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Seneca River, New York

13.8 mapped river miles, draining 772 square miles, in the Finger Lakes basin watershed.

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Map key
Public land — where the bank is open to walk and fish
USGS gauge — live water temperature
Water temperature — the colour of the river, and of every dot on it

50°F and colder is cold, through cold-transitional and cool, to warm above 70°F — the same four bands, breaking at 58, 64 and 70°F, that the app paints. Grey is water nobody has measured.

Thermal classification

There is no USGS gauge within 40 miles of this stream in the record this site holds, so there is no live temperature on this page and no measured July mean. Everything below the bar is NYSDEC's own classification of the water.

NYSDEC's classification of this water, reach by reach. A class, not a temperature — no July mean, because none was measured here.

Reach Typed miles Band NYSDEC type
RM 13.8–8.3 39.0 cold —

NYSDEC has classified 39.0 of the 103 miles NHD carries for this stream — 38% of it. Every typed reach carries the same class, cold. The untyped reaches are not warm water — they are water NYSDEC's inventory does not reach, and the mile ranges above span only the reaches it does.

Questions about this river

NYSDEC classification

NYSDEC classifies this water as Class A — drinking water source, Class AA — drinking water source, Class B — swimming and contact recreation, and Class C — fishing. More than one class appears because the classification changes along the river. The thermal bar above shows where. On those reaches DEC also designates it trout spawning waters, trout waters — which is the half of the classification that is about temperature, and the half this map paints by. The class is a designation of best usage under 6 NYCRR — what the water is protected for — and not the season and creel rules, which change yearly and live with the agency.

NYSDEC water quality classifications and standards →

Access

1 mapped NYSDEC access site within a quarter mile of the water, upstream first: Seneca River At Lysander (RM 7.0). 0 walk-in, 1 boat or canoe launches.

Public land on the river

4 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 1,955 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

Unit Owner Acres
Seneca River Preserve land trust or conservancy 224
Village Of Baldwinsville Land city land 47
Mercer Park local holder not recorded 2
Onondaga County Land county land 1,682

Species

NYSDEC designates this as trout water — Trout spawning waters, Trout waters — without naming the species. No fish survey or stocking record for this water is in the files this site reads.

Tributaries and watershed

1 named stream meets this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.

Seneca River sits in HUC 8 04140201, the Finger Lakes basin, and drains 772 square miles, Strahler order 6 at the mouth. 328 NHD reaches carry the name for 102.7 miles in total — more than the 13.8 miles of drawn mainstem, because NHD counts side channels and braids as their own reaches.

Other water nearby

The closest 6 rivers on this site, straight-line from the middle of this one — not drive time.