NEW YORK'S WATER

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1923, Page 14

NEW YORK'S WATER

SIX WEEKS 1 TRAVELLING FROM

SOURCE TO CONSUMER-

It is estimated that it takes " a drink of water " frye or sis weeks to travel; from the Catskill Mountains and throughthe Ashokan Reservoir to the consumer in Manhattan, a distance of something over 100 miles, states the ""New York Times;" How many residents of the five boroughs know that the big town uses up about 745,000,000 gallons of water a day; that the supply to the city averages 128 gallons a day for each person ; that the price of an evening paper, 2 cents, covers the cost to a citizen of his water supply for a week? The water board experts believe that New York's supply i B no t on iy the largest, .but the best and cheapest in the world. The weeks the water takes to get to New York are not wasted. First it is aerated and treated with liquid chlorine, to remove possible impurities. It dallies awhile in the Ashokan Reservoir, then dives into a seventeen-foot concrete-lined aqueduct for the long trip to Cornwall, where the aqueduct goes under the Hudson; then, on the Sew York side of the river, it winds along down t o the Kensico Reservoir, above White Plains, where it. "comes up f for air " and to loaf a while longer' before taking the tube for the Hill View Reservoir, just above the city line in Yonkers. The time it spends in the re, servoir is-not wasted, as an important, part of its purification comes from this; rest period. Coming up for air k no figure of' speech, as far as this water is concerneii. ■ It is one of the popular outdoor sports for motorists up that way to 6top a -while and watch the multitudinous geysers of the Kensico aeration plant send their white shafts into the air. New York water makes a pretty good movie as it is turned into fountains of spray and mist. . ■ ' .

It is worth a trip to Kensico to «cc 1600 fountains playing all at one time. The water supply is now siphoned under the East River to Brooklyn, and across the Narrows from Bay R-idgo to Staten Island, where it is temporarily stored at Silver Lake, 127 miles'- from Ashokan. The large water main is as deep below the surface at Broadway and Fourteenth street as the Woolworth Tower is above it further- downtown. ■ ■

The Catskill system will be augmented some time during next year by the new Scholarie Reservoir, which will make available about gallons additional to the present supply. The hew Gilboa Dam and all work iii connection with the new system is being done by the Board of Water Supply.