"Our city is in the midst of the worst drought it has experienced in a decade," said Mayor Bloomberg. "Six months of unusually dry weather have left upstate reservoirs only half full at a time of year when they are normally at 90 percent of capacity. I am declaring a Stage 1 Drought Emergency at this time because it is highly unlikely that we'll get enough rainfall to replenish our reservoirs before the heavy summertime demand for water begins."

The water supply system consists of three reservoir systems, - Croton, Catskill and Delaware - which include 19 reservoirs and have a collective storage capacity of 558 billion gallons. In November 2001, after an unusually dry summer, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the City agency responsible for operating and maintaining the City's water supply, in the face of less than normal reservoir levels, launched a water conservation campaign requesting voluntary conservation. On December 26, a Drought Watch, the first step in the drought declaration process was declared. A Watch is declared when there is less than a 50% probability that the Catskill and Delaware water supply systems -- the two largest- would not refill by June 1. As the winter season continued, with critically low levels of precipitation, the City was confronted by the probability that there was a less than 33% chance that the Catskill and Delaware systems would refill by June 1, and Mayor Bloomberg declared a Drought Warning on January 27th.

"New Yorkers have heeded our requests for conservation over these past months seriously, and we seen our water use cut by some 30 million gallons a day," said Mayor Bloomberg. "However, voluntary conservation alone can't make up for the lack of rain fall, therefore we must take more stringent measures to increase protection of the supply and reduce water use."

When a Stage 1 Drought Emergency is declared, mandated prohibitions direct and restrict the use of water. Prohibited activities include: