New York City’s water supply is responsible daily to more than eight million residents of New York City, millions other tourists, as well as another substantial volume of water for residents in Westchester, Putnam, Ulster, and Orange Counties. In order to ensure safe drinking water for New York City, the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) came up with a series of measures in order to limit the amount of contaminants in public water supply.
Its first measure is to implement Source Water Assessment Programs (SWAP) that comprise a series of assessment of the water and informing the public and authority of imminent contaminant for “additional precautionary measures.” According to the latest New York City Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report, New York City is still maintaining its 10-year Filtration Avoidance Determination Program, issued by the EPA. Furthermore, New York City is working toward enhancing watershed protection programs, combining with new agreement to acquire underdeveloped land in the Catskill/Delaware watershed. In accordance to this, the interest of the upstate stakeholder group is upheld, despite reallocation of the watershed residents with adequate compensation. Moreover, the interest of New York City is also upheld, as evident in the implementation of SWAP that will ensure minimum contamination of the drinking water for the residents.
As part of another more proactive measure by New York City, the Croton Water Filtration plant is being built downstream of the supply of water with comprehensive watershed protection program just like the one in Catskill/Delaware, ensuring to reduce the risk or microbiological contamination and maintain the standards of New York City’s drinking water. The project began in 2012. In Queens, the city is reactivating the groundwater supply system. Upgrades and repairs are being made to the infrastructure in order to ensure a smooth operation of the additional supply of water to New York City residents.
In conclusion, the Government Agencies stakeholder group is confident about the efficiency of New York State and New York City’s Government’s ways of handling the conflict between the upstream stakeholders and the downstream stakeholders. The authority is operating on a common ground between the two groups, protecting the interest of the residents from the upstream of the water supply by maintaining the 10-year FAD Program, all the while ensuring the health of New York City residents by extensive improvement of assessment programs, building downstream filtration plants like Croton, and enhancing the infrastructure of the New York City’s water supply system in order to make way for new sources of drinking water from groundwater.
Source: “New York City 2011 Drinking Water Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg Supply and Quality Report.” The official New York City Web site. Michael R. Bloomberg & Carter H. Strickland, Jr. Commissioner, n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2012. <www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/wsstate11.pdf>.
