This is part 2 of a 2 part interview. Read the first part here.
NEW YORK — Even after decades of commercial and residential development in upstate New York, the city’s mostly unfiltered drinking water is renowned for its purity. The water system will face increasing challenges — from growing demand to aging infrastructure to the possibility of gas drilling in neighboring counties — in the years ahead.
In the second part of Gotham Gazette’s exclusive interview with historian David Soll, the author of the newly released book Empire of Water (Cornell University Press) discusses the current and future challenges facing the city’s water supply system, which delivers over one billion gallons of fresh drinking water to nine million people each day.
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In the interview, Soll describes how the city of New York was ordered by the federal government to build a filtration plant for water from the Croton system in 1993. Twenty years and over $3 billion later, the plant in the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park is nearing completion. At the same time, the city has invested heavily in securing land that surrounds critical water sources. By 2017, the city will have spent nearly $2 billion protecting and managing upstate watersheds.
Soll also discusses the highly contentious question of hydraulic fracturing, why the practice has been essentially banned within the city’s watershed, and how the city of New York is trying to accomplish multiple — and perhaps contradictory — objectives through its current approach to fracking.
Soll is an urban environmental historian at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. He is particularly interested in the relationship between urban and rural areas and in the role that water plays in shaping the urban built environment. His current research focuses on water supply and sanitation in Bangalore, India.
GG: Can you explain more about the new water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park that is coming online? I thought our water was unfiltered.
DS: The plant is very close to being done. New York officially has three water supply systems: the Croton, Catskill and Delaware systems. The Catskill and Delaware systems are very interlinked. Because Catskill and Delaware water is coming from a place that is not very densely populated, with relatively little industry, the city could take watershed protection measures to ensure that it could still meet the health standards. They are [also] building an ultraviolet facility in Westchester — that is almost done – so they don’t have to use as much chlorine to get rid of bacteria. Catskill/Delaware water is not filtered because the natural landscape acts as a filter.
There was no way NY could comply with safety standards for water coming from the Croton region. There’s too much development. That’s why they are required [by the federal government in 1993] to build the plant. That filtration plant is only for water coming from the Croton system, roughly 10% of the city’s water supply.
GG: Based on all your research, is it your sense that the fundamental objective of the 1997 Watershed Agreement — maintaining water purity in the Catskill / Delaware system — is being accomplished?
DS: Yes. It’s one of these things that’s working until it isn’t.
If there was evidence that the water was no longer meeting safety standards, the federal government could come in and say to New York: we understand you’ve invested lots of money, time and energy into watershed protection but it’s not enough. You’re going to have to build a filtration plant after all. New York has a ten-year “filtration avoidance determination” until 2017 because they’ve been very successful and demonstrated a real concerted effort in trying to make watershed protection work. It’s somewhat of a lifetime probation.
In analyzing how the 1997 Watershed Agreement was implemented, [I’ve looked at] the pattern of land purchases by the city. They can only buy land that people agree to sell to them. There was a fair amount of criticism in the early years of land purchases that a lot of this land wasn’t that important for water quality. There was a bit of a disconnect between the ostensible purpose of buying the land, which is to protect the water, and the actual physical repercussions of buying properties.
This is the messiness of democracy. They had to come up with some mechanism to acquire land but doing it by eminent domain was not going to be acceptable politically. No one is going to coerce any landowner into selling their land. What we do to make things fair and democratic is not always going to be the most efficient.
They [the city] are trying to strike a balance between those two poles. Residents in the Catskills are concerned about the economic future of their region, and they should have a role in the conversation. One of the frustrations that they had in 2007/2008 is that the federal government is awarding New York city this big extension [the 10-year filtration waiver] and they felt like they were excluded from a lot of those conversations.
This story doesn’t end in 1997 when the Watershed Agreement is signed. The story goes on. There continue to be conflicts and disputes. When 2017 rolls around, there will probably be a lot of discussions around land purchasing or other sorts of conflicts that residents in the watershed are having with the city. It’s very much an evolving kind of thing. It’s not a static process. These [conflicts over long-distance water supply systems] are by no means unique to New York. But the partnership aspect — watershed residents working together with the city — is a much closer and more intense relationship than in other places. That’s what distinguishes it.
GG: Water quality is tested regularly? If problems began to emerge, is it fair to assume the federal government would be involved?
DS: New York City has a rigorous testing mechanism, and they’re testing water in various places. If you walk around New York City, you see water testing stations — the grey metal boxes. That’s another example of how the water system affects what the city itself looks like. It’s not just about are we literally complying with the standards. It’s about which parts of the system are likely causing problems.
GG: How actively is the federal government monitoring the land acquisition targets within the 1997 Watershed Agreement? Are they micro-managing this process? For example, you write about a target of acquiring one-third of the land within the Delaware Watershed.
DS: My sense is that they require New York City to produce an extraordinary amount of data and reports. A lot of it — at least initially — had to do with solicitation targets … The city would develop these maps [of the watersheds] and break them out into priority areas. The highest priority areas had the most effect on land quality. In those areas, the requirement for solicitation was higher … In areas that are more distant, the requirements were a little less onerous. My sense is that the federal government recognizes that New York City can’t put a gun to anyone’s head and say sell. That’s contrary to the spirit and the laws that govern the Watershed program. What they can do is ask.
Land acquisition [as part of the 1997 agreement] was not just in the Catskill/Delaware system; they [the city] also acquired land in the Croton area. That was much more expensive land.Very high cost per acre. The water for the Catskill/Delaware system was passing through those [downstate] reservoirs at some point in time, whether for a few days or six-months. Acquiring land in those areas was also really critical. That’s where the Catskill/Delaware system’s water flows through on its way to the city.
GG: How did the 1997 Watershed Agreement/MOA establish a new paradigm for accomplishing an environmental objective?
DS: It pushes things in a new direction. We all want clean water but what’s the way that we get there? The initial reaction of city officials is to adopt top-down command and control regulations. It wasn’t necessarily far-sighted geniuses who said the environmental system is not working now. People resisted, and they said, ‘No, we’re not going to let you take our land and destroy the economic vitality of our region. So let’s figure out a different way to do this.’ And it took a lot of creativity and a lot of hard work.
The solution they came up with is really a combination of things. In some ways it’s a low-tech solution — buying land, protecting the watershed, changing the way that people farm, making it less chemical intensive. It’s important not to be too romantic. It’s also about building new sewage treatment plants for those communities, many of which New York City itself owns.
It is the kind of thing where there were various components of the plan and some of them are very straightforward — like sewage treatment plants so not as much bad stuff goes into the streams that feed into the reservoirs. But it’s not just that. It’s a combination of grey and green, which New York City is [also] trying to do with its sewage inside the city. Up until then, New York City hadn’t shown much creativity at all, just building one reservoir after another. The focus here is quality versus quantity. It’s a very different mindset.
GG: It does appear that the federal government pushed New York City to consider strategies that they may not have.
DS: That’s another important point. None of this would have happened if the federal government didn’t push this. The people [in city government who advocated a new approach] were in the minority and they probably wouldn’t have been able to effect this kind of paradigm shift without the pressure of the federal government saying, ‘You’ve got to build this plant [for Catskill/Delaware water] or come up with some other solution that’s going to satisfy us.’ In some ways this is a story about thinking outside the box.
At the same time, it’s important to remember that it was environmental regulations that started the ball rolling in the first place. The Safe Drinking Water Act says that every surface water supply had to be filtered that the Watershed Agreement really came about. There were a lot of interim steps but that was the trigger. Without pretty conventional government regulations it’s hard to see how that paradigm shift would have come about.
It’s also important to recognize that it doesn’t mean that we don’t need regulations — that we can just assume that people can hammer out agreements because people are reasonable. There were particular things going on in this case that enabled the outcome that occurred. Having those regulations on the books was an important part of it. I could see how this story could be potentially interpreted in different ways.
