Government agencies such as USEPA, New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP), NYS Department of Health, and NYS Department of Environmental Conservation are concerned about the quality of both filtered and unfiltered water that flows to the homes of millions living in the area. They have two options. The agencies can spend a large sum of money to focus on maintaining unfiltered water. Officials would have to continually test for decreases in water quality. Once the water quality dips, they will have to build filtration systems to filter the lower quality water. The other option is to save money and allow water to be unfiltered and distributed to the masses of New York. The latter is what most wish to achieve. According to The Earth Institute at the Columbia University, despite New York being the largest unfiltered system in the United States, New York is also known for its “clean and delicious” drinking water. They explain that the NYC watershed consists of 19 reservoirs and 3 controlled lakes. 90% of the water is provided by the Catskill and Delaware watersheds. 10% of NYC’s drinking water is provided by the Croton water system. It is understandable that New York City’s water must be clean. However, filtering water may not be the way to go. New York’s water is treated with chlorine to kill germs, fluoride to prevent cavities, orthophosphate to inhibit lead contamination from pipes, and sodium hydroxide to lessen acidity. This occurs on top of the necessary requirements that must be fulfilled according to the STWR. The DEP conducts over 900 daily and 330,000 annual tests on drinking water throughout the city. In addition they run 230,000 test in the watershed. This is all for the sake of guaranteeing that NYC water meets the quality standards. There was some controversy regarding the Croton water’s purity as far as 1908. It is also true that Croton watershed had to be shut down for various points in time. However, as a result of this lower quality water, in 2007, the Croton water filtration plant had undergone construction estimating a cost of 2.8 billion dollars. The water in New York is clean. We have spent large sums of money to clean the mere 10% of lower quality water. 90% of our water is considered world-renown for its positive cleanliness and taste. However, the cost for the filtration of Catskill and Delaware watersheds is huge, estimating 8 to 12 billion dollars to construct the plant and a further 350 million dollars to operate it. Government agencies stand by their view to relie on unfiltered water in NYC.
Cho, Renee. “Maintaining the Superiority of NYC’s Drinking Water.” State of the Planet. The Earth Institute Columbia University, 29 July 2011. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. <http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/07/29/maintaining-the-superiority-of-nyc%E2%80%99s-drinking-water/>.
