Ridgewood Reservoir

For the last 4 years, a major focus of NYC H2O has been leading a coalition of community groups to protect and preserve the Ridgewood Reservoir. Since 2016, we advanced the cause or health of Ridgewood in the following ways:

• NYC H2O Virtual Hub to continue educating our students remotely (Spring 2020)
• Curated Ridgewood Reservoir for the 21st Century for the Queens Museum to open on April 5th, 2020, but transitioned to an online exhibit after museum closure for COVID-19. (Spring 2020)
• Successfully advocated for traffic safety measures from the DOT (pedestrian activated signal installed on Vermont Place, March 26, 2018)
• Successfully advocated with DEC for wetland delineation(designated on February 22, 2018)
• Wrote and submitted the Historic Register application (designated on February 2, 2018)
• Advocated successfully to have the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and NYC Parks & Recreation agree to reclassify the walls of the Reservoir as a non-hazardous dam, thereby avoiding demolition. This had been an impasse for a decade.
• Advocated successfully for the DEC to designate the Reservoir as a Critical Environmental Area—one of only two in NYC (the other is Jamaica Bay)
• Successfully lobbied the Parks Department to cancel its plan to put turf fields in Basin 3