99.99 Percent Pure: Why Syracuse Drinks Unfiltered Water from Skaneateles Lake

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By Sarah Chen, Staff Reporter

Syracuse and roughly 165,000 of its neighbors drink water that has never been filtered. No sand, no membrane, none of the multi-stage treatment plants that cleanse most American tap water before it reaches a faucet.

The water arrives from Skaneateles Lake, 16 to 20 miles southwest, traveling by gravity through a pipeline first opened on June 29, 1894. Before it hits a glass in Eastwood or Strathmore the treatment is chlorine, fluoride, and a recently added stage of ultraviolet light.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency permits this only when a water source is so consistently clean that filtration would be redundant. Fewer than a dozen large municipal surface-water systems in the country qualify. Syracuse is one of them. New York City is another. Boston, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon round out most of the rest.

The whole arrangement rests on one fragile premise: keep the lake clean every hour, every season, in perpetuity.

How the lake became Syracuse’s tap

Skaneateles is one of the deepest of the Finger Lakes. Maximum depth: 315 feet. Average depth: 148 feet. The lake holds about 413 billion gallons of water, with a residence time of roughly 18 years. The lake itself spans three counties and six municipalities: the village of Skaneateles and the towns of Skaneateles and Spafford in Onondaga County hold the north end and the east shore through Glen Haven, while Niles and Sempronius in Cayuga County and Scott in Cortland County wrap the southwest. A drop of water entering the lake takes nearly two decades to flow out the north end.

Geology built the natural treatment plant. The watershed is small relative to the lake itself. Just 59 square miles drain into 13.6 square miles of open water, a ratio of about 4.3 acres of land per acre of lake. By comparison, the watersheds of larger Finger Lakes are several times that ratio. Less land draining in means fewer pollutants, longer dilution, and steady clarity.

The water sits in a narrow basin gouged out by the last glacial retreat, fed by springs and small tributaries. Its trophic status is oligotrophic, the scientific term for low-nutrient and biologically unproductive. Wikipedia, citing limnological data, ranks Skaneateles as the second-cleanest lake in the United States by dissolved nitrogen, behind only Crater Lake in Oregon.

That natural advantage is what made the engineering feasible. Construction on the Skaneateles supply began in 1893 under City Engineer William R. Hill. Roughly 500 Italian, Polish, and Black migrant workers laid 19.75 miles of pipe, including a 30-inch conduit running through Marcellus and Camillus to the Woodland Reservoir on Syracuse’s south side. On June 29, 1894, Mayor Jacob Amos pulled a lever and the lake began flowing into the city.

It still does. Skaneateles sits about 200 feet higher than Syracuse, so gravity carries the water the entire way. No pumps. The trip from gatehouse to city storage takes between 6.5 and 7 hours. Syracuse is one of only two gravity-fed municipal water systems in New York State.

The Filtration Avoidance Determination

For most of the 20th century, the EPA did not require any city to filter its surface water. That changed in 1986, when Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act and ordered the agency to write a Surface Water Treatment Rule. The rule, finalized in 1989, now requires every public water system that draws from a lake or river to install conventional filtration. The exception is a Filtration Avoidance Determination, or FAD. A city can skip filtration only if it proves its source water is clean enough on its own.

The bar is high. Raw-water turbidity must stay below 5 nephelometric turbidity units (NTU) at the point of disinfection. Coliform counts have to be vanishingly low. And the system has to demonstrate it can inactivate 99.9 percent of Giardia lamblia cysts and 99.99 percent of viruses through disinfection alone. The 2006 Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule added a separate requirement for unfiltered systems to inactivate Cryptosporidium using ozone or ultraviolet light.

Syracuse cleared every bar. In July 2004, after years of negotiation with the New York State Department of Health, the city received an indefinite filtration avoidance waiver, with no expiration date so long as it continues to meet the conditions. The deal is contingent on water quality monitoring, redundant disinfection, and active watershed protection.

To meet the cryptosporidium provision, Syracuse spent $22 million installing UV disinfection at the Westcott storage tanks and Woodland Reservoir, with treatment going live in early 2014. The cheapest filtration plant estimate the city ever received was $60 million in 1996, which had ballooned to $80 million by 2015 and to a $150-to-$200-million range in 2021 city projections. UV was the cheap fix; full filtration was the nuclear option.

What can break the lake

Three categories of threat keep watershed managers awake at night. Agriculture is first. About 48.2 percent of the watershed is farmland, mostly dairy and crop, and an estimated 80 percent of the lake’s nonpoint phosphorus loading comes from those fields, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Nine Element Plan for the watershed. Phosphorus feeds algae. Algae produce toxins.

