April 21, 2021 • 54 mins
New York City's water supply system is the largest municipal water supply system in the United States. This modern marvel of engineering consists of 19 reservoirs and 3 lakes that store 570 billion gallons of water when full, delivering that water through 400 miles of aqueducts to 8.5 million people in New York City and another 1 million people in 72 communities throughout the Hudson Valley - by gravity alone. This system shaped the design of older neighborhoods in New York City - the powerful force of gravity was capable of sending water to the 4th, 5th, even the 6th floors of those buildings, so that's how high they were built until the advent of strong electric pumps which could push the water to even higher heights. This system is also the largest unfiltered water system in the country, which means it's a priority to protect the quality of the water at the source, delivering it clean to the 9.5 million people who depend on it everyday.
This week's episode features Adam Bosch, Director of Public Affairs at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, discussing this powerful system, water quantity and water quality, as well as the jobs that support this incredible water supply.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
We are experiencing a paradigm shift, a fundamental
change in the way we usually dothings.
We are intentionally choosing tosee the silver lining
opportunity arises.
We can shine a light on thethings that weren't working well
(00:25):
on those things that weren'treally working at all, we can
regroup reevaluate andre-engineer it's time to explore
new patterns and paradigms thosethat inspire us to rise above
the chaos and explore how theconditions of today can take us
(00:47):
to a better tomorrow patternsand paradigms the pattern
podcast from Hudson Valleypattern for progress.
Your listening to season two,episode 16, the Marvel of moving
water to New York city with yourhost pattern, president and CEO,
Jonathan Dropkin.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Hi everyone, and welcome to patterns and
paradigms.
We hope that you felt theinfectious enthusiasm from our
conversation with summerCrockett Moore and Tony Glaser,
as they discussed the filmindustry in the Hudson Valley,
please remember to subscribe toour podcast at Apple podcast or
(01:29):
wherever you find your favoriteone.
And take a moment to share anepisode with a friend this
week's bubble or trend planes,trains, and automobiles, the
airline industry for touting theupsurge in the desire to fly
accompanied by an increase inplane fares as a sign that the
(01:53):
airline industry is coming back,people have been comfortable in
cars for a while.
So as long as there is aworkplace to travel to or a
vacation destination, the use ofcars seems to be heading closer
to whatever normal is.
(02:13):
But here in New York, commutertrains are nowhere near capacity
and do not appear to be headingin that direction.
As long as New York citybusinesses are not requiring or
having the need for workers toreturn to the office, ridership
remains way down on the commuterlines.
(02:35):
The longterm implications ofthis trend are potentially
catastrophic higher fares withless service.
As you'll hear with today'sguest, the relationship between
the Hudson Valley and New Yorkcity is often symbiotic, a
healthy New York city is a goodthing for the Valley, despite
(02:56):
potentially short-term gains.
I am here with my partner atpattern Joe Cheika.
Hey Joe, we're in the midst of abroad reaching study about one
of the potential benefits ofthat relationship with New York
city.
We call it who's moving in.
We've discussed that pattern andprogress.
(03:19):
The impact of the exit is of NewYork city residents and the
shortage in high-end housing,but there are a number of
upsides simply put, um, there isa potential for adding educated
people to the Hudson Valley'sworkforce.
Um, we also know that peoplewith means also have dollars to
(03:43):
circulate in the local economy,and that's good for hospitality,
retail, and restaurants.
So, Joe, what do you think isgonna shape this study and how
do you think it's going toproceed?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Well, there's a lot to unpack in there.
You know, we do, we are seeingthis uptick in migration to the
Hudson Valley and it seems to becoming from New York city and
Northern New Jersey as well.
Um, but you know, we don'treally have the hard data yet.
Um, so, you know, there's,there's a lot of questions to be
(04:18):
asked.
Um, is it a perceived increasebased on what information we're
hearing from real estate folks?
Um, we're not, we're not quitesure yet.
Um, what, what do we know?
So skyrocketing prices andhousing shortage of inventory.
There's, uh, there's more buyersentering the Hudson Valley
(04:39):
market, but I think there's abigger question at hand, uh, in
the real estate world.
And is that sustainable?
How high can these prices gobefore they either stop or they
continue to go up a little bitor perhaps they drop a little
bit, um, are people leaving theHudson Valley at the same time
(05:01):
as people are moving into theHudson Valley?
Is this a replacementdemographic?
If so, what are the age cohorts?
So there is a low inventory, butwhat is it, what is actually
getting built?
I would say right now, primarilyit's rental luxury rental, your
(05:22):
transit and your major roadsystems.
And if you look at the rentalsthat are being built, I think
it's primarily studios, onebedrooms, some, two bedrooms,
and almost no three bedrooms.
So the household size of peoplemoving into rentals is small.
(05:43):
One people, two people, maybethree people subdivisions are,
they still occurring somewhat.
Um, but I think it's the sametrend, big homes, big, lots hard
, hard sell.
