Proceedings from the 2013 Mohawk Watershed Symposium, Schenectady NY

This volume contains 43 extended abstracts presented at the Symposium in March, 2013. "We return to Union College for the Fifth Annual Mohawk Watershed symposium, and we are please that momentum continues to build for this effort. With forty-three presentations and an ever-increasing number of meeting registrants, we are hopeful that this meeting has played and continues to play a key role in facilitating a healthy dialog between stakeholders in the watershed. In the Northeast we are lucky to have an abundance or groundwater and surface water. Despite what sometimes feels like a profound excess of water, all of that water plays a profound and critical role in maintaining and sustaining a fragile and sensitive ecosystem. Hence the removal of water from the system has the potential for adverse ecosystem response. We are reminded that there is a cost and a responsibility for the water used by industry, municipalities, power generation, agriculture, and navigation. Stakeholders have a shared responsibility to ensure that our water resources are protected from over use and exploitation, and we must make sure that we balance use with reasonable regulation and oversight. We all benefit when the decision-making processes that affects our water resources are open and transparent so that stakeholders can provide a peer review and critical assessment of those decisions. Hurricane Sandy, which caused so much damage and devastation in the coastal areas, really didn't have a direct physical impact on the Mohawk Watershed. But the proactive response to the potential threat of this historic storm in the basin was profound. In the wake of a number of devastating floods in the watershed over the last decade we are starting to see important responses at the local, state, and federal levels. Much of this response is aimed at building resilience and adaptation through a number of mitigation efforts. Some of these mitigation efforts are costly and complicated, but building resilience will have long-term benefit to those in the watershed, especially those adjacent to floodways. The future of the watershed looks bright especially considering the close collaboration and communication between stakeholders, which is partly demonstrated by the tremendous response to the Mohawk Watershed Symposium. Ongoing efforts continue to focus on the implementation of the Mohawk Basin Action Agenda, which is focused on ecosystem-based management. Last June Congressman Tonko introduced H.R. 5927 to the US House of Representatives, entitled: Hudson-Mohawk River Basin Act of 2012." If funded this bill would finance and create a Hudson-Mohawk River Basin Commission which would focus on flood control energy production agriculture recreation regional history and economic development. This sort of regional oversight is long overdue in the Mohawk Watershed. Last year Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar created the National Blueways System which seeks to protect and highlight our waterways by recognizing a holistic approach to river conservation and management. The Connecticut River was designated our first National Blue ways designation and at the time of designation in the spring of 2012 it was noted that this river should be a model for how communities can integrate land and water stewardship efforts in a basin-wide approach. The National Blueways Initiative is part of the America's Great Outdoors Initiative which is aimed conservation and recreation efforts driven by stakeholders in a watershed. The effort seeks to protect and restore lands of national significance to build a new generation of urban parks and to increase our focus on rivers. Can the Mohawk Watershed win National Blueways designation? We are fortunate to have Rebecca Wodder from the Department of the Interior as our keynote speaker. She is currently the Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Interior and she is working primarily on conservation issues and the America's Great Outdoors Initiative. When she was President of American Rivers she led efforts to help communities restore the health of their rivers through a variety of conservation measures including the creation of river trails dam removal and practices to safeguard clean water. We are hopeful that we can profit from her expertise and background. Finally our youngest stakeholders have had another busy year and the watershed continues to provide students with a host of scientific and cultural activities. Over the years we have been very impressed by the activities of students and the important role that they play in collecting data formulating hypotheses and articulating the message that emerges from the work they do. In recognition of the importance of the work that students do this year we will award the Brookfield Renewable Student Achievement Prize to the most highly ranked student presentation."

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Mohawk River Watershed (N.Y.)
Watershed management

Schenectady (N.Y.)
Mohawk River (N.Y.)