Septic systems are second. Roughly 1,000 properties along the lakeshore are not on municipal sewer. The City of Syracuse mailed warning letters to nearly 900 watershed property owners whose systems are likely older than 30 years, the lifespan the EPA assigns to a septic tank. New York’s Septic System Replacement Fund, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul, reimburses owners up to 50 percent or $10,000 toward an upgrade. The state has committed $75 million across five years.

The third threat is climate. Warmer summers, longer stratification, heavier rain events that flush nutrients down hillsides faster than the soil can hold them. The result has been visible since 2017, when Skaneateles experienced its first confirmed harmful algal bloom (HAB). It was a big one. Microcystin levels in some lakeshore samples ran nine times the recreational threshold the DEC considers dangerous. The toxin reached the city’s intake pipes and gatehouse. It did not reach the finished drinking water; chlorination was boosted at both points and stopped the toxin cold. But the line had been crossed.

Blooms have recurred almost every year since. The most recent advisory, issued by the Onondaga County Health Department on September 12, 2025, again confirmed microcystin in the raw lake water and again declared the public water supply unaffected. The pattern is now familiar: shoreline blooms in late summer, raw-water detection at the intake, monitoring tightens, treatment holds. Each year the staff rebuilds confidence in a system that was designed for a lake that did not bloom.

The watershed’s defense

Syracuse runs the most aggressive municipal watershed protection program in upstate New York, and one of the most aggressive in the country. The annual budget runs about $2.3 million. The work is unglamorous. Sixteen people, including two full-time city watershed inspectors and a watershed quality coordinator, drive the watershed twice a year and visit each of the roughly 2,600 properties inside it. They check septic tanks. They flag erosion. They review every site plan for new construction.

The keystone program is the Skaneateles Lake Watershed Agricultural Program, or SLWAP. The city created it in 1994, modeling it on New York City’s deal with Catskill farmers, after rejecting watershed regulations that would have been imposed top-down on the agricultural community. SLWAP is voluntary, not regulatory. Farms sign a Whole Farm Plan, and the program pays for engineered Best Management Practices: buffer strips, cover crops, manure storage, fencing to keep livestock out of streams, nutrient management software, gully and erosion control.

The program covers 37 of the 42 active farms in the watershed, an 88 percent participation rate. The city has invested $21 million through SLWAP since the program began. About $14.7 million came from city water rates; another $6.3 million was leveraged from federal and state grants.

The city has also bought conservation easements on 858 acres along the most sensitive ravines and tributaries, restricting future development on those properties in perpetuity. The Finger Lakes Land Trust, working independently, has placed another 3,000-plus acres of the ~37,952-acre watershed under protection . Together, those tools have removed roughly 8 percent of the watershed from the development pipeline forever.

The math

Build a filtration plant for Skaneateles, and the city pays once for the construction and forever for the operations. Membrane plants need power, chemicals, sludge handling, replacement filters, and a 30-year refinance cycle. Even at the bottom of the cost band, $150 million amortized over 30 years at modest interest is roughly $9 million a year before a single chlorine tablet is added.

Run a watershed protection program, and the city pays $2.3 million a year. The math, on paper, is not close. Watershed protection wins by a factor of four or more, every year, in perpetuity, as long as the watershed cooperates.

The catch is the cooperation. A bad bloom year that breaches the FAD turbidity ceiling or pushes microcystin into the finished water can trigger an EPA review. A few back-to-back failures could end the waiver entirely. At that point Syracuse would not be choosing between watershed protection and a filtration plant. It would be building the plant on a deadline.

Syracuse has come close. On January 10, 2024, raw-water turbidity at the intake hit 49.90 NTU, ten times the regulatory ceiling, after high winds churned sediment off the lake bottom. Levels stayed above 5 NTU for roughly 49 hours. The Westcott storage tanks and the Woodland Reservoir absorbed the slug; turbidity settled out before the dirty water reached the distribution system, and no untreated water reached customer taps. The city reported the violation, and the FAD held. But events like that are why the city is now spending $16 million to extend its primary intake line into deeper, more stable water.

What the rest of the country can learn

Most American cities filter their water because they have to. Their watersheds are too crowded, too paved, too farmed, too industrialized to deliver lake water clean enough for the EPA to allow shortcuts. New York City and Syracuse keep their FADs because they treated their watersheds as part of the treatment plant, decades before anyone called it green infrastructure.

SLWAP won the 2019 Environmental Steward of the Year recognition at its 25th anniversary. Three participating farms have won the Leopold Conservation Award: McMahon’s E-Z Acres in 2018, Young’s Twin Birch Dairy in 2020, and Greenfield Farms in 2022. The Environmental Policy Innovation Center calls SLWAP one of the country’s best examples of voluntary, non-regulatory watershed protection.

The program is not free of stress. Farms in the watershed have declined from 67 in 1994 to 42 today, mostly through retirements. Climate-driven blooms now arrive most years. Real-estate pressure on the lakeshore is rising. The septic backlog is real. The intake extension under construction will buy a margin of safety against future turbidity events but does not solve the upstream problem.

