Upstate Development May Be Reducing the Quality of NYC's Water Supply

New Yorkers proudly claim that their drinking water, pumped straight from the city’s many reservoirs with very little treatment, is the purest, best tasting water in the country. But those bragging rights may be in jeopardy. 

The upstate water is of such good quality, in fact, that the city is not even required to filter it, a distinction shared with only four other major American cities: Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, OR. But that state of affairs may not last. In late spring or early summer, the US EPA will decide whether New York water is still pure enough to drink without filtering. Development in the city’s upstate watershed areas, as well as the increasingly stormy weather that comes with climate change, is threatening the water’s purity. If the federal agency does conclude that city water is too sullied to be consumed directly, New York will have to spend huge sums on filtering.

Every five years, the city’s environmental officials sweat out the federal decision over the quality of New York water, and 2007 is one of those years. The EPA will either issue another permit allowing the city to avoid filtration, or it will order the city to build a huge filtering plant for the Cat/Del system. In 1998 the city committed to building a filtration plant for the “East of Hudson” system, under Mosholu Golf Course in the northern Bronx. The plant will begin operations in 2011.

On the Water Front - NY Times, February 18, 2007

Ed. Note: F. X. Browne, Inc. performed the evaluation of the NYC DEP Joint Venture Report on Alternatives to Filtration.