The New York City water system in a word is AMAZING. It serves 1 billion gallons of water to over 8 million residents on a daily basis. Just take a minute and let those numbers process in your brain. If you can't, let me help you. It's a lot!
There are 2 major watersheds that provide clean drinking water to New York City. First is the Catskills/Delaware Watershed (known in the biz as the CatDel system) and the Croton Watershed. The CatDel water is brought to the city by two main aqueducts- the Catskill Aqueduct and the Delaware Aqueduct. The Croton Watershed is closer to the city and has a shorter distance to travel. It is brought in by the New Croton Aqueduct.
What I find most amazing about the system is that it was constructed in stages beginning in 1905. The engineers had the foresight to create such an advanced system that uses gravity to bring water from the Catskills to NYC through the Catskill Aqueduct. The water in the Catskill Aqueduct travels at about 4 feet/second, all propelled by gravity!
New York City is unique also because they have been granted a Filtration Avoidance Determination (FAD) that allows them to not filter their water. Under the EPA Surface Water Treatment Rule a system can only be granted a FAD if they meet source water quality limits for coliform and turbidity also meet coliform and total trihalomethane MCL's (maximum contaminant levels). Trihalomethane is a disinfectant byproduct (DBP) from the chlorination process. The CatDel system has a FAD in place but the Croton system is now required to filter their water. A new innovative UV filtration plant is being installed. It will filter up to a quarter of the New York City water supply. The plant will be able to filter 20 million gallons a day. This plant is expected to be up and running by 2012.
To read more about the intricacies of the NYC water system click here to visit the DEP website.
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