And yet the lake still tests as one of the cleanest large lakes in the United States. Water flows by gravity from a 16-mile bowl in the southern Onondaga hills, through a pipe first laid in the 1890s, into glasses and dishwashers and coffee pots in roughly 165,000 homes. The 59-square-mile watershed the City of Syracuse has spent 30 years and $21 million teaching how to behave does most of the filtering. The chlorine and the UV light finish the job.

What we found in further reporting

The clearest voice on what watershed protection looks like inside the fence line of an actual farm is Jim Greenfield, one of the original seven farmers who signed up for the Skaneateles Lake Watershed Agricultural Program when it launched in 1994. Greenfield Farms in Skaneateles, the operation he runs with his brothers and son, took home the New York AEM-Leopold Conservation Award in 2022. According to the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, “Jim Greenfield was one of seven farmers who agreed to help encourage other landowners across the 37,952-acre watershed to voluntarily participate in the program. As one of the original leaders and early adopters of Syracuse’s Skaneateles Lake Watershed Agricultural Program, Jim and his family started making changes to the way things were done at home.” The Greenfields sold their mold-board plow in 2000, were among the first farms in the area to invest in no-till drill technology, established more than 12 miles of grassed waterways across the property, and now operate a 1,400-acre “sponge” of buffer strips and cover crops feeding the lake.

Five additional verified facts on the city’s filtration-avoidance arrangement and the lake itself, drawn from primary documents:

• The City of Syracuse’s own 2024 Water Quality Annual Report confirmed the January 10, 2024 turbidity event in detail. The peak measurement at the intake reached 49.90 NTU. Levels stayed above the 5 NTU regulatory ceiling for approximately 49 hours between January 9 and January 11, 2024, then a second exceedance hit roughly 16.5 hours on January 13 with a peak of 18.96 NTU at 4 a.m. The Westcott storage tanks and Woodland Reservoir absorbed both slugs and no untreated water reached the distribution system. The city issued a formal public notice.
• The McMahon family of E-Z Acres in Homer, NY operates a 2,500-acre sixth-generation dairy and beef farm in which roughly 30 percent of the operation drains directly into the City of Syracuse drinking water supply. The McMahon brothers, Mike and Pete, were named the 2018 Outstanding Dairy Farm Sustainability winners by the American Dairy Association North East and earlier won the New York AEM-Leopold Conservation Award in 2018, the first watershed farm to do so.
• Twin Birch Dairy in Skaneateles, run by owner Dirk Young, sits between two drinking-water watersheds (Skaneateles and Owasco) that supply more than 400,000 people. A volunteer water-quality study Twin Birch ran with the Owasco Watershed Lake Association found water downstream of the farm tested equal to or higher quality than water upstream, a defining data point for the program’s voluntary, non-regulatory model. Twin Birch was the 2020 Outstanding Dairy Farm Sustainability winner.
• The total program investment in SLWAP through 2024 totals $21 million, broken down as $14.7 million from City of Syracuse water-rate funding and $6.3 million leveraged from federal and state grant programs. The watershed’s working farm count has dropped from 67 in 1994 to 42 today, with 88 percent participation, according to the Onondaga County Soil and Water Conservation District.
• Skaneateles’ summer average total phosphorus has stayed under 5 micrograms per liter throughout the FAD era, well below the eutrophication trigger, and the latest CSLAP report shows Secchi-depth clarity in the 6.9 to 8.5 meter range, among the highest of any large lake in the state.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Syracuse’s tap water actually unfiltered? Yes. Water from Skaneateles Lake passes through screens to remove debris and zebra mussels, then receives chlorine, fluoride, and ultraviolet disinfection. There is no sand, membrane, or carbon filtration step.

How is that legal? The federal Surface Water Treatment Rule allows a Filtration Avoidance Determination for cities whose source water consistently meets strict turbidity, coliform, and pathogen standards. The City of Syracuse received an indefinite FAD from the New York State Department of Health in July 2004.

What about the harmful algal blooms? Skaneateles Lake had its first confirmed bloom in September 2017 and has had documented blooms most years since. The City of Syracuse monitors raw water at its intakes and finished water at its reservoirs. Microcystin toxins have been detected in the raw lake water but never in the city’s finished drinking water.

Does OCWA serve the same water? No. The Onondaga County Water Authority, which serves the suburbs, draws from Otisco Lake and Lake Ontario, and only uses Skaneateles Lake water as a small supplemental source. Most OCWA customers receive filtered water.

Why does the city not just build a filtration plant? A filtration plant for Syracuse has been estimated at $150 to $200 million in capital cost, plus annual operating expenses, and would force a major water rate increase. Watershed protection costs about $2.3 million a year and has held the FAD for two decades.

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