How Rochester's water supply changed Hemlock and Canadice

Rochester began buying watershed land around Hemlock and Canadice in 1896 to protect its public water supply. Over time, the city acquired the whole shoreline and parts of the surrounding hillsides. Much of the land it bought in the early twentieth century had been used for farming.

That history appears in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's 2015 management plan. The plan describes the two lakes together as protected sources of Rochester water since 1876. There is a distinction to keep in view: a separate Rochester record dates Canadice Lake's addition to the city system to 1919.

The city began a tree-planting program in 1902. According to DEC's account, 3.7 million conifer seedlings were planted across 3,000 acres over the next 29 years. Scots pine, white pine, red pine, and Norway spruce were among the species.

Those planting figures help explain the wooded shores. The forest grew in part from a deliberate effort to change land use around a municipal water source. Purchases removed land from its earlier ownership, and planting established forest cover where much of the acquired land had been agricultural.

In 2010, DEC purchased Rochester's watershed property under the State Reforestation Law. The 2015 plan described water-quality protection as its most important function. It also set out conservation, scenic-preservation, forestry, and recreation purposes for the state forest.

The need for drinking water linked Rochester to both lakes and influenced what happened around their shores: who owned the land, how it was used, and what was planted. When state management began, protection of that water supply remained central.

About this account

The 2015 plan provides a retrospective history, and this account attributes its dates and planting totals accordingly. Official documents give different acreage totals for the transfer and the later state forest because they describe different dates or scopes. Those totals have not been combined into a single figure here. The account does not describe current conditions.

Source note

The 2010 DEC purchase, the plan's combined 1876 water-supply statement, the 1896 start of Rochester's land-acquisition process, the 1902 reforestation program, and the 29-year planting totals appear on printed page 13 (PDF page 15) of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's Hemlock-Canadice Unit Management Plan (2015). The Canadice 1919 qualification is consistent with the City of Rochester's current water-quality history. This story attributes the retrospective account, omits conflicting acreage totals and current conditions, and reproduces no plan photograph, map, page image, or extended text.