New York City's Water Supply In Danger
By Sara Jerome,
@sarmje
Should New York City residents be worried about their water supply?
A new report by Al Jazeera America says yes. The UCLA water main break "pales in comparison to the threat facing America’s biggest metropolis: New York City," the report said.
Like other U.S. cities, New York relies on aging water infrastructure. "The average age of New York City’s 6,400 miles of sewage mains is approximately 84 years, for example. Its 6,800 miles of water mains are approximately 69 years old," The Atlantic reported.
Problems with the all-important Delaware Aqueduct have plagued the city for years. The aqueduct carries about half of the city's drinking water from the Catskills, according to the New York Times.
New York City environmental regulators "admitted in the early 1990s that the aqueduct was leaking at a rate of up to 35 million gallons a day. That’s enough water to supply nearly half a million people a day," Al Jazeera America reported.
Today, "the aqueduct is wasting twice the amount daily that the UCLA water main break did in its entirety," the report said.
But the leaks are only part of the problem. Under the worst-case scenario, "you'd have a catastrophic failure,” said Bill Wegner, the staff scientist at Riverkeeper, an environmental watchdog. "If the tunnel, which is under pressure, were to collapse, the whole aqueduct would have to be shut down. Fifty percent of the city’s water supply would cease to exist."
New York has sewage problems, as well.
"Take the problem of combined sewer overflow, which happens in cities with old infrastructure such as New York, where wastewater and stormwater go into the same system. During heavy rains that overwhelm treatment plants, that means the stuff that goes down your drain and your toilet ends up in the surrounding waters, a truly disgusting phenomenon anybody who lives near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn...has witnessed," Next City reported.
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