Um, and so the existinginventory that is for sale, I
think are, are modest homes, butthe prices again are very, very
(06:05):
high.
So part of the calculus here, Ithink we should also find out
who is moving where so prior tothe pandemic, people were
leaving New York state, somecounties showed a slight
increase, so more stable, butmost, most were declining.
Of course, the ability to workremotely has caused people to
(06:27):
look at the Hudson Valley, butthey also look at other States.
So what do we know about otherStates?
Well, North American van lines,2020 report was just released a
few months ago.
The outbound leaders, whichmeans people leaving their
States include New York, NewJersey, Illinois, Maryland, and
(06:51):
California.
The inbound include Idaho, theCarolinas, Arizona, Tennessee,
and Florida
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Wait back up a minute, Idaho, Idaho,
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Slower pace, less expensive, beautiful scenery.
And if you like courses, that'sthe place to be.
We also have to look at theweather and climate, and then
you and I have discussed this inthe past.
You know, you can't really beatthe, the weather and the climate
here in the Hudson Valley.
(07:26):
Sure.
We have harsh winters, but it'sonly a few months of the year.
So you have to look at the lookat the weather a little bit more
in a, uh, in a, in a larger, uh,parameter with the larger
parameters.
So while there's been anincrease in weather events, the
Hudson Valley, it certainlyisn't the Gulf coast where
(07:47):
hurricanes happen all the time.
It certainly isn't tornado alleyin the Midwest or the center of
brush, brush fires andearthquakes out in on the West
coast.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
It might be a whole new marketing campaign come to
the Hudson Valley.
It's climate friendly,
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Absolutely.
And climate friendly andclothing appropriate.
As we like to say, if it's cold,put on an extra jacket, you'll
be fine.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
All right, Joe, I, it sounds like we're going to do
what we always do, which is take, um, a lot of anecdotal
information and try to distillit down to as the old TV show
used to say just the facts, man.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
That's right.
Mr.
Dragnet.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
All right.
Thanks, Joe.
Um, our guest today is AdamBosch.
Adam is director of publicaffairs for the New York city
water supply.
He manages the department ofenvironmental protections
efforts to educate the publicabout the largest municipal
water supply in the UnitedStates through community
(09:00):
outreach, education programs,and regular communication with
local elected officials andjournalists.
And speaking of journalists,Adam was once a very, very good
journalist for multiplepublications.
He is the recipient of numerousawards and for full disclosure,
(09:22):
Adam did a tour of duty withpatent for progress.
Look forward to a really niceconversation with, uh, our
friend Adam, Hey Adam, how youdoing?
And, uh, has a family.
And how has this wholeexperience been?
Speaker 4 (09:38):
That's it's nice to see you.
It's been bizarre, I guess isthe word I was thinking about
what I could tell you about myfamily when we start this thing
and how everyone's been doing.
And, you know, I figured, youknow, pattern likes regional
solutions.
I'd tell you about my ownregional solution.
We came up with, so yeah, earlyon in the pandemic, when they
said, Hey, we're just going toshut everything down, including
(09:58):
the schools.
And you had to think about,well, how are you going to work
and teach and do all these sortsof things at the same time?
Uh, we have some neighbors wholived down the street and they
have a daughter who's in thesame grade as my son.
And they have a son who's twoyears younger and we decided
that we would all sort ofquarantine on our own for a
couple of days, make sureeveryone was feeling well.
(10:19):
And then essentially coquarantine together for the
remainder of the pandemic.
That way we could rotate thekids between each of the four
adults and each of the threeadults, the remaining three
adults would have essentiallyfour uninterrupted work days.
Um, and that the lone adultwould be in charge of the
raising and feeding andeducating of the three children,
(10:41):
which, I mean, it worked, itworked really well.
And I'm not saying this likeothers didn't do it, but, but it
, but it works really, reallywell.
And, um, it was good because youknow, my, my son is an only
child and you start to thinkabout who the pandemic's been
most difficult on.
It's been difficult on everyone,but I think it's been uniquely
(11:02):
difficult on kids at a certainage who are only children who
are at a stage where they'relearning a lot from interacting
with other kids.
And then that gets completelycut off from them.
And so it was really valuablefor my son to be with two other
kids, you know, five days a week, um, so that they could learn
together and bicker with eachother and do all the things that
(11:23):
kids that age do when they're,when they're trying to learn,
learn the things they need tolearn socially
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Well, that's, that's really clever.
And I'm glad that you were ableto figure out and navigate your
way through it, but I'm notsurprised.
So, so let's explain to ourlisteners what your, what your
day job is and how it may havechanged during the pandemic.
But why don't we explain toeverybody?
Speaker 4 (11:46):
So I'm the director of public affairs for New York
city's water supply system,which, uh, as many people may
know is the largest municipalwater supply system in the
United States.
So it is a system of reservoirs.
There's 19 reservoirs in threelakes, that store about 570
billion gallons of water.