GG: Early on in the book you use the term “hydrological commons.” What does that mean?
DS: What it means for me is the area that is essentially affected by New York City’s water system. In some ways [for instance] Long Island is not part of [our] hydrological commons because it’s not getting its water from New York. In other ways, it is part of the city’s commons. Once Brooklyn stopped pumping water [from Long Island] there are a lot of places that used to be dry that all of a sudden get a lot wetter.
There are all of these connections — sometimes they’re physical, sometimes they’re political — that we don’t necessarily see. It’s common to talk about watersheds now. Many people have a sense of what that means. It’s a fairly big area —as far away as Philadelphia [which also relies on the Delaware River] — that ends up getting affected by New York City’s actions. This is a story about New York City, but it’s also a story about the region, mostly southeastern New York, but also Philadelphia, New Jersey … That end up being affected by things that New York did.
GG: How do you see the question of hydraulic fracturing in terms of this ongoing narrative between the city and the state, and trying to balance water safety and economic development?
DS: New York City presents this as a catastrophic risk to the city’s water supply system. There are many people [upstate] who wish they weren’t in the New York City watershed, but then there are others — who are outside the watershed —who say, ‘I wish I was in the watershed so we wouldn’t have to worry about this drilling thing.’
It’s very complex in terms of the potential risks. I come back to the question of how much has been invested over time in this water system. Is the potential risk of contamination worth putting that investment at risk? I tend to think no.
There’s another response that says this is such a large system with such enormous volumes that a well-regulated system — even with a few spills — would have relatively little impact. I’m not a geologist, or a hydrologist. I’m a historian. New York City has a fairly compelling case that to risk the system doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Does there need to be economic compensation for that? If you think about what the basic premise of the Watershed Agreement is — yes, New York City, you can have your water but you have to offset some of the economic difficulties that people experienced there as a result of you needing this water. Should the city or the state — or some combination of the two — compensate people for their lost economic opportunities? That doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable question to ask.
GG: Now that its watershed is off limits to drilling, the city is not going to fight drilling in other parts of the state. At one point the city wanted upstate water, but they also want sources of energy that could potentially come from upstate New York.
DS: New York City government has the responsibility to ensure that its citizens can have access to basic resources. Water and energy are both basic resources. The city operates a system that supplies water, and it wants to — very rationally — protect those investments. It also wants to ensure energy to its citizens. If they’re able to get that energy closer to New York City, it stands to reason that the cost of delivering that energy is going to be cheaper. The city is advocating on behalf of its citizenry. Does that seem selective to the upstate resident who says, ‘Well, you’re protecting your own, why can’t I protect my own?’ Sure.
They’re doing their job as they understand it. Both perspectives are legitimate. That’s part of what presumably state government is supposed to do — to try to be a broker and figure these things out. New York City is part of the state, but it’s not the whole state. The role of the state is to weigh these competing interests.
GG: In closing, what else would you want to say about the NYC water system?
DS: The other angle is that the city’s water network is really important for recreation. Certainly within the city, but also outside of it. The reservoirs in Westchester are really popular for ice fishing, people go picnic at the Kensico Reservoir. Yes, the purpose of this system is to provide water to the citizens of New York [and 90 percent of Westchester’s water] but there are all of these other ancillary benefits. It doesn’t mean that from the perspective of the person in the Catskills, it necessarily makes up for the destruction of their grandfather’s farm. They have to decide.
But it created this whole network of recreation in a region like the Catskills that doesn’t have many natural lakes; in a region like Westchester where it can be hard to find peace and quiet. These other aspects are important. It’s worth seeing infrastructure in a different way. It’s not just a big pipe in the ground. It can also have all of these other benefits in our lives. That’s a useful perspective to bear in mind when there’s a lot of discussion today about decaying infrastructure and do people want to pay for it. It’s a way to get people invested in public infrastructure.
