figure, this page says so directly: that county-specific number requires a direct records request or GIS query to NYC DEP or Sullivan County's own real property records, not a general web search.

What to check before buying near the Neversink or Rondout watershed

1. Get a full title search on any parcel near the Neversink Reservoir, the Rondout Reservoir, or their tributary streams -- a recorded DEP conservation easement is a permanent restriction that runs with the land and will not show up on a simple listing description.
2. Ask NYC DEP's Bureau of Water Supply directly (contact via the sources below) whether a specific parcel is within its current solicitation/priority-acquisition area, and whether the program is currently active for that area given recent reporting about NYC slowing new purchases in parts of the watershed.
3. If a parcel is already under a DEP conservation easement, obtain the actual recorded easement document -- not a summary -- to see exactly which uses (forestry, limited agriculture, a single residential structure, etc.) remain permitted.
4. Separately confirm whether the parcel falls within the NYC DEP Watershed Rules and Regulations boundary for septic review purposes (a related but distinct requirement from the land-acquisition program) -- see our Sullivan County hub and the state septic guide for that layer.