When they're all full, theydeliver that water to New York
(12:07):
city through about 400 miles, avery large aqueducts.
It's considered a Marvel ofmodern engineering, the water
supply system.
And one of the reasons is notonly because of its scope and
scale, but also because all ofthat water that comes from the
reservoirs goes to the city bygravity alone.
And the force of gravity is notonly enough to get the water to
(12:27):
the city, but it's enough to getthe water up into the fourth,
fifth or sixth story of everybuilding in the city.
So, you know, when you go,Jonathan, you'll know, when you
go through some of the olderneighborhoods in New York city,
the most classic residentialbuilding is the four or five or
six story walk up, apartmentbuilding.
They were built that highbecause that's how high the
water could get in thosebuildings.
Before we had electric pumpsthat could pump them to a
(12:49):
rooftop tower and then allowgravity to take back over again.
So, uh, you know, the otherinteresting thing about the
system and Jonathan you'll knowthis, this is a regional thing
is not only does this greatwater supply system provide
water to eight and a halfmillion people in New York city.
Um, but it also supplies waterto another million people who
(13:10):
live in 72 communities, North ofthe city in Westchester, Putnam
orange and all start counties.
So there are lots of folks whorely on this system.
And, uh, my job as director ofpublic affairs is to not only
help with, uh, with explaining,sort of lifting the veil of
mystery off the system andexplaining all the work that we
(13:31):
do to operate, maintain, andprotect it so that it continue
to serve those roughly nine anda half million people now, and
for many decades into thefuture.
So,
Speaker 2 (13:39):
So Adam D so during the pandemic, there were a lot
of people that left New Yorkcity, you know, out of fear or
whatever, they try to find aplace up in the Hudson Valley.
Did that have any impact onwater supply?
Speaker 4 (13:53):
So, so it's interesting, you know, it didn't
have, uh, necessarilyinformation, uh, you know, an
impact on water supply.
It, it might've, but the way alot of people saw it was
actually in the wastewaterinfrastructure.
So, uh, at some of our right,the city actually owns six
wastewater treatment plants inthe Hudson Valley and Catskills
(14:14):
that it owns and operates, uh,they're near reservoirs.
So we, the city built them yearsago to protect the water quality
in the reservoirs.
But we also monitor a bunch ofother wastewater treatment
plants that we don't own just tomake sure that they're
functioning well, and that thewater they're putting back into
the environment is clean.
And we know from, from seeingthe data from those other plants
(14:35):
, that some wastewater treatmentplans, many wastewater treatment
plans in small communities inthe Hudson Valley, and pretty
deep into the Catskills.
We're seeing their flow into thewastewater treatment plants, you
know, double, triple, maybe evenquadruple, and was a result of
people using their second homesor summer places as full-time
(14:58):
homes.
So instead of having apopulation of X living there
during the spring or the fall,or the winter, you were having,
you know, two X or three X, youknow, the triple that amount and
the, and the, uh, localcommunities were actually seeing
that in their wastewater data,right?
You had more people flushing,washing, you know, bathing
(15:19):
drinking.
And that was picked up on thewastewater data.
And people were able to see, andin some cases kind of panicked
and said, Hey, we got a lot moreinflow coming into our
wastewater plant than we usuallydo.
What are we going to do aboutthis?
And so we did pick up on thatthroughout the pandemic,
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Uh, yet another aspect of this that, you know,
probably, um, people did notrealize was happening.
Yeah.
So I just, out of curiosity,what happened to water usage?
Was there anything obviouseither at first I was thinking,
are people moving up to theHudson Valley?
Maybe there was something tonotice here, but then with the
(15:59):
great Exodus out of New Yorkcity, I really it's the other
way that it may have beennoticeable in some regard or
not.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Yeah, no, for a period of time, what are used,
we could see it on the meteringwhen it went down in New York
city, it went down Oh, byapproximately a fifth.
Um, yeah.
Yeah.
But you know, you got toremember Jonathan, you know, uh,
what are you seeing?
New York city is not onlycomprised of the people who live
and work there, but it'scomprised of the people who are
(16:29):
traveling there for tourism andvisiting too.
Right.
So, so if your use is going downin places like hotels and
restaurants, that's a bigportion of your use.
So just because the use wentdown, doesn't necessarily, uh,
there's not a one-to-onecorrelation between the number
of people who are living in NewYork city and water use.
It also has a lot to do with howmany people were commuting from
(16:51):
areas to the right West, East,North, into the city to work.
Right.
And they would be flushing allday, preparing their lunch,
doing those sorts of things.
How many people were coming fromoutside New York to see Broadway
shows and go to all the museumsand do all the tourist things,
again, flushing, showering,doing all the things.
(17:11):
So it was really, uh, you know,I think more emblematic of the
fact that fewer people werecoming into the city, then
people going out of the city,but we did see a, uh, a drop of
a bell of about a fifth, a sixthor a fifth.
And that persisted for a while.
We've seen a good amount ofrecovery over the past couple
(17:32):
months.
