Natalia Kolganova
Professor Green – Anderson
English 101.0785
Research paper
Revision
December 3, 2007
The Truth about New York City Drinking Water
The environment of the Earth is currently at the edge of survival, and our society has to take radical steps in order to save our planet. The problems that not long ago were just local troubles are now becoming global issues. One of these extremely important issues is water quality and it deserves the most attention. Centuries ago, New York City had tremendous problems with the quality of the drinking water. For a long period of time, thousands of New Yorkers had been dying because of contaminated water (New York City water supply). Over time, a solution had been found, and the drinking water was transformed from the source of deadly diseases to what is now called “champagne water” winning numerous rewards for its taste and purity. Unfortunately, it is a well know fact that history has a tendency to repeat itself. Therefore, there is a question of whether New York City drinking water still deserves its status of “champagne” or have the sparkles already gone? Looking for an answer to this question, I have found that New York City is in danger concerning its drinking water supply.
Before I go any further, I would like to draw a clear picture of the New York City’s water supply system. According to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP), at the moment, there are three interdependent systems that provide water to New York City and Westchester County. About 90% of the entire water supply comes to the city from the Catskill/ Delaware watersheds located west of the Hudson River; the rest is delivered from the Croton segment which is in Westchester County and the New York City’s Groundwater System in southeastern Queens. This New York City’s water system “includes 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes with a total storage capacity of approximately 580 billion gallons” (History of New York City’s Water Supply System) “that supplies nearly 9 million people with 1.1 billion gallons of water each day” (2006 Water Quality Report, letter of introduction). The special construction of reservoirs and the fact that they are located miles away from the city make it possible to avoid the filtration of the water; however, it is still “treated with: chlorine to kill organisms, fluoride to prevent tooth decay, sodium hydroxide to raise pH levels, and orthophosphate, a substance that coats pipes, to prevent lead from leaching into the drinking water” (New York City water supply).
Taking into consideration all the information listed above, it is obvious that the New York City Department of Environmental Protection has two main responsibilities: to ensure the quality of the drinking water and to supply millions of New Yorkers with the appropriate amount for the following years. In its annual 2006 Water Quality report the NYC DEP stated that the residents of New York City have no reason for worry regarding the quality of the water they drink because it complies with all the City and State government standards. More over, “the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has developed a $19.5 billion Capital Investment Strategy for the next decade, the majority of which will be used to upgrade and add to existing infrastructure and guarantee that [they] can fulfill [their] mandate of delivering quality drinking water to New York for years to come” (2006 Water Quality Report, letter of introduction).
Reading the 2006 Water Quality Report of the NYC DEP made me remember one situation that took place about half a year ago when I moved to a new apartment in Queens. One day I decided to take a nice relaxing bath (I have not done that for a couple of years because of the lack of free time). So, I went to the bathroom, turned the water on and stepped out for couple of minutes leaving the bath to get full. When I came back, not only did my desire for a warm bath disappear, but I was totally disgusted by what I saw. It is hard to describe what color the water was, but definitely, not clear and transparent. And that was the water I made my coffee with every morning; that was the water I used in cooking everyday. I could not believe my eyes. If that was the visible condition of the water, I did not even want to imagine what was going on at the microscopic level. Am I the only one who has encountered this kind of incident, or am I one out of thousands of New Yorkers who silently suffer from contaminated water and just keep on reading the NYC DEP fairy tale reports?
The articles that I came across while conducting my research, reveal the unpleasant details proving that the NYC DEP really has a lot of work to do. The overview of the articles show that cases of contaminated with a variety of pollutants water keep on popping up every year. The most recent incident when traces of chemicals were found in the drinking water in a significant part of Queens happened in May 2007. The journalists reacted with a wave of articles addressing this issue. In his article called “Contaminated water in Queens is a repeated performance,” Anthony DePalma states, “The area in Queens where city officials found an industrial chemical in the drinking water last week has had problems with contamination by the same chemicals for several years.” Jennifer Smith gives more details about the nature of contamination and its scale saying, “Routing water testing last week turned up tetrachloroethylene, also known as a PERC, in the surface water serving Jamaica… About 64,000 residents in St. Albans, Cambria Heights and Hollis were affected.” 64,000 people are not a joke, especially when we are talking about such chemical as PERC. “According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, people who drink water containing tetrachloroethylene over many years can develop liver problems and may have an increased risk of cancer.” (DePalma, The area in Queens)
This information is shocking. I can not understand how this issue can be left untreated and why the DEP lets it happen over and over again. Though the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene declares that the tetrachloroethylene found in the water is not a threat because of its minute amount (DePalma, Contaminated water), I truly believe that if there is a slightly possibility of a negative impact of this chemical on people’s health, the NYC DEP has no right to leave this problem untreated.
This raises a reasonable question: How do these chemicals get into the drinking water supply? The officials do not provide an exact answer to this question or just prefer to leave it unanswered. However, they share their speculations that the possible reason for contamination might be the lack of water valves that are supposed to protect the main water system from backflows of discharged chemicals. The article “Many buildings lack required water valve, City records show” written by Anthony DePalma reveals dramatic numbers:
As many as 85,000 large residential and commercial buildings in New York City lack special valves on their water connections that could prevent hazardous substances from being sucked into the public water system… the records also show that 26,000 buildings in the city represent an especially high risk because factories, gasoline stations or businesses that handle hazardous materials housed in those buildings have not installed the device, called a backflow prevention valve.