That was a major point of contention for people in the Catskills. If New York City was going to buy up a whole bunch of land, [people there] wanted to make sure they had access to these lands for hiking, hunting, bird watching, etc. After a lot of struggle and pushback from New York City’s side, in the last 5 to 10 years, the city has opened up a significant amount of the acreage they’ve acquired.
GG: As time goes on, and as areas in and outside of New York City become more congested, these areas will presumably remain an important connection to nature?
DS: People may look at the system differently in 2013, than they did in 1980, or 2050. We also need to be careful not to say the Catskills are one entity. There are divides depending on which particular reservoir, which region you’re talking about. There are a lot of nuances. Part of the story is definitely downstate / upstate. But even within that, there are divides. Cannonsville is the example par excellence. The city just assumed it was like the Pepacton Reservoir. Well, it wasn’t. There was a lot more agriculture. It was a different topography. It got a lot more polluted. To the city person, everything looks the same. [But] one farm can be as different from the next farm as black and white.
NEW YORK — Left without power, basic supplies, and often potable water, Hurricane Sandy victims in the city's poorest and low-lying areas say they were often forced to look after each other for help rather than wait for the government.
Now, six months after the storm, several grassroots organizations that work in those communities are taking preparations for the next big storm into their own hands by organizing first responder plans and developing their own vision for a sustainable, resilient waterfront.
Calling it “essential” to start the conversation from the local-level, Eddie Bautista, director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, said for too long grassroots groups have “waited and responded” to governmental plans. That is why an umbrella group of grassroots and environmental advocacy groups released its agenda for responding to extreme weather in April.
By releasing what’s billed as the “Sandy Regional Assembly Recovery Agenda” before plans from the city and federal government are released this summer, Bautista said he hopes community concerns can take the lead in discussions.
The agenda aims to reduce infrastructure vulnerabilities, they say, while mitigating environmental hazards posed by flooding in toxic areas. That includes building out the proposed greenways in Sunset Park and the Bronx, projects that could cost almost $150 million but would provide permeable surfaces to help disperse water in serious storm events.
“We've circulated the plan to city, state, and federal officials,” said Bautista, whose organization is a member of the Sandy Regional Assembly, which has over 40 groups from New Jersey to New York City and Long Island.
Other plans in the agenda call for investing $1 million towards upgrading the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s Port Richmond Sewage Treatment Plant and a half million dollars to build out rain gardens and bioswales on New York City Housing Authority properties.
At a recent mayoral candidate forum, Sandy recovery discussions focused on high-profile ideas like expanding ferry service or large-scale environmental solutions such as storm surge walls. Important as these broad, expensive plans might be, they do not meet the criteria of the Sandy Regional Assembly, which points to more “sustainable” soft-environmental solutions and the needs of low-income areas.
The agenda also calls for emergency generators at all NYCHA properties and re-building with natural, sustainable solutions such as sand dunes that have been eliminated along beachfront areas.
Citing an analysis of Sandy's effects on housing by New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, the Assembly's agenda notes that the hurricane affected 20 percent of NYCHA properties, many of which are by industrial areas, where receding flood waters can spread chemical toxins to waterways and residential areas.
Furthermore, six of the city's “significant maritime industrial areas” are located near neighborhoods with large low-income populations, including the South Bronx, Newtown Creek, Brooklyn Navy Yards, Red Hook, Sunset Park, and the North Shore of Staten Island. The agenda calls for expedited cleaning of the city's Superfund sites, such as the Gowanus Canal.
Environmental cleanup will be part of FEMA's recovery strategy, but Ken Curtin, the federal disaster recovery coordinator for FEMA, acknowledged there isn't the “political will” in Congress to include more funding to clean these Superfund sites.
Even as the Sandy Regional Assembly's plans were circulated to create dialogue, it’s unclear what direction the city’s plans are taking.
In December, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn called on the nonprofit Urban Green Council to convene a task force to help draw up plans for making the city’s structures more sustainable and resilient in the face of extreme weather. The task force itself includes over 200 experts, including architects, engineers, real estate owners, contractors and other technical professionals.
