New York City Drought Warning Declared for First Time in Over 20 Years

The warning, which extends beyond the city to include 10 other counties in New York state, was announced as wildfires burned and residents continued to await meaningful rainfall.

Mayor Eric Adams on Monday elevated New York City’s drought watch to a drought warning, the last step before declaring a drought emergency, which would come with mandatory water restrictions.

The warning extends beyond the city to include 10 additional New York State counties, including much of the Hudson Valley. In the rest of the state, which is also experiencing abnormally dry conditions, Gov. Kathy Hochul has declared a drought watch.

Although no restrictions are required under a drought warning, officials are urging residents to voluntarily conserve water, while water suppliers focus on contingency plans. The city’s reservoirs, which are usually around 79 percent full at this time of year, are down to about 60 percent of their total capacity, and the inch of rain forecast in the coming days will not be enough to replenish them, officials said. New York City has received less than a quarter-inch of rain since Oct. 1, according to the National Weather Service.

One such contingency plan involves the pause of the Delaware Aqueduct repair project, a $2 billion, eight-month initiative, planned for decades, that required the shutdown of a crucial tunnel responsible for transporting about half the city’s water supply. Since repairs began in early October, access to four major reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains has been cut off.

Now, the mayor plans to halt the construction project and reopen the aqueduct so the water from those four reservoirs can flow into New York again.

“The ongoing and historic lack of rainfall, both in the city and in the upstate watershed where our reservoirs are located, has become more critical,” said Rohit T. Aggarwala, the city’s climate chief and the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the city’s water supply system.

The region, along with other parts of the United States, has experienced an unusually dry fall. Over a tenth of the southern section of New York State, including New York City, has been in a severe drought for about a week. In New Jersey, about a quarter of the state has been in an extreme drought for two weeks. New Jersey declared a drought warning last Wednesday. Both states, along with Connecticut, have announced burn bans, prohibiting residents from burning trash, brush or leaves.

New York and New Jersey are battling a wildfire along their shared border in the mountains that has proved difficult to contain and led to evacuations in a nearby town on Sunday. And New York City has seen a record number of brush fires — 270 and counting — this month. Several of them flared up in popular green spaces like Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Inwood Hill Park in northern Manhattan, prompting the Fire Department to announce the formation of a new brush-fire task force.

Although the rain predicted to fall in the city on Wednesday night and into Thursday will help mitigate the drought, it will not be enough to fix what has become a serious water deficit, said John Murray, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service. This fall, New York City and the area where its reservoirs are have received eight inches of rain less than usual, Mr. Aggarwala said.

For now, New Yorkers are urged to conserve water any way they can. Zach Iscol, commissioner of the city’s emergency management department, suggested taking shorter showers and running dishwashers and laundry machines only with full loads. “We urgently need every New Yorker to join these efforts,” he said.

New York City’s last drought warning was issued in early 2002. Three months later, it was upgraded to a drought emergency. By January of 2003, the drought was declared over.