Dam Safety Intern

The NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) enriches the environment and protects public health for all New Yorkers by providing 1.1 billion gallons of high-quality drinking water, managing wastewater and stormwater, and reducing air, noise, and hazardous materials pollution. DEP is the largest combined municipal water and wastewater utility in the country, with nearly 6,000 employees. DEP’s water supply system is comprised of 19 reservoirs and 3 controlled lakes throughout the system’s 2,000 square mile watershed that extends 125 miles north and west of the City.

The Bureau of Water Supply (BWS) employs nearly 1,000 people who are responsible for the management, operation, and protection of New York City’s upstate water supply system, associated facilities and aqueducts, over 100 miles of road, 55 bridges, and approximately 150,000 acres of watershed lands. The mission of the Bureau of Water Supply is to reliably deliver a sufficient quantity of high-quality drinking water and to ensure the long-term sustainability of the delivery of this most valuable resource in order to promote public health, economic development, and quality of life of the City of New York. BWS is also responsible for the overall management and implementation of the provisions of the City’s $1.5 billion Watershed Protection Program and for ensuring the City’s compliance with the provisions of the Filtration Avoidance Determination. Within BWS, we have diverse roles and responsibilities, and each of us contributes to the same mission of reliably providing New York City with its most valuable natural resource.

The Water Operations Division plans, manages, operates, maintains and provides responsible stewardship to all NYC water supply reservoirs, dams, facilities, aqueducts, shafts, hydroelectric plants, highways, bridges and watershed lands of the Delaware, Catskill and Croton water systems upstream of the Kensico and New Croton reservoirs.

The Dam Safety section provides oversight of the BWS Dam Safety Program which consists of operation & maintenance, inspections, work order management, instrumentation, emergency planning, regulatory compliance, and facility improvements. BWS is improving and expanding the dam safety instrumentation used to monitor the performance of these critical structures. The expansion and improvements include importing data existing and new dam instrumentation from throughout the watershed into the Automated Data Acquisition System.

The intern will assist with instrumentation maintenance inspections/troubleshooting, Inspection & Maintenance Plan Review/Updates, Spare Part Inventory/Organization (Instrumentation), data downloads and reviews. Candidate will be responsible for adhering to and complying with all environmental, health and safety laws, Agency policies, rules, and regulations.

As of June of the Program year the prospective interne must be a student matriculated in a college or be a recent college graduate (winter/spring term of the Program year).

Appointment to this title is only valid for the duration of the Program, June – August each year.

Preferred Skills

– Student must currently be enrolled at a college/university at the undergraduate level majoring in Civil/Mechanical/Environmental/Structural Engineering or Environmental Sciences.
– Student must have at least a 2.5GPA (on a 4.0 scale)
– Effective communication.

Selection Criteria:
– Strong writing skills; effective interpersonal skills.
– Familiarity and/or experience with computers/software/ MS Office Suite.
– Leadership skills; self-motivation; and ability to work well with minimal supervision