Um, I think as some people aregetting back into the office and
doing things like that, we'reseeing the demand go up a little
bit more.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Um, I, I've been reading a lot about the future
of New York city and it's very,I don't know that anyone has a
really good ball, but they saythat tourism may take a year or
two years, three years to comeback.
And so, um, the demand for water, um, does it make it easier on
(18:02):
the system if there's less drawdown or does it
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Make it easier on the system?
You know, there, there's aninteresting story about
efficiency in the New York citywater supply system.
So if you go back to, asrecently as the 1990s, New York
city used about 1.5 billiongallons of water each day, just
as recently as the 1990s, sincethen, since the 1990s, the city
(18:29):
has grown by about a millionpeople.
It's a little more than that byabout what, about a million
people.
And the city now uses less thana billion gallons of water a
day.
So, you know, you may think,Hey, how can a city grow by a
million people, but use 33% or35% less water.
And it has to do with, yeah,good question.
(18:49):
Well, I'll answer it.
It has to do with two things.
Uh, one is some very, uh,purposeful investments that New
York city made in the 1990s.
So back in the 1990s, the citywas being looked at by the
federal government for combinedsewer overflows.
This is where right?
Your wastewater treatment planis designed to handle X amount
(19:11):
of inflow.
And when you get a big, big, bigrainstorm, all the water that
goes into the storm drains alsogoes into the wastewater plan.
The wastewater plant getsoverwhelmed and instead of
blowing itself to bits, it's, ithas an overflow design where it
actually overflows into whateverbody of water is connected to.
And it can overflow a certainamount of raw sewage into that
(19:32):
body of water.
So you want to cut off orminimize that amount.
So in the nineties, the city wasunder pressure to cut back on
that.
Well, guess what?
You can't change the amount ofrain that's going to fall.
You don't have control overthat.
So you have to think about whatinputs you do have control over.
And the one, one of the biginputs you have control over is
how much water you used.
Cause that's getting flushed.
(19:53):
It's going down the drain.
So the city decided the 1990s toinstall the first sort of
generation of smart metersthroughout the city.
It used to be in New York citythat you were billed for your
drinking water based on yourroad frontage.
So Jonathan, if you owned ahouse that was wider than mine,
you would pay more than water asI'm oversimplifying a little,
but that's essentially how itworked.
(20:15):
So now the city goes andinstalls meters.
And for the first time peopleare being built based on the,
based on their consumption,right?
Well, that really changespeople's habits, right?
If you were leaving the water onall day, if you had a drip in
your sink, if you had a runningtoilet and you heard that
someone down the hall or someoneon the floor above you saved a
(20:36):
bunch of money by getting allthese plumbing problems fixed,
while you were likely to do itto your, maybe take a shorter
shower, you would think aboutyour work consumption
differently.
And that helped drive down waterin the city.
But at the same time in the1990s, something else happened.
And that was advancements intechnology.
So in the 1990s is when yourfirst-generation of low flow
(20:57):
shower heads, low flow toilets,low flow washers, and
dishwashers began to come out.
And actually there was anepisode of Seinfeld that sort of
memorialize this, where Kramer'slandlord puts in a low flow
shower head, and he can't getthe shampoo out of his hair
anymore.
So he goes on into an alley onthe black market and buys one of
(21:18):
the high flow shower heads.
And it blasts so much water outof that.
It blows them out of the shower,but that was a joke.
But the joke was based onsomething real that was
happening in New York city inthe nineties, which has all
these low flow fixtures werecoming on to the market.
People were installing them.
I know I bought a house that wasbuilt in the eighties that had
toilets that flush with fourgallons of water.
(21:38):
We replaced them with toiletsthat flushed with one gallon of
water.
And you extrapolate that kind ofsavings over a city of 8 million
people.
And you're talking about, youknow, a real quantity of water.
So, you know, the, the, youknow, getting to sort of the
conclusion here is that, yeah,that was great, but it has some
unintended, um, benefits aswell.
(21:59):
So the next time you have adrought because you have not
been using as much waterthroughout the entire year.
You can last longer throughdroughts.
The droughts don't come up onyou as quickly because you're
not draining down the reservoirsystem as fast.
And so it not only helped thecity in terms of its wastewater
treatment, which was able toreally, really help.
(22:21):
And now we have the best Harborwater quality that New York
city's had since the civil war,since the mid 18 hundreds.
Um, but it also helped in termsof being able to withstand
droughts of the future.
So conservation helped the cityin so many ways.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So I remember the first time that you showed me
this, uh, graph and chart ofyes, the population went up, but
the water demand went down and Iwas the let's.
Well, let's see I was mystifiedby it, but I I'm trying to
(22:56):
remember the year 1978, that Iwas working for the New York
city council president at thetime, a position that doesn't
exist anymore.
And we had to vote on the first,uh, first set of funding for a
third water tunnel.
(23:17):
And the idea was this was goingto take 1978 to take like 40
something years to build.
