A season on the river: community, stewardship, and a decade of watershed work.

Looking Ahead

Annual Membership Meeting
Monday, April 27th, 7:00 PM — In-person/hybrid
Board elections will be held, and members are eligible to vote.

Monthly Board and Advisor Meetings
Fourth Monday of the month, 7:00 PM, usually on Zoom

Board Service
The Alliance is looking to fill vacant board seats and welcomes suggestions.

Current Work in 2026

HABs:
The WRWA is working with Riverkeeper, Hudson River Watershed Alliance and Bard College on developing a Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) “Communications Tool Kit and Framework” for the Wallkill River, with the goal of coordinating effective public communications about HABs and other emergency conditions that affect public health.

The new Coordinator/Administrator, Bobby Howe, will take the lead on this project, as he is also working on a Master’s Thesis at Bard focusing on HABs. His research pilots ECO HABIT (Educational Community Outreach, Harmful Algal Blooms Information Tracker), an interactive web platform that trains community members to identify and report toxic cyanobacterial blooms integrating real-time station monitoring, creating a scientifically rigorous early warning system.

Last year 9 total blooms were reported in the watershed on the DEC’s NYHABS system, with 3 intermittent reports on the River in August, and Sturgeon Pool experiencing a persistent event with 6 confirmed reports from September through October.

Harmful algal bloom conditions in the Wallkill watershed.

NYS DEC Clean Water Plan for the Wallkill
HABs can result from a combination of factors, including excessively hot and dry weather, lack of flow due to dams, and nutrients entering the river from human activities. The NYS DEC is in the process of developing a Clean Water Plan for the Wallkill, focused on the inputs of one nutrient, phosphorus. The plan will identify and quantify sources and amounts of phosphorus entering the river, establish a limit (Total Maximum Daily Load – TMDL) and identify ways to reduce the loading to meet that limit. We hope that this plan will result in projects being prioritized for Federal and State funding in the future. This is a several year process but we look forward to working with the DEC to share the plan with the watershed community when it is ready for public input. In the meantime, we can all be aware of our role in protecting the Wallkill by minimizing our use of, and properly disposing of, household chemicals, maintaining proper functioning of septic systems, maintaining native vegetation as buffers along waterbodies, reducing runoff from our properties, and limiting pesticide and fertilizer use.

Shawangunk Kill Watershed Environmental Benefit Project:
Hudsonia Ltd., will be working with the Alliance to complete a Watershed Characterization Report for the Shawangunk Kill based on an assessment of current water quality and watershed conditions, including stream biological and chemical parameters as well as important habitats along the main river floodplain. The project also includes a freshwater mussel survey conducted by Andrew Gascho-Landis of SUNY Cobleskill. We will be looking for interested residents in the watershed who would like to help with the stream sampling and habitat assessments. We will also be looking for volunteers to serve on a Shawangunk Kill Watershed Characterization Advisory Committee, to provide local knowledge, data, guidance on characteristics important to communities in the watershed, and oversee the next steps of developing a Watershed Plan. The Alliance will also convene a Shawangunk Kill Summit to present the results of the assessments and characterization and facilitate discussion on how the watershed community can use this information to protect the health of the watershed into the future.

Alliance on the Wallkill in a Glance: 2025 Summary

Organizational Capacity Building:
In 2025 we participated in an Organizational Capacity Building Program with Hudson River Watershed Alliance. Through this program we developed a Strategic Work Plan for the coming year and adopted an improved fiscal tracking tool. We gained two new board members, Mark Palczewski and Karina Tipton, both on the Town of Montgomery Conservation Advisory Council, and hired a part time coordinator/administrator, Robert Howe, a graduate student at Bard working on HABs. We will also be working with a web consultant to upgrade our website.

Community Outreach:

• Board and Advisory Members of the WRWA spent hundreds of volunteer hours participating in numerous watershed-related meetings and events, such as: the Hudson River Watershed Alliance Conference, roundtables and trainings; Riverkeeper Water Quality Monitoring Collaborative Workshop, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation trainings, presentations and meetings; Ulster County Environmental Management Council meetings; Mohonk Preserve stream sampling; NYS Association of Conservation Commissions conference, New Paltz Earth Day Fair, Wallkill High School Duck Derby; and various town and village board meetings.
• On Nov. 6, WRWA hosted an informational dinner meeting at City Winery in Montgomery. More than 20 people attended a presentation on past and current WRWA activities, followed by a productive round-robin discussion of participants’ interests and visions for the Wallkill. Many attendees have contributed important work on behalf of the watershed.

Trees for Tribs:
In conjunction with Riversweep, the Alliance hosted a day of planting and maintaining riparian trees at the Trees for Tribs planting site in New Paltz on the River along the OSI River to Ridge trail in early May. WRWA helped recruit volunteers to assist with planting hundreds of trees at Conuco Organic Farm along the Wallkill River in New Paltz in May and again in October. The Montgomery CAC continued to maintain their 10-year- old Trees for Tribs plantings along the Muddykill and the Wallkill at Benedict Farm Park. This summer they participated in a NYS Water Resource Institute acoustic study to determine bird biodiversity. The study identified 52 different bird species, including two — the Chimney Swift and the Field Sparrow — that have declined significantly on a continental scale.

Music on the Wallkill Paddle Event:
On Sept 14 the Alliance hosted this successful event with over 40 attendees, most attending by kayak on the river and a few by land. Paddlers launched at Sojourner Truth Park and enjoyed music from the river courtesy of the Damian Ecco Band, who were perched on a spot overlooking the river on the River-to-Ridge Trail in New Paltz.

A Closer Look: Black Dirt Rewetting

Project Overview:
WRWA Board Member Orion Russell Blake has been working to promote the wise use of peatlands locally, the largest of which is the Upper Wallkill’s farmed floodplain known as the ‘Black Dirt Region’. He is pursuing paludiculture, starting with a rice paddy at the headwaters of the Wallkill’s Wawayanda tributary, on the same parcel “Sugar” the mastodon (on display at SUNY Orange) was excavated from. Paludiculture, a sustainable agricultural practice on rewetted peatlands, is a significantly climate-friendly approach because wet peatlands are hugely efficient carbon sinks, while drained peatlands emit high amounts of carbon dioxide.

Paludiculture is more developed overseas, and this year Orion went to both “The Fens,” a peatland that grows a third of England’s produce, and to the German center that coined the term. While on the continent, he also visited the Wallkill’s namesake, the “Waal River,” a main branch of the Rhine River and an important waterway in the Netherlands both currently and historically.

Wallkill River Watershed Alliance

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