Want to know where NYC’s water supply stands? There’s a DEP page for that!
Posted 02 Nov 2016 / 0
I recently discovered this page on the NYC.gov Environmental Protection site. It’s pretty cool: if you are worried about NYC’s water supply, you can get up-to-date information on where our reservoirs stand.
When I ask my students to cite sustainability issues, they often point to how water is wasted in NYC on things like spraying off driveways or over-watering lawns and plantings. And while I don’t want to endorse wasting water under any circumstances, the robustness of NYC’s water supply makes water conservation issues a lot less worrisome than most other issues we think of when we think about urban sustainability.
The NYC water system is a triumph of ecosystem services and design. Ecosystem services — specifically the preservation of watershed ecosystems that filter NYC’s water before it trickles into our many reservoirs — assure the quality of our water supply. And a genius design that predominantly uses gravity to transport water to its urban users lowers the impact of our water consumption due to expenditure of energy.
A Minor Post, Ecosystem Services, Green Design, Public Policy, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Ecology, Water Supply, Web