New York City is one of the cities with the cleanest and best tasting drinking water of any City in the world. Scientists from the Department Environmental Protection test the quality of the water each day. The water system of New York City provides one billion gallons of drinking water each day to a total of more than eight million people living in New York City. According to Discovering New York City’s Water System “This water comes from the surface of New York City through a network of 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes.” New York City water system is known as one of the most expensive water systems in the world.
According to How New York City gets its water, from reservoir to tap: NYC Curious says “The main water sources of the city of New York are the Delaware and Catskill systems west of the Hudson River and the Croton system, just north of the city.” The watersheds provide approximately more than a dozen reservoirs and controlled lakes. The largest reserves of water are Pepacton and Ashokan, which have capacities of 140,000 and 123,000 million of gallons. From which the highest quality water is selected to send to the State of New York.
The surface waters of New York City are supplied from a network of 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes in an area of almost 2,000 square meters.
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The groundwater in New York City water system is treated with chlorine, fluoride, food grade phosphoric acid, and, in some cases, sodium hydroxide. The use of chlorine to meet the Sanitary Code and federal Safe Drinking Water Act disinfection requirements. The use a concentration of 0.7 fluoride. In addition, phosphoric acid is added to create a protective film on pipes that reduces the release of metals such as lead and copper from household plumbing. Furthermore, phosphate is add at several wells to prevent the precipitation of naturally occurring minerals, mostly iron and manganese.
Water is essential for us humans and our environment which is the planet. The planet, have 2.5% of water fresh & drinkable, and only 1% of the freshwater is accessible. According to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, “about 9 million people use over 1 billion gallons of drinking water every day in the Big Apple.”
Most of the household use comes from the bathroom in water consumption. Indoor water is about 60-70 per person daily.
The agricultural owners of each facility who extract water exceeding an average of 100,000 gallons per day in a consecutive period of thirty days which corresponds to 3 million gallons during a period of 30 days. They must submit an annual report to the Department of Environmental Conservation of the State of New York on March 31 of each year.
There are federal regulations that require states to create implement programs to notice and take action in the areas that have water contamination and that need to be assess and those areas where will possibly be contamination in the future to keep in track with the safety of all the people which utilize that water. To implement this programs, they use available data and information for precautionary contamination.
According to What kind of pollutants are in New York City’s waterways? Says “In a recent study, the group NY/NJ Baykeeper estimated that NYC’s waterways contain 165 million plastic particles. These particles come from such notable sources as plastic water bottles, bags, and cups that have broken down after being thrown into the water.” This causes water pollution and affect our environment and more can have a negative impact in our health. Fishes and other marine animals can eat the plastic then we buy fish and it those particles which can lead to cancer.
Pollution in Hudson river began in 1947 and in 1977 General Electric contaminated the river by means of a discharge of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). This until now has caused a negative effect on wildlife and consumers of water and fish in general. Further on, the Hudson River has been contaminated by discharges of untreated water into the river and by mercury.
Gowanus Canal is under so much pollution that it is considered one of the most polluted water reserves in New York City. Its contamination is derived from the fact that it was the base of many industries, gas plants, chemical plants, oil refineries, cement factories, etc. All this has had a negative impact on the canal, which has led to the fact that after 150 years, at present, the canal has been heavily contaminated with PCBs, heavy metals, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, sewage solids from sewage combined culverts and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH).
Hunts Point is an area in the Bronx that is very affected by environmental pollution. This area was affected by the toxic waste left by a Con Edison gas plant in the 1950s. Currently, Bronx citizens continue to fight for the elimination of chemicals and the emission of air pollution by the locals. from Hunts Point Av.
Newtown Creek has a high level of contamination such as metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls are present in Newtown Creek in concentrations and exceed above the levels in nearby places in the Atlantic basin. This is because it was the busiest waterway in the nation during World War II. It has also been the base of much untreated water deposited in this location since 1856.
According to Dealing with Oil and Chemical Spills, one by One says that one of the major spills for New York City has been “Hurricane Sandy was a major oil spill event, and DEC, using FEMA funds, pumped more than 1,100 residences that had oil tanks that spilled into the basement. ‘ This was one of the spills that most affected the city New York City and environmental well-being.
According to New York City’s Wastewater says ‘The 14 wastewater treatment plants in New York City treat 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater per day Our system combines the sanitary flow, created every time a New Yorker opens a key, runs a washing machine or flushes a toilet, and the runoff that enters our sewers when it rains or snows. ‘ This system offers us as citi’zens of the City of New York the safety of the wastewater treatment process in the city.
‘The Wards Island plant, located in the middle of the East River, was built to handle the flows from the east side of Manhattan and the lower part of the Bronx. The plant went online in October 1937 and was the first to use the conventional activated sludge process, a breakthrough in wastewater treatment. ‘The New York City Parks Department notes that the plant at Wards Island It became ‘the largest capacity wastewater treatment center in the world.’ This facility was designed to reduce pollutants in the Harlem River and the East River, since its facilities were highly polluted and had a very bad odor. the dissolved oxygen sometimes reached zero in summer.
According to NYC Environmental Protection says “The Jamaica Wastewater Treatment Plant was built in 1903. The purpose in the construction of this plant was to treat 100 million gallons of wastewater per day from roughly 728,000 residents living in a nearly 26,000-acre area of Southeast Queens.
Located in Brooklyn, Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is consider the largest waste water treatment plant in New York City’s 14 wastewater treatment facilities. “It is situated on 53 acres and serves more than 1 million people in parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. On average, the facility treats about 18% of New York City’s wastewater, or 310 million gallons, each day. When it rains, the capacity more than doubles, to about 700 million gallons.”
NYC Valhalla Ultraviolet Water Treatment Plant, is the largest water treatment plant of its kind in the world. It aims to make drinking water safer for all New York City. “The plant consists of 56 filtration units, each with more than 200 ultraviolet lights. About 500 billion gallons of water from multiple reservoirs and lakes west of the Hudson will be treated each day.” The implementation of this ultraviolet disinfection plant is a great advance that has great changes in what is safety and health in the water that is drink by the population.
