Safe drinking water is a high priority and for most of us our water comes through a filtration system but the city of Syracuse taps Skaneateles Lake and it's so pure no filtration system is needed."So that requires extremely high water quality and that requires a lot of vigilance to make sure that, that water quality is maintained. Building a treatment plant for filtration would be very, very expensive." Dr. Russell Briggs with SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry.
Dr. Briggs is leading a study of the Skaneateles Lake watershed. It's a mix of mostly forest and agricultural land and the risk, he says, is from the agricultural land.
"Of course, forest land is the primary source of the purest water and agricultural practices have a potential to degrade water quality from fertilization and runoff and a variety of things," Briggs said.
Which means the water quality is good because farmers are using best management practices such as keeping contaminated water out of nearby streams, treating contaminated water before releasing it, and using vegetation like shrub willows to filter the water before it reaches the lake.
The lessons and techniques we've learned protecting the Skaneateles Lake watershed can be replicated around New York State using nature instead of expensive water treatment plants to produce pure water.
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