Inside New York City's Water Towers | The New York Times

Pisa has the leading tower and Paris has the Eiffel Tower and New York has the water tower this is Frank Runyon for the New York Times there are 10 to 20,000 water tanks on rooftops across New York City they're the primary source of drinking water for many city dwellers and yet the tanks are breeding grounds for bacteria and regulation of them is rarely enforced if part of my drinking water came from this that was certainly changed the way I drank water in the city of New York and nothing to do with the municipal water supply because do with attack The Times tested 14 tanks in 12 buildings in Manhattan Brooklyn and Queens eight of the tank samples were positive for coliform bacteria and five had e.coli the Health Department which is responsible for ensuring that building owners inspect and test their tanks for bacteria refused our on-camera interview requests though an official told us that they are satisfied with the inspection requirements as they are right now the dr. Stephen Edberg a leading medical and public health microbiologist who invented Kohl alert one of the world's most widely used test for bacteria says there's cause for concern ecoli has only one source it is only there because some animal is defecating in that place it's the only way it gets there you have a bunch of two-by-fours that get built out here as framework right Stephen silver is a third-generation tank man with American pipe and tank when the roof on the tank is in deteriorated condition and it's open to the atmosphere you have dust dirt pigeons garbage we've seen people living in roof tanks you see mice and vermin in the roof tanks and this is for the most part people's drinking water that the people in the building don't even know about New York City's water is gravity-fed from reservoirs upstate but this aqueduct system can only deliver water up to six storeys so to provide water pressure to the upper floors water is pumped from the base to a rooftop tank before draining directly into taps water tanks can be exposed to the elements for up to 50 years so to keep them in working order they need to be maintained New York City require that these tanks are cleaned and disinfected a minimum of once a year because this is a building's primary drinking water source so to prevent algae and bacteria from flourishing which it would under normal conditions you have a tank of water that's baking out in the sunshine all summer long you're going to get things growing in the tank we have the chance to drop our camera into a tank on a building above Times Square we could see a layer of sediment that had built up at the bottom this is a common sight in water tanks around the city sediment should be flushed out every year it's so inexpensive to maintain the code by cleaning your water tank and taking a water sample cleaning only costs a few hundred dollars but the problem is most of New York City's water tanks aren't cleaned every year as required by law a city survey of 100 buildings showed that nearly 60% did not comply it has been a problem there has been less than adequate compliance in my view but we need buildings to step it up we need to ensure that they are doing what they are required to do under the law the DEP is largely responsible for the city's water until it gets to individual buildings and then it's up to the landlord's to maintain water quality when tank companies are called to clean a water tank they drain the tank scrub the wood inside and add a disinfectant like Clorox bleach to finish the job it's also standard practice for them to take a water sample to test for bacteria we took a sample from this tank just before it was cleaned we took it to a lab for an independent analysis so the fact that the sample is yellow means it's positive for coliform uh-huh and once it's positive for coliform we put the UV light on it and if it flores's it's positive for e.coli so what does that mean that it's positive for bacteria and England at least from where the sample was collected if it's not fit for human consumption the Health Department says that the contamination the New York Times found in samples from the bottom of the water tank would not normally enter the water supply because drinking water exits through a pipe near the middle of the tank the experts we spoke with disagreed in most of the world water is stored in large vessels and the problem is that if any part of the tank gets contaminated all of its are contaminated so if you have sediment in the bottom of a water tank then whatever's in the sediment is going to get in the water selectively yeah vegetation okay even if it's just you know on the very bottom of the tank and they're pulling it from the middle it's correct but with all these potential contaminants why don't we see more people getting sick it's a very hard the population is large and dense as New York to ascertain even reasonably large illness outbreaks you'd literally have to have entire apartment buildings getting sick at the same time it disappear but they're there despite billions of dollars spent to protect New York's drinking water the delivery system has a weak spot the thousands of unmaintained untested and forgotten water tanks you

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 773,133

Keywords: Water Tower, Nyc, wagter towers, municipal water, NYC water, New York Water quality, e. coli, animal feces in water, drinking water, Croton reservoir, New York City (City/Town/Village), New York (US State), Manhattan (Administrative Division), new york times, health, purity of drinking water, plumbing, The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, nytimes.com, news, newspaper, feature, reporting

Id: P_9RLbRZJr0

Length: 6min 6sec (366 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/mulymule]

Saw this the other day. Take a look at water tower cleaning. I did post it on here a week or so ago! Proper freaky shit!

[u/turbos_make_me_happy]

This is actually extremely interesting