But that the first tunnel wasbuilt in like 1918 or 17.
And then the second tunnel was1931.
And that the, what if you knowthe catastrophe and I, and I
remember, you know, so proudthat that we're building and
(23:41):
I've been down in the shaft andI've seen all that and that you
come in with chart and you'regoing to, uh, well, maybe we
don't need as much water in it.
And I said to you, well, hold ona second.
Does that mean we didn't have tobuild it?
And I remember your response,but let's see.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah, no, the re the response is, no, you definitely
need to build it.
You know, New York, city's watersupply in so many ways, benefits
from redundancy, right?
You have a problem at onereservoir while you've got 18
others, you have a problem inone system.
Well, the system is comprised ofthree systems.
You can go to one of the othertwo, and it's the same, the same
is true about the water tunnels.
So just so everyone understands,you know, the way the reservoir
(24:21):
system works is, is the waterright?
Starts in the Catskills, startsin the Hudson Valley, and it
goes down successively to nextreservoir and the next
reservoir, the next reservoir.
And then when you get to thelast reservoir, it goes down
into it's really four, but mostpeople think of it as three
large tunnels that run throughthe five boroughs, gigantic
(24:41):
tunnels that deliver that waterup into trunk mains, which are
the big, big water mains, andthen smaller mains.
And then the service lines thatfeed each building.
You think of them like straws,if you want.
So these big, big tunnels,right?
City tunnel one and two andthree, um, are, are the big ones
that delivered in the city soforever, right?
For a long, long time, it wasjust city tunnel one and two.
(25:03):
But the reason you need citytunnel three, regardless of
demand is at some point, youwant to be able to take city
tunnel one or two off out ofservice so that you can go in
and inspect it.
Hey, how's it doing after ahundred years?
Hey, how's it doing after 70,you know, 60 or 70 years, and
you might go in and inspect andfind, Hey, this thing's like as
(25:24):
good as the day we built it,which happens quite often on the
New York city water supply.
When we get in things we haven'tseen in a hundred years, and
you're shocked by how, how goodit is.
Um, or you might see somespalling or some cracks or some
things that you want to, that,you know, superficial things
that happen in infrastructureover time that you want to patch
up before it becomes a biggerproblem.
(25:45):
But the key is you can't takethose other two water tunnels
out of service.
If you don't have the third one,cause you need to, you need to,
to run the city.
So, so that's important.
And that's why you need citytunnel.
Number three, city tunnel,number three.
Uh, yeah, I mean, it's finished.
The tunnel is finished.
There's water running throughit.
The only thing that's left to dois build two final chefs.
(26:07):
Again, the chefs, although allthat does is it allows the water
to come from, you know, 500 ishfeet below the surface, much
closer to the surface to get thewater into the smaller mains
that feed the buildings.
A number of the chefs are done.
So there's actually waterrunning through tunnel three.
That's actively feeding thepopulation of the city now as we
speak.
And we're just going to buildthese last two.
(26:28):
And that's, that's part of thework that's upcoming here, uh,
to finish those final two chefsso that it can essentially, uh,
feed the maximum number ofpeople that it was intended,
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You know, and with all this talk in Washington,
right of a new infrastructurebill, um, one of the things that
I always thought about the, thewater tunnel, when I went down
into the shaft, I became anhonorary San hock, uh, Sam for
people that don't know it is theunion at that.
Actually the workers thatactually build this, it is as
(27:02):
remarkable a piece ofinfrastructure as any bridge you
will have seen, but you can'tsee it.
That's why, you know, when, whencommunities up in the Hudson
Valley needed to build sewer,water and other things that are
underground, there's just not alot of support for it until it's
a problem.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The stuff you can't see, isn'tsexy.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
It, it, it, you know, ribbon cutting for, you know,
the, the sewer plant or, or thesewer line, you know, is just
never that great to docommunities in the Hudson
Valley.
So you mentioned that there aresome that actually benefit from
this whole, um, connectivity tothe, uh, water supply upstate,
(27:51):
but there are communities thatalready benefit from it.
And then there was recent storyabout one of the fastest growing
communities in the HudsonValley.
That would be curious, Joel, nowPalm tree actually built their
own big pipeline and they'regoing to connect to it within
the next year or so.
(28:12):
What was that project like andhow has it been that some
communities do actually tap intothis?
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Sure.
So there are 72 communities, asI said, that are connected to
the water splash to say 72communities North of the city.
Um, I'm smart enough to not callthem upstate communities.
They're not all upstatecommunities are 72 communities
North of the city.
Um, that includes about half ofWestchester County.
So in Westchester County, you'retalking about places like
Yonkers and Mount Vernon and rye, and, you know, your big
(28:41):
population centers inWestchester County all get their
water through the New York citywater supply system.
As you get further up the line,you're talking about places like
Newburg, new Windsor Newpaltzright.
So, um, you know, our smallestcus smallest, uh, our smallest,
uh, customer North of the city,I think has 200 connections.
