[This letter, like a few prior ones, is the text of a news article that was kindly sent to us by a reader named James Ayers. This one is from the Catskill Mountain News on February 9, 1940.]

Ashokan Water Low, Will Last About 2 Months

Gate Houses have Scarcely enough Electric Power to Lift Control

WELL DIGGERS BUSY

530 Million Gallons Go Daily to the Metropolis and More Is Needed

With the bottom of the great Ashokan reservoir. New York City's chief water supply, showing up in daily-widening areas along its entire distance it was noted this week that the gate house gauges show but 41 billion gallons remaining in the two basins. This, it is calculated will last about 65 days, and even less if New York asks for more than the 530 million gallons that are now going daily from Ashokan to the city, in each 24-hour stretch.

In the meantime, officials in New York and the men at the reservoir are looking in vain for water and fear that unless some heavy rain comes this way soon the huge gates which operate the water system will not have enough electric current to control them. While gasoline-driven generators are installed at the gate houses their supply of current would not be great enough to operate the gates. Manual labor thus might need to be resorted to, a rather tremendous task when it is realized that nearly a day's work is required to drop or raise even one of the gates which electricity, developed by water surging through the viaduct pipes in the gate house raises or lowers in the space of a few minutes. Already the lowered water has affected the amount of electricity generated at the gate houses. Ample water in the reservoir heretofore has furnished a surplus of electricity for operation of the gates, lighting and necessary motor-driven machines at the Ashokan.

Well diggers are busy throughout all of Ulster, Delaware and Greene counties. Many wells which have never been known to be dry before are now without water as farmers rush new wells to supply their households and feed their stock.

Intense cold for more than a month, including one period of 21 days in which the temperature has hugged the freezing point, has sent frost deep into the ground throughout the Catskills, affecting the source of springs on which most of the water systems in the county depend for supply.

James Ayers

Kerhonkson