The task force is expected to coordinate with the mayor's special initiative for rebuilding and resiliency.
Bautista claimed that the mayor's initiative had not been forthcoming with information, though it has released a partial action plan. The mayor's office didn't respond to a request for comment before press time. A spokeswoman for the Urban Green Council said the organization could not weigh in on the specifics of the task force recommendations until a final report is released this summer.
However, the Urban Green Council has published a summary of broad proposals. Without price tags or locations suggested, the UGC will look to create more permeable surfaces, call for critical building utilities to be placed above flood levels, and consider alternative energy sources such as solar energy and cleaner back-up generators.
But Bautista and other members of the Assembly said they think their voices are being left out of the discussions.
In Sunset Park, Brooklyn, UPROSE — the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park — said its residents were stung by Sandy, and relied on non-governmental groups to provide supplies instead of the city or state. For instance, the Occupy Wall Street off-shoot known as Occupy Sandy used St. Jacobi's Church in the neighborhood to distribute food, clothing and water.
“Government officials have a standard, traditional way of approaching community engagement,” UPROSE Executive Director Elizabeth Yeampierre said in an interview. “But climate change is and should force them to think differently about the relationship.”
The government, she added, “should stop thinking about communities as things that have to be managed, rather as partners in addressing this complicated issue.”
Already UPROSE has taken the initiative in organizing themselves. “People want to be trained as first responders,” Yeampierre said, adding that UPROSE has begun mapping backyards and coordinating with landlords to reduce impermeable surfaces and add bioswales to better disperse water.
Up in the South Bronx, which escaped Sandy’s wrath but is nonetheless a vulnerable waterfront community, advocacy group Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice is now offering emergency preparedness training, according to Anthony Thomas, the organization’s environmental justice coordinator.
The group has already purchased 10 canoes in case of severe flooding, are putting together plans to prepare go-bags full of medical and emergency supplies, and are spreading the word to people who might not be able to be reached through official city announcements. The effort, Thomas said, affords local communities a measure of control of their own lives that feels absent when dealing with governmental officials.
“People have a fear of government not necessarily taking them seriously,” Thomas continued. “We really want to take things into our own hands. We are the only people who can define the best strategies for our neighborhood, we are the people who know what's needed.”
Although Sandy had a limited impact on the South Bronx, Thomas said early predictions had the storm hitting the area hard. "Who knows what it will be like next time," said Thomas, whose group has learned the lesson the easier way.
To aid in these efforts, lawmakers like Assemblyman Marcos Crespo, whose district includes industrial and residential areas abutting the Bronx River, such as Hunts Point, have looked to bridge the gap.
Crespo introduced legislation to fund micro-grids — miniaturized versions of the usual grid can be disconnected and operate independently — which was incorporated into the state budget. Micro-grids are seen as more resilient than the city's broader power grid, and would generate energy for first-responder needs.
“One of the many lessons learned from Sandy is how much of our critical infrastructure is susceptible to power loss and what can be done to prevent that,” he said.
With hospitals losing power and back-up generators sometimes failing, this micro-grids would better ensure power. Crespo, however, said some of the technical aspects with the micro-grids were still being worked out.
Crespo is also sponsoring legislation that would offer emergency supplies tax-free for two weeks during the year. The state needs to be “more aggressive” when preparing for future disasters, Crespo argued. And that, he said, begins with helping communities be prepared.
But Patricia Simon, director of the Ocean Bay Community Development Corp. in Far Rockaway, said a main challenge is that the scope of the rebuilding remains more than many residents in her area can envision.
She said her group, which is also a member of the Assembly, is partnering with the Pratt Center For Community Development to provide workshops for residents “so people won't feel [officials or contractors] are talking over their heads.”
Flood maps, she said, “have to be broken down,” and the new requirements for homeowners need to be explained. And, she said, “There's always the risk of contractors ripping people off.”
Which is why Thomas said he thinks the responsibility often has to come down to the community rather than waiting for government assistance. "We really want to take things into our own hands. We are the only people who can define what the best strategies are."