That's high falls and UlsterCounty.
(29:03):
And they use like 30,000 gallonsa day or something.
And then our largest Yonkers ismany, many, many thousands of
connections.
And I think, uh, they usesomething like 23 million
gallons a day.
So it really runs the gamut ofsmall and large communities.
All of those communitiesactually have a legal right to
the water.
Now, how did that come about?
(29:23):
Um, the first system that NewYork city built when it needed,
uh, drinking water was theCroton system.
So those are reservoirs inWestchester and Putnam County.
That system was activated 1842,and it allowed the city to grow
hugely through the 18 hundreds.
You're talking about explosivegrowth from 200,000 people or so
(29:44):
living in New York city, whenthat system was activated in
1842 to about 3.5 million peopleliving in New York city, just,
you know, uh, 60 years later.
So a period of explosive growth,unlike anything that's been seen
there since.
Um, but then they began to runout of water.
So they had to go looks far andwide for where the next source
(30:05):
of water would be.
They looked out to the Berkshiremountains of Massachusetts.
They look to places we'refamiliar with like the Wallkill
river and the mood and theCreek.
They looked actually all the wayup to the Adirondacks and drew
up a grand plan to bring thewaters of Lake George and in New
York city through a massivetunnel.
And they ended up in theCatskills for a number of
reasons, water quality and waterquantity.
(30:26):
But in order to build that nextpart of the water supply, the
city needed certain rights to goacquire the lands and just sort
of get the work going.
And those rights were providedto the city by something known
as the water supply act of 1905.
And that is a really interestingpiece of legislation, not only
because it gave the city, theauthority to use eminent domain,
(30:47):
to forcibly purchase the lands,it needed to build the
reservoirs and the aqueducts.
Um, it also required that thecity would have to provide two
forms of access to thereservoirs forever.
Those being fishing and icecutting, because there was no
refrigeration back then, right?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Hold on a second, Adam.
So New York city's eminentdomain, Maine to access water
extends into the Hudson Valley.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
Yeah, that's right.
So into the Hudson Valley andinto the Catskills, and
Speaker 2 (31:18):
That's, that's an incredible thing that probably
most people do not know
Speaker 4 (31:22):
That's right.
So right.
It allowed that sort of, youknow, access to the public
forever for fishing and for icecutting.
It was kind of progressive inthe way of thought about labor.
So everyone working on the watersupply, right.
Thousands and thousands of menat the time were forced to be
subject to a 40 hour work week,which was like 35 years before
the fair labor standards act waspassed.
(31:44):
So they thought about how totreat the workers well in this
legislation, which I findinteresting.
And the other thing it requiredwas that any community in any
County that hosts any part ofNew York city's water supply has
a legal right to tap into thesystem to draw water for itself,
which means that New York citydoes not get to say yes or no.
(32:06):
Okay.
So if you live, if you, if youare a community in Westchester,
Putnam, orange, Ulster,Sullivan, Delaware, green, or
SCO, hairy counties, you have alegal right to tap into the
system to get water for yourcommunity.
The only thing New York city hasthe authority over is really two
things.
One is the engineering of thatconnection to ensure that your
(32:30):
connection does not damage thesystem in some way that would
harm New York city or the othercommunities that depend on the
system.
And the other thing is werequire everyone to have an
adequate backup supply becausewe've run into situations over
the years where, uh, eitherbecause of an emergency or
because of plannedinfrastructure work, we need to
(32:52):
shut off some part of thesystem, right?
That's, that's very common, youknow, Hey, we have to repair a
dam, we have to repair a valve,we have to repair an aqueduct.
So we're going to shut this partof the system off.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Didn't you do that over towards the, you know,
orange County, Ulster County,giant aqueduct, or some thing in
order for you to,
Speaker 4 (33:12):
Well, yeah.
The, so the community that, thathas a hard time with this when
we do it as Newpaltz, becauseNewpaltz sort of outgrew its
backup supply.
It has a number of reservoirsgoing up the road that heads up
toward Mohawk, but thosereservoirs are small and new
Paltz sort of, you know, as thecollege, it has a lot of
economic activity outgrew itsbackup supply over the years.
(33:34):
And so we had to go to greatlengths to pump water from
another part of our system.
And we had to shut down theCatskill aqueduct to ensure that
Newpaltz, didn't go dry and toits credit.
New is actually working rightnow on, you know, the process of
developing a adequate backupsupply.
Once again, because you know,planned infrastructure outages
(33:55):
are one thing.
But if we had an emergency, youknow, we had to shut down a part
of the system in an emergency.
We got to make sure that allthose communities have water to
sustain their population in anemergency situation.
So, so those are really the twothings we check the engineering
of the connection.
We want to make sure everyonehas an adequate backup supply so
that, uh, they're not 100%beholden to the city system,
(34:18):
100% of the time.
Um, so that's how a communitylike Palm tree curious, Joel,
you know, has a right to thatwater.
We don't get to say yes or no.
