Cooper Lake, located near Lake Hill in the Town of Woodstock,

Ulster County Ulster County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. It is situated along the Hudson River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 181,851. The county seat is Kingston. The county is named after the Irish province of Ulster. The count ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

, is the largest natural

lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

in the

Catskill Mountains The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province and subrange of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined a ...

. However, it has been expanded somewhat over the years since it serves as the main

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

for the nearby City of

Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the six most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...

and Town of Ulster, which stores water there that it pipes from Mink Hollow Stream in addition to the water that reaches the lake from its 8.6-square mile (22.4 km)

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

. It holds roughly to the city a year; providing an average of a day to Kingston and Ulster. Operational since 1899, the Edmund T. Cloonan Water Treatment Plant treats Cooper Lake water with chlorine, alum filtration, and lime corrosion control. Its laboratory conducts bacteriological examinations and offers public access for water testing, aiding community monitoring efforts. Since it is a water supply, boating, swimming and fishing in Cooper Lake are prohibited. The area of Cooper Lake and the surrounding grounds is owned by

City of Kingston The City of Kingston is a local government area in Victoria, Australia in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, its northern boundary lying approximately 15 km from the Melbourne city centre along the north-eastern shorelines of Port P ...

Water Department.

References

{{authority control Lakes of Ulster County, New York Woodstock, New York Reservoirs in New York (state) Lakes of New York (state)