Yeampierre said she was unsure if her community was prepared for the next storm, and other problems could arise because of different environmental challenges, such as extreme heat.
"But we've begun to provide the tools so people can take ownership in an emergency," she said.
Image of canoes that could be used in the South Bronx if there's another big storm, photo courtesy of Youth Ministries For Peace And Justice.
Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part interview.
NEW YORK — Largely invisible — but essential — is New York City’s water supply system, stretching across 125 miles and delivering over one billion gallons of drinking water to nine million people.
In his new book, Empire of Water (Cornell University Press), historian and public policy expert David Soll takes a multifaceted look at New York City’s water supply system, one of the largest, largely unfiltered municipal water supply systems on the planet. The system, which relies on mountain water flowing into upstate reservoirs, is delivered to the city through an astounding network of tunnels and aqueducts.
Soll spoke to the Gotham Gazette in an an exclusive interview last month about how that system came to be through rough-and-tumble politics, the destruction of entire towns and the flooding of thousands of acres of land.
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Soll also touches upon the engineering challenges that New York City faced as it constructed the system; and the social, economic and regulatory shifts that would force New York City to re-think how it managed its water supply system in the last decades of the 20th century.
He also explores what led to the 1997 Watershed Agreement, a landmark urban-rural accord that enabled New York City to obtain permission from the federal government to avoid construction of a multi-billion dollar filtration plant. The Watershed Agreement cements a close partnership between New York City and upstate communities in the Catskills and the Delaware River Basin in order to maintain water purity through sewage management, sustainable farming practices, limits on development, and other strategies.
Soll, an urban environmental historian who teaches environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, focuses his research on the relationship between urban and rural areas and in the role that water plays in shaping the urban built environment. He is working on a study of the water supply and sanitation in Bangalore, India.
GG: Was there something in particular that really surprised you as you wrote the story of the city’s water supply system?
DS: What surprised me was the ability of people to overcome a lot of misunderstanding and rancor that in many other situations present obstacles that are too high to get over. There are a lot of lessons from the story of the New York City water supply, but one of them has to do with the passage of time. There was a lot of resentment and misunderstanding on both sides, but the fact that the [1997] Watershed Agreement [between New York City and upstate watershed communities] was discussed in the 1990s, rather than in the 1970s or the 1950s was really important ... There’s a lot of resentment and conflict that is still ongoing but these two sides — who were really diametrically opposed and had very different viewpoints — were able to come together.
The other thing that surprised me was the importance of particular individuals … People tend to talk about government as an abstraction, as a faceless entity. This story showed me that people in particular points in time can really make a difference one way or the other … It’s not just rules and regulations—it’s actually individual people.
GG: What are the fundamental elements of the story of how the city built its water supply system, from the mid-19th century to 1967, which you describe as the end of its expansionist period?
DS: For most of that period, until roughly the 1950s, New York was experiencing really tremendous growth. The consolidation of the city in 1898 was an important part of that story. The water system developed in tandem with that population growth. There was a fairly explicit understanding on the part of the people who were responsible for the water supply system that growth was good and growth was necessary, and they had to keep expanding the system to keep up with the pace of growth. Conservation was reserved for emergencies. It wasn’t part of the normal course of business.
They [the City] expanded the Croton system until they got virtually every drop that was available. The last piece of that [Croton system] was completed in 1911 … They had to figure out where to go for more water and they ended up getting it from the Catskills. That same cycle repeats itself where they complete the Ashokan Reservoir and they just keep building and building … It’s a constant expansion — more, more, more — until some combination of politics, financial circumstances and the environmental movement cause them to take a different approach.
GG: What was the source water for the Croton system?
DS: The Croton River and also its tributaries. They [the City] complete the New Croton Aqueduct in 1890/1891, and it’s basically this really powerful straw, but they don’t have enough water to supply the straw … Right after they build this aqueduct, there’s this drought and they’re concerned about running out of water ... they find that they don’t have enough storage capacity to make sure they can always fill the aqueduct. Even within that [Croton] system they are constantly expanding and building additional reservoirs to keep up with the conveyance power of the aqueduct.