And so they are going throughthe process of building the
infrastructure that they need tomake that connection safely.
And we're continuing to reviewtheir plans to make sure that
(34:40):
their connection will be notonly safe but effective, right.
Uh, want to make sure that itactually works and they're going
through the process of makingsure that they have an adequate
backup supply as well.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Um, okay.
So, so the communities of theHudson Valley actually have this
right to tap into it and it wasmaking me think, Adam, so water,
um, you and I often are part ofa discussion about food
security, the interrelationshipbetween New York city and the
(35:18):
Hudson Valley is much deeperthan people ever really
understand.
They, they, Oh, those New Yorkcity people are, we don't want
New York city to do this to us,but the connectivity, uh, the
commuter lines from Metro North,you know, that go into New York
city, there is such strongsymbiotic relationship.
(35:40):
I worry a little bit about, youknow, what's happening to New
York city.
And I don't know that that's anarea that you want to speculate
on.
I always, of course will applyand on almost anything, but you
know, it, the health of New Yorkcity post pandemic is very
important to that's invalid.
Um, and I think that it'ssomething that we, you know, as
(36:04):
opposed to, Oh, those New Yorkcity people, we should actually
be saying it's important for NewYork city to come back.
I don't know if that's somethingyou want to.
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
I mean, I've, listen, I won't, I won't talk about
things I don't know about, butthere are certainly, as, as you
said, a symbiotic relationshipbetween the two, I mean, um, you
know, New York city is aneconomic engine for the state.
It's the largest economic enginefor the state.
I don't think anyone woulddisagree with that.
(36:35):
And in being, so it needs a lotof, uh, goods and services that
can come from within the cityitself.
Uh, and that includes water.
That includes, you know,agricultural products that
includes workers.
I mean, the very fact that wehave people who live in
Westchester, Putnam Duchess,orange, Rockland, I mean, so
(36:58):
many of those people work in thecity and then bring that income
they make in the city and spendit on businesses that are in
their backyard.
So, I mean, there's such asymbiotic relationship there.
The, the, uh, stronger New Yorkcity is economically the better
it is for the Hudson Valley and,and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Does, does New York city DEP is there any limits
though, that on growth, based onwater, I started looking at
Rocklin County and startedpondering that where it's kind
of a weird private systems Suez.
I think that really controls thewater.
Nothing.
I, you know, it's, I think it'sfine that you can have a private
(37:39):
system that does it, but doesthat put limitations on growth?
You know, the amount of wateryou, you were talking about the
earliest in New York, going froma couple of hundred thousand,
all of a sudden found a newwater supply and went to a
couple of million people.
So
Speaker 4 (37:55):
Yeah, you know, I'm reminded of, uh, I'm reminded of
something from early in myjournalism career.
I was a journalist in the HudsonValley for almost 15 years.
And my very first job was at aweekly paper based out of Walton
called the Walnut Valley times.
And I covered, uh, the Hamlet ofWallkill and Montgomery and
(38:16):
Maybrook and pine Bush.
And I used to have to go to alot of planning board and zoning
board meetings as youngreporters, uh, hopefully still
have to it's good training.
And I remember one in particularin the town of Crawford, pine
Bush, where there was some bigproject that wanted to come to
town and it could, and Iremember asking the town
(38:37):
officials at the time, why itwas going to be problematic and
it come to find out pine Bushactually sits over top of a very
small aquifer.
You know, we're, we're fortunateto live in a region of the
country that is water rich.
Right.
But, uh, so you don't hear aboutthis a lot, but pine Bush sits
over top of a very small aquiferthat didn't have a lot of
(38:59):
bandwidth plus it left.
And it, it didn't have a lot ofwater left to provide beyond
what the Hamlet was alreadyusing.
And I remember, I don't rememberwhat the project was
specifically, Jonathan, but Iremember it was something that
was relatively water-intensiveif it were to be built and the
town fear that it didn't haveenough water left in the aquifer
to actually sustain thatbusiness and other things.
(39:22):
Now they may have come up with asolution since that time and
found another source of what arethey could tap into.
But I remember early in myjournalism career, that being
the first time, uh, that I hadever come across where I said,
wow, something got turned backbecause there wasn't enough
water to sustain it as a viableproject.
And, and that goes forcommunities as well.
(39:44):
We, you know, no communities,small, medium, or large can
survive and thrive without anadequate supply of water.
And so for New York city's part,right, you want to talk about a
history.
There've been all sorts ofstudies done over the years.
And, and I like to dig back inthe history of New York city's
water supply system.
Every time there's a bigdrought, there was another
(40:06):
investigation into what New Yorkcity could do for the next
drought and the drought of the1980s.
I think that's the one wherecorrect me if I'm wrong, where
mayor Kotch actually came up toUlster County and stood in the
base of the Michelle canreservoir, which was almost
completely dry and actuallyprayed for rain from inside the
reservoir.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Well, I, I would have been on the other side of that.