Aren’t the officials supposed to perform the inspections on a regular basis to insure the compliance with the laws and regulations? They are and they do, in fact, but in a very lazy way. In the same article, the author reports, “Last year, only 2,085 such tests on the valves were conducted in the city … but fewer than 2,000 violations were issued for the thousands of property owners who failed to conduct the tests.” Well, you do the math! 2,085 tests among 85,000 potential violations are not even 3% which means that the entire water supply system is under the threat of a ticking time-bomb. The main principle that guides NYC DEP and city officials in their operations is: To solve the problems upon their arrival instead of preventing them. In other words, the message the officials are trying to send is: if the chemicals get into the mainstream, we will clean; otherwise, cross your fingers and pray for it not to happen.
Unfortunately, the possibility of discharged chemicals’ penetration in the water system is not the only problem that NYC has to deal with. I came to this conclusion after watching the film An Inconvenient Truth which is an extraordinary American Academy Award-winning documentary film about the global warming crisis on the planet. Although Al Gore (the former Vice President of the United States who performed in the film) does not evidently talk about the drinking water in New York City, I noticed that global warming can have a tremendous impact on it. There are two types of possible effects. The first one is that due to enormous rise in temperatures, some areas of the United States (not far from New York State) have already started suffering from severe droughts; therefore, New York City, sooner or later, can face a shortage of water. The second one is that as global warming causes droughts in some parts of the country, it can be the reason for severe floods and storms in the other areas as well creating pollution in the drinking water. As mentioned before, at the moment, the major water supply comes to the city unfiltered from the Catskill/Delaware watershed. But there is a high possibility that this pleasant situation can change very soon, and the filtration plant in New York will become a necessity.
The article “New York’s ‘champagne tap water’ under threat” supports this idea.
The storms have washed mud and clay into reservoirs and rivers, turning that a muddy brown in many places. In order to keep the tap water clear, the city authorities have had to add 16 tons of aluminium sulphate, known as alum, to the daily water delivery to keep down turbidity and meet federal government standards. … This stopgap solution cannot go on for ever, officials say. Storms grow steadily fiercer and sprawl continues to advance. Sooner or later, New York may be forced to join most other big cities and construct a filtration plant – costing anything up to $8bn. (Cornwell)
It is obvious that the situation does not look optimistic, isn’t it? Tetrachloroethylene, lack of valves, lazy officials, storms and droughts – why do all these issues take place? Well, I have only one answer to this question which I came to after watching An Inconvenient Truth – Money! There is a quote of Upton Sinclair in the film that, in my opinion, describes perfectly the reason why not only New York City but the entire planet faces environmental problems, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” People just simply to do not want to realize the importance of the problems they are facing because admitting the crisis and making steps to resolve it can hurt the pockets of millions of businesses. That is why the officials ignore the violations of the laws; that is why “some businesses object to the high cost of installing the valves, which can be 8,000 to 16,000” (DePalma, Many buildings); that is why NYC DEP refuses to build a filtration plan. It is all about money! Our generation is obsessed with money! We have become so greedy that in our crazy race for the world’s wealth, we forget about such important things as the environment.
A sarcastic example of people’s obsession with money is shown in one of the episodes in An Inconvenient Truth when Al Gore puts on one side of the scale golden bricks and on the other one – the planet Earth. “Do we have to choose between the economy and the environment?” he asks. Not necessarily; we just have to find the right balance. “If we do the right thing, then we are going to create a lot of wealth, jobs and opportunity” claims Al Gore. We can not forget that in order to do something we need the planet, first and foremost.
So, what can we, the residents of New York City, do to make and keep our water clean and safe? On the local scale, the government has to make radical steps and finally start doing the job they are supposed to: instead of building a new useless stadium in Queens, spend this money on construction of the filtration plan and perform the regular inspection of the buildings and fine the owners for the violations of the rules and regulations (in the end it will be cheaper for them to install the prevention valves in the water systems, rather than paying thousands of dollars tickets). On the global scale, it is time for all of us to wake up and think about what we are doing to our planet.
In the days of Galileo it was inconvenient to think that the Earth was not flat. People tried to deny scientific facts as long as they could though the evident facts spoke for themselves. Nowadays, it is inconvenient to think of the existence of the global warming crisis on our planet. Well, nature does not care whether we are comfortable with this fact or not and it makes us pay for our indifference. The issues regarding the New York City’s drinking water are just some of the examples of horrifying environmental problems on the Earth. If we do not start moving right now, in, probably, 20 years from now it might be too late. We do not want, sitting on some space station, to tell our children stories about how we destroyed the only planet in the entire galaxy that had conditions for life!
Word count 2,307
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Work Cited
An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Perf. Al Gore. Paramount Classics, 2006
Cornwell, Rupert. “New York’s ‘Champagne Tap Water’ Under Threat.” The Independent (London) 21 July, 2006: 30. LexisNexis. LaGuardia Community Coll. Lib., Long Island City, NY. 20 Oct. 2007