The Ramapo River Valley is a small river by many standards, but very important to Rockland County and northern New Jersey. It’s a key source of drinking water and provides for wildlife and recreation. Call it the jewell of the Ramapo Mountains.

Sloatsburgers are very familiar with the Ramapo as the river runs right through the village which sits at the foot of Wrightman’s Plateau and Torne Mountain. The Ramapo River also recharges the valley’s productive underground and gravel aquifer, and is the main source of water for Sloatsburg.

Geoff Welch, the Ramapo River watershed keeper, is interviewed by at LoHud’s Akiko Matsuda at the H. Pierson Mapes Flat Rock Park in Hillburn, NY, on June 27, 2016. Welch has been involved in protecting the watershed since the 1980s, when the community fought for closing of the Ramapo Landfill. Video by Tania Savayan/The Journal News.

It’s not a large watershed, but it’s a very important watershed for the water supply in the suburban areas of New York and New Jersey. The Ramapo River Valley has been federally designated as a “sole source aquifer” of drinking water for about 2 million people in New York, including Rockland County, and New Jersey.

The Ramapo River Watershed is the one of the smallest watershed’s in New York and is part of the much-larger Passaic River Basin. With headwaters near the Town of Monroe in Orange County, the Ramapo Watershed runs from central-southern Orange County through western Rockland and into northern Bergen and Passaic Counties in New Jersey.With population growth and increased development along the Ramapo River, the watershed is facing threats from urbanization and industrial development.