Nine months ago, New York City and the upstate New York towns in the New York City watershed formally settled their differences over environmental restrictions in the watershed region, but close to a third of the upstate residents don't know about the agreement, according to Cornell University rural sociologists.

A Cornell survey of 571 households conducted in June in 14 communities around New York City's upstate reservoirs found that 29 percent of the residents had not yet heard of the agreement signed on Jan. 21 of this year, said J. Mayone Stycos, Cornell professor of rural sociology.

"Among those who had heard about the agreement, there was considerable lack of information about important details. Only half of them knew that financial help to the towns for economic development was a part of the package," Stycos said. Nearly a third of them did not know that the watershed program offered homeowners and other residents assistance with their septic systems. Over half of those who heard about the agreement mistakenly thought that funds for recycling were part of this agreement, he said.

Stycos and Max J. Pfeffer, Cornell professor of rural sociology, have been conducting a longitudinal survey of watershed attitudes in the upstate New York watershed region, which includes Schoharie, Ulster, Delaware, Sullivan, Otsego, Putnam, Westchester and Dutchess counties and in New York City. The watershed supplies the city with water. The survey, supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and Cornell, has involved four detailed interviews with the same sample between 1994 and 1997.

Pfeffer said that while attitudes toward the watershed agreement were largely favorable, a considerable residue of suspicion and resentment of New York City lingers, especially among the upstate communities. Among the respondents who had heard of the agreement, only about 10 percent thought the towns had come off "very well" compared with 46 percent who thought the city fared much better. About 28 percent thought the towns had come off "not so well" compared with only 5 percent for the city.

One-third of the sample said they were "not very confident" that New York City would honor the commitments made in the agreement. Asked whether they trusted the city more or less than a year ago, 16 percent said more, 10 percent said less, with the remaining 74 percent at about the same. Most respondents, however, felt that New York Gov. George E. Pataki had handled the watershed issue "very well" (10 percent) or "pretty well" (58 percent), while 14 percent said they did not know.

More effective communications efforts are needed, according to Stycos and Pfeffer. In the sample, less than half (41 percent) had seen watershed news on television, and nearly one-third (30 percent) had never discussed watershed matters with friends or relatives over the several years of the controversy. Three-quarters of those surveyed said they needed to know more about watershed issues, which is about the same proportion as one year ago.

"Results of the survey indicate important differences in knowledge about watershed issues. For example, residents of watershed towns east of the Hudson, such as Kent and Bedford, were less knowledgeable than those in towns west of the Hudson, such as Bovina and Neversink," Pfeffer said. "Eastern residents were also much more conscious of the need for additional information on the watershed."

The survey also showed interesting gender differences. Although men were almost twice as likely as women (30 percent to 17 percent) to say they had sufficient information on the watershed, women were about as knowledgeable as men on details of the agreement.