Melanie Lekocevic reports for Columbia-Greene Media that officials from the Greene County Soil and Water Conservation District and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection toured the Batavia Kill stream restoration project in Prattsville and Ashland on Sept. 30. At Red Falls more than 6,000 feet of the Batavia Kill are being restored at a cost of $3.7 million. “We have been doing a lot of stream restoration projects to reduce the amount of sediment that gets into the reservoirs that are managed by the city,” New York City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Vincent Sapienza said. “We want to make sure those reservoirs continue to have high- quality water. We invested a lot of money into projects like these.” The project will benefit those south of Greene County as water from the Batavia Kill heads to the Schoharie Reservoir, then to the Ashokan Aqueduct, then to the Catskill Aqueduct. Eventually folks in New York City and more than a dozen communities in Ulster, Orange, Putnam, and Westchester counties gets drinking water from this source. “Not only is this the 450th stream management project that we have done with our various partners, like the Greene County Soil and Water Conservation District, but it also happens to be the biggest and most complex stream project we have done,” said Adam Bosch, director of public affairs for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. “It will actually treat a mile of the Batavia Kill that over the years, because of big storms, has resulted in huge slope failures, and it is the single largest source of sediment going into the Schoharie Reservoir.” Greene County Legislator James Thorington, a Republican from Prattsville, said the spending will also help here. “This purifies our water as well, for the fish and the environment,” Thorington said. “A lot of people swim at the barrier dam below this, so it will clean up the water there as well.” Read more about this story at HudsonValley360.com.