New York City is surrounded by water, so it is no surprise that water is an important part of the city. While watching WATER by Eric Goldstein, I learned that the Dutch and English settled in New York City because of the water. It is great location for commerce and trading. For drinking water, the Dutch and English used well water, ponds and springs or drank beer because the Hudson River was extremely polluted from dumping sewer and waste. Its interesting to note that the Hudson river is still very polluted today, showing how long this problem has been going on in New York City. While on the Cruise Line Harbor tour I saw first hand how polluted the water is, seeing actual garbage float around but also by seeing how dirty it is. At home, I lived near the Charles River in Massachusetts. This river is extremely different from the Hudson because it is not very polluted. The water that we drink from my house is filtered water from the Charles River.
According to Eric Goldstein, the Catskill Mountains are where the reservoirs were built and are still used for New York City water. About 1.1 billion gallons of drinking water a day comes from this reservoir. This water is unfiltered yet extremely clean, but it is endangered from pollutions that come from factories, sewer plants, and runoff water. Another important factor about the reservoir is that it does not use any energy to get the water from the Catskills to New York City. Only gravity is used to transport it, meaning that it is extremely sustainable and ecofriendly.
Throughout the world, wild oyster reefs have been severely impacted by the amount of pollution, 85% of oyster reefs are gone. According to the video, Shell Shocked, the Hudson River use to be the oyster capital of the world. It was economically and environmentally extremely important for the city. The oysters helped the ecosystem in the Hudson River; there were many other fish and animals in the water, stemming back to the need of the oysters. One oyster can filter fifty gallons of water a day, so this was keeping the water extremely clean. Oysters were eaten by most people, which made it an important export for the city. Oyster shells were also ground up and made into brick for buildings. Because of all the waste dumping into the river, oyster beds became polluted and were infected with disease, making people sick when they would eat them. This has hurt other organisms and fish in the water as well.
There is a movement to try and get oysters back into the Hudson River. One artist is making oyster shells out of nontoxic, natural materials like porcelain or marble, for oyster larvae to have a place to settle on. The water is so acidic that the oysters couldn’t live in the water anymore because the acid would eat the shells. The hope is that the oyster larvae in the water now can land on the man made shells and start producing oyster beds again. There is also the Billion Oyster movement that is happening to try and bring oysters back to the Hudson in hopes that it will help filter out the water and create a cleaner river.
Bhawani Venkataraman is a professor at The New School and talked about the chemistry of water and why it is so important. As most know, water is essential for life. We take for granted that water is a liquid, because if it was anything else we wouldn’t be able to survive. This is why treatment plants are so important because having safe water is needed for survival. This is also why it is such an important issue around the world that everyone should have access to clean water, especially in third world countries like Africa. To have safe water, there needs to be an analysis of water and then determine if there are threts for the water and if so, what level threat there is. The Safe Drinking Water Act established maximum levels of toxins to still be safe, drinking water. In New York City, there are water sampling stations after water is treated at the water treatment plant to make sure that the water still meets the standards after coming from the underground pipes.
It is interesting to note the difference between bottled water and tap water. Citizens of New York pay in their taxes for the disinfecting and treatment of water to make it clean and drinkable. This means that tap water is roughly $0.07 cents per cup, equaling 1 cent per gallon. Bottled water in New York City is around $2, and it is basically the exact same thing.
Kate Zidar is apart of the Newtown Creek Alliance so she was able to speak directly about the Newtown Water Treatment Plant. This is the most polluted area in New York City because it used to be the area for heavy industry. It is now mostly distribution centers. 720,000,000 gallons of water a day are processed in Newtown Creek. It is interesting to think about how much water New York City uses, how much waste is produced, and how much needs to be disinfected before being able to be used again.
