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Today, there's a front page NY Times story about the future of the New York City water supply - and whether the city will need to build an $8 billion filtration plant to keep the water clean. Some people may have been surprised to realize that chemicals are currently added to our water to filter out the impurities, but this is considered a stopgap measure, because turbidity (water cloudiness) from upstate water supplies is getting worse. The Times describes water up there looking "like a chocolate Yoo-hoo." The article details the different areas the city receives water from, which we need to re-read again to full understand. But the end of the article was clear:
Which raises the question of whether building a filtration plant is inevitable in the long run, and if so, wouldn’t it make more sense to simply go ahead and build it now?So, there you have it. Stopgap measures have their place, perhaps.City, state and federal officials don’t think so. Mr. Mugdan, the federal official, calculates that the city has spent about $1 billion over the last decade to protect the water supply, compared with $6 billion to $8 billion to build a plant, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in operating costs.
“Even if, 75 years from now, some accountant asks how much has it cost the city to avoid filtration versus how much we would have spent to build it,” Mr. Mugdan said, “we’ll still be ahead.”
We're going to ask our favorite civil engineer (our dad!) about this article, but in the meantime, you can learn a little about water purification by reading the Wikipedia explanation of water purification and this paper about the history of the city's water supply system. And you can read about water quality at the City's Department of Environmental Protection website. On the bright side, our reservoir has a lot of water!
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Eat shit and die Joe.
Its amazing how good our water system is and how everything else seems to be substandard. What exactly is causing this cloudy water?
"their" place.
I was actually talking about water filtration plants for the city with my dad two weeks ago - I have to send him the article for his opinion.
And thanks for pointing out the typos.
kojak, it's clay that makes water cloudy. rtfa.
Turbidity is another word for suspended solids or particles in the water. It makes the water looks muddy. It's natural and comes from the hillsides and streambeds that feed the upstate reservoirs. It's not considered a health concern at low levels, but at high levels it could interfere with the chlorine that's put in the water for disinfection, and allow bacteria to get through.
Turbidy in the City's water system has gotten worse recently because of the large storms and floods that have taken place in the watershed area. The high volume runoff from those storms and floods scours the hillsides and damages the streambeds and so the reservoirs wind up with more turbidity. The City adds alum to the water, which binds with the suspended particles and causes them to settle out of the water. (A lot of other cities do the same, alum is safe and widely used for water treatment.) But the issue here is whether the increased turbidity problem will cause the EPA to force the City to filter its water supply. That would cost billions.
But is all that chemical in the water safe for us to drink? Does Bloomberg drink from tap?
It doesn't help that New Yorkers are building so many second homes in the watershed areas. Development and large lawns lead to more erosion not to mention fertilizer in the runoff.
And I thought the watershed was supposed to be protected from intrusive development...
Still good enough to drink, at least for now.