Packed public screenings in Oneonta and Delhi revealed something New York policymakers rarely see: what happens when Catskills residents are finally allowed to speak openly about energy, land, and the future of their region.

On Saturday, March 21 at 2 PM, New York Energy Alliance will bring Unfiltered: New York’s Watershed Battle to the Phoenicia Playhouse for its third public screening, followed by a live audience discussion examining New York accelerating plans for renewable energy, battery storage, and transmission on Catskills land.

The event is part of a series that has drawn over 125 residents, officials, engineers, farmers, and business owners into a candid conversation about whether the region is once again being positioned to absorb the physical costs of New York City’s infrastructure needs without meaningful local control.

“For more than a century, the Catskills were told that development had to be frozen to protect New York City’s drinking water,” said Alex Panagiotopoulos, co-founder of the New York Energy Alliance. “Now the same land is being reimagined as an energy platform. People are asking whether this is progress, or simply the next phase of the same logic.”

The film traces how New York City avoided building a filtration plant by acquiring and controlling hundreds of thousands of acres upstate, reshaping land use, population growth, and economic development across the region. It also documents how that framework is now shifting, as city agencies and state planners pursue solar development, battery storage, and long-range transmission corridors on land once considered untouchable.

At the Oneonta screening, audience members raised concerns about grid reliability, the intermittency of renewables, unequal enforcement of watershed rules, and the erosion of local decision-making under state siting laws. Several participants, including retired energy workers and county planners, questioned whether the Catskills are being treated as a living region or as a managed sacrifice zone.

The March 21 discussion at the Playhouse will build directly on those questions, focusing on land use, workers, grid physics, and whether upstate communities will have a real voice as New York’s energy transition accelerates.

“This isn’t about nostalgia or anti-city resentment,” Panagiotopoulos said. “It’s about whether people in the Catskills can build lives without repeating a century-old pattern of suppressing human creativity and local prosperity.”

Learn more here:
https://nyenergyalliance.org/event/catskills-energy-future-iii/

Event Details
Catskills Energy Future III
Screening Unfiltered: New York’s Watershed Battle
March 21, 2026 | 2 PM
Phoenicia Playhouse
Tickets: $12