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NYC Tap Water Gets Report Card from Riverkeeper
By
John Del Signore
Published May 16, 2008
Modified May 16, 2008
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By
John Del Signore
Published May 16, 2008
Modified May 16, 2008
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Good news for metro mammals; the New York City tap water is still safe to drink, according to a report card released yesterday by Riverkeeper and the Clean Drinking Water Coalition. The longstanding environmental advocacy group gives our water system A grades for reducing fecal coliform from waterfowl, managing stormwater runoff and waterborne disease risk assessment. High-five!
But the city needs to do a better job of securing land around the Croton watershed in Westchester, where development has increased non-point pollution. To compensate, the city is building a $2.8 billion filtration plant in the Bronx to filter water from the Croton system, which supplies about 10% of our total. And the city scored a gentleman’s C+ when it comes to reducing non-point pollution in the Catskill/Delaware Watershed areas east of the Hudson.
The favorable grades are non-governmental but still good news for the city, because if evidence shows that the water supply is falling behind, the EPA will force New York to install a filtration plant that will cost billions to build and hundreds of millions a year to maintain. So pour yourself a celebratory glass of aqua, blast some Fela Kuti, and pore over the entire 75 page pdf on the Riverkeeper website.
Photo courtesy edEx.
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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