The New York City Water System

New York City residents use on average 60-70 gallons of water per day per person according to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP). In 2016, NYC used 1,002 million gallons per day, that is roughly 12 million gallons a year. It goes without saying that New Yorkers use their water without worry and mindfulness. Very few of us know where we obtain our water source from. If more people were aware of how we obtain our water, we would be more open to conserving it instead of misusing it.

The State of Colorado has suffered from a water shortage in recent years; a difficult situation which is easily visible when viewing the quickly shortening length of the Colorado River. Lake Mead, for example, is roughly 130 feet lower than it once was, marked by the stained rock which towers above the current water level. “The river has become a perfect symbol of what happens when we ask too much of a limited resource: it disappears. In fact, the Colorado no longer regularly reaches the sea” (Zielinski, 2010). Legislation was implemented early on to address this issue, though the results were (perhaps not surprisingly) rather unanticipated, regarding

One hundred and four years after the construction of the first aqueduct, Angelinos receive water receive water from “local groundwater and water imported through the State Water Project (SWP) and the Colorado River Aqueduct (CRA)” (Department

The establishment of city water supply was regarded as a private, residential matter rather than a public function in the early 19th Century (Blake, 1956). The State depended on privately owned companies to supply water for its residents rather than undertaking the responsibilities themselves. The Manhattan Water Company was chartered in 1799. They had the sole rights to supply water to the city. They had a reservoir built in the city to provide over 400 of NYC most elite

This photo was taken more than 100 years later and quite a bit further upstream, just south-east of St. Clair and Spadina. There, the brook runs through the Nordheimer Ravine, named after the family who used to own the land. Samuel Nordheimer made his fortune importing pianos and then married Edith Boulton of the super-crazy-important Boultons: one of the first families to move here when the city was founded, they were leaders of the Family Compact and the people who built the Grange. In the 1870s, the newlywed Nordheimers built a mansion on the hill overlooking the ravine and damned the brook at this spot to create a little pond and waterfall.

Roughly 30 million people are using colorado river water in their everyday lives. Farmers say they need more water than all the cities that are using it because in their opinion keeping their crops alive to give to everyone is more important than having all the people using abundant amounts of water.

The water is distributed throughout the metropolitan Boston area through 117 miles of pipeline and aqueduct tunneled through bedrock 200 feet below the earth's surface. Three Western Massachusetts communities are also supplied with Quabbin water through the Chicopee Valley Aqueduct. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, created in 1984, is responsible for the treatment and distribution of the water, and the development of new water supplies. Rangers, foresters, a wildlife biologist, a staff of engineers, skilled craftsmen and laborers all help to ensure the purity of Quabbins water and watershed, and maintain and protect Quabbins very special qualities.In order to flood the vast area of the Swift River Valley in the 1930s, Hundreds of homes, businesses, a state highway, a railroad line, and 34 cemeteries were also moved or dismantled. Over 6,000 graves were relocated from the Valley to Quabbin Park Cemetery

Recently, California has cut out 25% of its cities water usage in attempt to conserve water, but is city-wide restrictions really the answer? There are many simpler and more efficient ways of conserving water rather than flat out restricting it. Picture yourself in a poor city in California with limited food and water supply, now you’re being told by the government that your city is required to cut out one fourth of its total water supply. We all use much more, clean, drinkable water for things other than basic needs. In fact, 5.7 billion gallons of water alone are flushed down the toilet each day by millions of Americans (Fishman.) Flushing too much is not the only way Americans are wasting water, leaks, over-irrigation and cooling of power plants. Just imagine if we were able to reuse all that water or use it in more efficient ways.

We all love water, but don’t know much about it. What I mean is that a lot of us don’t even know where our water comes from. That answer varies; for example, the city of Camarillo California gets its’ water in Camrosa Water District. It’s official website, “Camrosa Water District building Water Self- Reliance” provides information like what their purpose is, and as well as water conservation, building self-reliance, and other public information. This website states that Camrosa is currently in a state two water supply shortage. This means that there are restrictions on water use and a call for a voluntary fifteen percent reduction on the amount of water consumption. Also, according to Camrosa “Agricultural Water Management Plan”, water is being

Snow falls gracefully from the sky, landing atop the beautiful Rocky Mountains. When that snow melts into water, it collects into streams, which run into rivers, and low down into the plains and further into different states. That water that originally fell as snow will be collected and pumped into thousands of homes, businesses, and farmlands in order to supply thousands of people with safe drinking water. One thing people generally do not concern themselves with, is water usage, and so in the United States alone, approximately 3580,000 million gallons of water was used, with 70 percent of that coming from surface water (Price 1). With so much water usage, the demand has already outgrown supply, and new ways of providing that supply have been

Balancing the vital need for water and related resources with an obligation to protect environmental and ecological health poses an increasingly complex challenge. The Bureau of Reclamation manages CRSP and other Colorado River projects to develop and protect water and related resources in an environmentally and economically sound manner for the American public. It works actively with federal, tribal, state, local and non-governmental partners to adaptively manage the river system with an eye toward greater societal awareness and the importance of healthy ecosystems – particularly downstream of the dam through Glen and Grand

The Genesee River and its watershed is a major tributary to Lake Ontario. The river originates in the Allegheny Plateau in the town of Ulysses, Potter County, Pennsylvania, about fifteen miles south of the New York State border (GFLRPC, 2004). The river flows north through Allegheny, Livingston, and Monroe Counties and forming a portion of two borders between Livingston County and Wyoming or Monroe Counties. Letchworth State Park runs along the Genesee River encapsulating 14,350 acres of the watershed and contains the “Grand Canyon of the East” a gorge 550 feet deep and six miles long.

To supplement the City’s upstate water supplies, the DEP will also rehabilitate the Queens Groundwater System, a system of 68 wells and aquifers in southeastern Queens. The groundwater system is expected to provide more than 33 million gallons of water a day to 100,000 residents in the locality. The DEP plans to install water treatment systems for the system to ensure that the wells produce high-quality water that meets or exceeds all water quality standards (“Water for the Future | Queens Groundwater Rehabilitation”).

For more information on hard water in Kentucky, see the following article on Hard Water – To Soften or Not to Soften, by the Cooperative Extension Service at the University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture. (http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcomm/pubs/ip/ip7/ip7.pdf)

Every day Americans depend on public water systems to treat and deliver over 44 billion gallons of water to homes daily (“Importance of Clean Water”). However, Americans