SAUGERTIES, N.Y. — For years, the resentment simmered as residents of Ulster County endured development bans, flooded basements and ruined crops, all for the sake of protecting New York City’s water supply.  But the last straw in a string of grievances was the browning of a cherished tributary that is vital to recreation and agriculture in this corner of the Catskills. Discontent has given way to full-throttle fury against the city, which has always called the shots on reservoir management in the region.  The tipping point was a two-year-old decision by New York City environmental officials — with state support — to allow frequent releases of muddy water from one of the city’s major upstate reservoirs, the Ashokan, into the waterway, the 34-mile-long Lower Esopus Creek. The purpose of the discharges is to rid the reservoir of clay particles and other materials stirred up by rainfall, ensuring that the water supply for nine million people downstate remains pristine.  Last year, the releases from the Ashokan Reservoir turned the Lower Esopus a muddy brown, forcing the shutdown of local beaches, undermining boating, fishing and tourism, and marring the sparkling vistas that many people in Ulster County have come to see as their birthright. Now, as local residents prepare for spring rains that could result in more discharges, they worry that the tributary may never run clear.  Michael P. Hein, the county executive, has threatened to file suit if the discharges are not stopped, comparing the city’s treatment of his county to that of “an occupying nation” toward “indigenous people.” More broadly, he wants his county’s population of 180,000 to have an enduring say in how the watershed is managed.  “There’s a complete lack of respect for the people of upstate New York,” said Mr. Hein, surveying blown-up pictures of the muddy Lower Esopus in his office in Kingston. “It’s reached the breaking point.”  New York City mostly blames nature. Officials with the city’s Department of Environmental Protection say that more frequent rains over the last two years have stirred up sediment that washes into the Ashokan Reservoir’s two basins. At the same time, a 2007 order from the state required the city to reduce its use of a chemical, alum, it had relied on to treat turbidity.  The city has tried to cast the discharges in a positive light, saying they reduce reservoir levels and minimize the flood risk in downstream communities after wet days.  Nonetheless, the region is basically stuck with a situation of mud or flood, the city’s environmental commissioner, Carter Strickland, told a crowd of more than 300 anxious residents at a town-hall-style meeting that Mr. Hein organized in January at SUNY Ulster in Stone Ridge. “There are no great options.”  Farmers, tourism officials and other residents in the audience were indignant. “If a fish can’t live, neither can we!” one woman snapped at Mr. Strickland.  The anger is rooted in longstanding problems. For over a decade, leaks in an aqueduct that delivers about half of New York City’s drinking water have damaged dozens of homes in the town of Wawarsing and left yards perennially soggy. And the high levels of the Ashokan Reservoir worsen flooding from the Lower Esopus during rains, residents say, damaging homes and crops.  Then there is the long-held perception that the city will prevail in any dispute decided in Albany — and, worse, that people downstate belittle rural dwellers. People here still recall a 1984 Playboy magazine interview in which Edward I. Koch, then New York’s mayor, scoffed at country people in “gingham” dresses and “Sears Roebuck” suits.  Yet the tensions over water and land go back more than a century, to when the city, after impounding water from the Croton River in Westchester County, looked farther north and tapped the Old Esopus Creek and, later, the headwaters of the Delaware River for additional sources.  “They made a very conscious decision to go for the highest-quality water and protect it, and it’s paid off,” said Steve Via, who handles government regulation and policy affairs for the American Water Works Association, a group of water professionals. “They could have just as easily decided to pull water off the Hudson.”  Generally, 90 percent of the drinking water in New York City — more than one billion gallons a day — comes from what are known as the Catskill and Delaware water supply systems.  The city is widely recognized for maintaining the quality of its drinking water and thereby winning an exemption from the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s filtration requirements — a rarity in the United States.  The unfiltered system, comprising 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes spanning eight counties on both sides of the Hudson River, serves eight million people in New York City and another million in Westchester, Putnam and Orange Counties and small sections of Ulster County.  The stakes for New York City in doing anything that would jeopardize its filtration exemption are enormous. Installing a filtration system would involve spending an estimated $11 billion and passing the water rate increases on to customers.  While many in Ulster see the city’s water advantages as coming at their expense, the E.P.A. and the State Department of Environmental Conservation firmly support the nonfiltration policy. Both say that local communities have benefited from the $1.35 billion that the city has spent on restoring wild areas, building sewage treatment plants, repairing septic tanks and other measures to protect the watershed in the last 15 years. The city also pays about $132 million in local taxes each year, although it is also known for vigorously fighting to lower its tax assessments.  Some political historians argue that the state government has no choice but to defer to its most populous city, home to nearly half of New York State’s residents.  “It’s not good policy for the state to treat that place exactly the same as it treats everyone else,” said Gerald Benjamin, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at New Paltz in Ulster County. “Distinctions are made in law and regulation and politics.”
The soiling of Lower Esopus Creek infuriates Ulster County residents who have long resented development bans and other impositions by New York City.