GG: What is an aqueduct exactly?
DS: In New York’s case, it’s a pipe or tunnel, a horseshoe shaped structure that is going to convey the water from reservoirs underground generally to a reservoir in the city, from which it goes into water mains ... One of the paradoxes of the New York system is that it’s an incredible system, but you can’t see a lot of it. For the most part the system is invisible.
GG: You talk about how unification of the city in 1898 saved Brooklyn from a water supply crisis.
DS: Brooklyn was really struggling … They were trying to get more water from infiltration galleries and wells on Long Island. Brooklyn was growing tremendously. It was annexing a lot of communities, many of which decided to join Brooklyn in part because of improved services … Gravesend, Flatbush and these other villages that had been independent entities ... Brooklyn was trying as hard it could to keep pace with the growth … A lot of it was financial. They didn’t have the real estate resources to raise the funds to expand the system in a significant way. By the 1890s it had become a pretty perilous situation. There had to be some sort of a larger solution, and consolidation provided that. One of the points that was raised prior to the vote on consolidation was that it would save Brooklyn’s water supply.
GG: You use the term “urban democratic imperialism” to describe how New York City initially related to communities in the Catskills as it searched for new sources of water.
DS: I would no longer describe it that way. I don’t think that the relationship today fits that bill. For me, a lot of the book is about the evolution in that relationship from one that is more one-sided to one that is certainly much more balanced. That’s what the narrative arc is about.
New York City [historically] is the economic engine of the state. Even though in the late 19th/early 20th century and beyond the Legislature is dominated by rural interests, there’s a recognition that New York City needs an adequate water supply to function. And if New York City falls apart, the state is not going to succeed. Through the democratic system, through the legislature, New York [City] is able to secure rights to take water from the Catskills. That’s the democratic part — they have to get permission from the state.
But the way they actually go about it, they pretty much have free reign. There are a lot of caveats to that. They had to compensate people [for the seizure of farms, businesses, etc. that stood in the way of reservoir and aqueduct construction] … some people were fairly compensated, some clearly were not, some of that had to do with gender and education … New York [City] got pretty much what it wanted. It certainly had to do some things — maintain certain highways and bridges, compensate people who were directly affected … For the most part, it held most of the cards. That’s what begins to change because of the environmental movement and some of these federal laws.
GG: As the book goes on, the city’s construction of new reservoirs in the Catskills seems more questionable. You argue that the city had other options, like conserving water through metering and tapping the Hudson River, which they refused to do.
DS: A lot of this gets back to self-image. To this day, one of the points of pride of the city is its excellent water supply. It’s part of the ethos and self-identity of the city. That was a big part of the debate about the Hudson … We’re a world class city after World War II … The idea that we’re going to take this crappy water from the Hudson? No way.
There clearly were other alternatives that existed. It’s clear a city the size of New York had to obtain water from outside the city. If New York [City] had been serious about conserving water from the nineteen-teens or nineteen-twenties, maybe they didn’t need to build all those reservoirs. That’s a little bit speculative but it’s not a crazy assertion. It’s quite possible they could have instilled an ethos of conservation. This is what happened in many other cities. New York [City] was way behind the times. They didn’t start really getting serious about metering residential properties until the late 1980s/early 90s, and they didn’t finish that until several years ago.
The differences between Philadelphia and New York [City] are quite stark. Philadelphia was taking dirty water from industrial rivers and cleaning it up, and putting a lot of emphasis on conservation. And New York is doing the exact opposite. They’re taking this very pure water from far away and they’re not too concerned with how much they use. It is a disturbing story and it shows various things. This gets back to the imperial angle. No one was too concerned about what New York City was doing … The state aided and abetted that behavior. The federal government wasn’t on the scene in terms of regulating municipal water supply in any serious way. New York [City] was sort of this colossus that could do what it wanted to do. By the 1970s/80s that starts to change. And the real wake-up call comes in the late 80s, early 1990s when the federal government orders it to build a filtration plant. That’s this really significant moment where I think the story is before and after that point in time.
GG: So the state did not pressure the city of New York to look at other water supply options — like the Hudson River — because of its economic importance?
DS: That was part of it, and there was a lot of inertia. They had built all of these other reservoirs. There were a few thousand people who were going to be directly affected [by the building of the last reservoir and dam project, Cannonsville in Delaware County]. New York City had tremendous political power at that point [1950s and 60s]. There were mechanisms — the state Water Power and Control Commission — that had to sign off on the plans for building Cannonsville. But the whole discussion — at the state level — became about the quality of the Hudson water. New York City did an excellent job of framing the argument and making it be about how polluted the Hudson was rather than … We can clean it up.
As it turns out, the Cannonsville Reservoir has not been a resounding success. It’s prone to a lot of pollution problems, particularly more so in the past when there was more agricultural activity … In many cases the reservoir — for a certain period of time — doesn’t get used that much for the purpose it was built for. That decision [to build Cannonsville] probably didn’t make a lot of sense. New York [City] could have gotten the next increment of water from the Hudson. You could have saved that landscape from being developed... That story could have turned and taken a different direction. I hadn’t seen very much discussed [about this] in the research I had done — people just glossed it over.
[But] I ended up finding these papers of Abel Wolman … the most prominent sanitary engineer in the United States [he was sharply criticized for his recommendation that the city look seriously at the use of Hudson River water] … It was this interesting “what if” kind of moment … He’s this sort of enemy of the city in the 1950s, and then he comes back in the 1980s [at age 94] and gives a very powerful presentation at a public hearing [on the need to increase safeguards for the city’s upstate watershed]. He’s been part of the story for 40 to 50 years … That was one of my favorite things that happened in researching the book.
GG: What were others?
One of the most rewarding aspects of the research was figuring out that New York has all these reservoirs and water-related infrastructure that became other things that most people are not aware of. There’s this whole network of parks and the Great Lawn and pools and other things that used to be reservoirs that are now this pretty formidable recreational network. I kept turning up examples of the connection between the water system and culture and recreation.
One of the conditions of building the [about to be completed] Croton filtration plant was that New York City agreed to pump a couple hundred extra million dollars into rehabilitating parks in the Bronx. The filtration plant is being constructed in Van Cortlandt Park and there was a lot of resistance to losing parkland … in order to get the deal through the state Legislature, New York [City] had to agree [to this investment] … a significant number of rehabilitation projects [have been] funded with money linked to the water system. To me, that was one of the most interesting aspects of the book … the transformation of what the city itself looked like. As they started to get more water from outside the city, the [original] reservoirs within the city could then be turned over for other uses, parks, libraries, etc.
GG: It seems like a part of our history that’s so below the radar. Why don’t we have more of a sense of that part of our physical heritage?
DS: That’s a good question. Part of it is that these things are geographically scattered. Williamsbridge Park in the Bronx, which is far away from Ridgewood Reservoir in Brooklyn, which is far away from the main branch of the New York Public Library [the main library building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue is the former site of the Croton Reservoir, a four-story gray edifice that dominated what would become midtown Manhattan] … It’s not well advertised. They are also scattered in time … This is something that happens over and over again. The water system shaped what the city itself looked like. That was really important to me.
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Note about the featured image:
Completed in 1915, the Ashokan Reservoir holds 122.9 billion gallons at full capacity. The Reservoir is located in Ulster County, about 13 miles west of Kingston and 73 miles north of New York City. It was formed by the damming of Esopus Creek, which eventually flows northeast and drains into the Hudson River. Including the water it receives from the Schoharie Reservoir, the Ashokan supplies about 40% of New York City's daily drinking water in non-drought periods.
According to David Soll, construction of the Ashokan flooded several thousand acres, erased eight towns, and forced two thousand people to relocate.
All images courtesy of the city's Department of Environmental Protection.