I would have been in New Yorkcity when the restrictions were
placed on how often you couldwater your lawn and yes.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Right.
But at that time they hired somefolks to go come and commission
the study to look at, Hey, whatare the other viable options for
water?
And they came up with all sortsof ideas.
They came up with the idea topump water out of the Hudson
river, near red hook somewhereand run it down a pipeline.
Actually, someone came up withan idea to do what was called
(40:59):
skimming, skimming water off thetop of the great lakes and
finding a way to get it into thecity, all sorts of ideas, but it
gets back to that idea ofconservation.
The best idea was just to limitin a more year round way through
technology, right throughmetering the amount of water
that that people are using.
But still we go through when wedo what's called safe yield
(41:21):
studies, right.
Essentially how much water doesthe city use and how much water
could the reservoir systemprovide during the worst drought
that we can put in through acommute, through a computer
model, right?
We have the ability now as aresult of technology to model,
right, take the record droughtof the sixties, model it, even
(41:42):
make it worse, run it through acomputer and see, okay, how long
can the city last?
And, and essentially the goodnews is that New York city will
keep going on because of all thework that we've done with this
conservation.
So what our quantity is not achallenge for New York city, but
I've certainly seen instances inmy career where it is a
(42:03):
challenge for others, and itaffects the things that you can
do
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Well.
And, and I, you know, I caughtthat when you said water, water,
quantity.
No, but you've been involved indiscussions in the Hudson Valley
about water quality,
Speaker 4 (42:20):
Right.
Both are equally important.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
So maybe give us one example of, um, you know, where
is it, what are we looking forabout water quality?
We've seen this all over Flint,Michigan being one of the great
examples, but in the HudsonValley Newburgh was I think one
where they discovered somethingin the water that they said,
(42:42):
Nope, can't be here.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Sure.
So, you know, water, quantityand water quality are equal.
Either.
You don't have enough.
Or the water that you do have isnot drinkable for some reason.
And so, you know, we've seendifferent communities who have
issues.
Some of them are seasonal.
Some of them are more longlasting in terms of water
quality for New York city'swater supply system, right?
(43:07):
The city, our, our water supplysystem is the largest unfiltered
water supply system in thecountry as well.
And so the way we think aboutwhat our quality is, we think
about water quality isprotecting the water at its
source.
Essentially we do lots ofinvestments in lots of programs
up in the Catskills to protectthe quality of the water where
it's coming from.
(43:28):
And that means that you canprevent, uh, essentially having
to filter it.
So, right.
You've got two choices.
Jonathan, you either protect thewater where it comes from and
deliver it right, cleans yourconsumers, or that water is
allowed to get dirty or taintedin some way.
And then you have to use a wholebunch of energy and a whole
bunch of chemicals to try totake those contaminants out in a
(43:51):
big industrial plant at the endof a pipe, right?
Those are your two.
Those are your two choices,really.
And so clearly in recent years,there's been a lot more
attention paid to water qualityas places like Newburg, right.
Have found out that they hadperfluorinated compounds per
(44:12):
floral alcohol substances is thefright, the big umbrella that
these chemicals fit into and, uh, other places have found other
contaminants that they've got tofigure out.
And the process of getting thesecontaminants out of water is
very, is very difficult and verycostly.
So you know, that right bringsyou right back to the beginning
of, you know, what work do weneed to do to protect this water
(44:35):
at its source, rather thanallowing it to become
contaminated.
It also highlights somethingelse for me though, is that, you
know, we're sometimes we'revictims of our own desire for
convenience, right?
So where did these per floralalcohol substances come from?
Yes, they came from firefightingfoam because we wanted to make
sure that if an airplane caughton fire, there was a way to put
it out, right.
(44:56):
That's, that's understandable.
That's not convenience.
That's a legitimate publicsafety.
And, and, you know, thechemicals, uh, perhaps were not,
uh, um, uh, vetted or theprocess.
Wasn't going through to thinkabout how to contain them in a
way that wouldn't let themaffect groundwater and surface
water and all those sorts ofthings.
But let's not also forget thatthese per flora, alcohol
(45:18):
substances were used in pizzaboxes because we didn't want our
pizza stick into the box andthat they were used in, in, you
know, dental floss, because wewanted that floss to glide nice
and smoothly through our teethwhen we flossed our teeth.
So sometimes, you know, we don'tthink about the long-term
consequences, uh, in our sort ofnever ending search for
(45:40):
convenience and making sure thateverything works just so, and,
uh, you know, we've got to thinkabout, you know, chemicals that
we develop, other things that wedo and how that can affect, uh,
our natural resources in thelongterm, I think is, uh, is a
big lesson that comes out ofthis.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Did, did the period that we've just gone through,
give DEP time to do some moreplanning or, you know, cause I
was trying to think you usuallyare the spokesperson show up at
meetings all over the placewhere you doing meetings by zoom
now.
And yeah,
Speaker 4 (46:20):
We were doing a lot of meetings by zoom.
We use Microsoft teams aboutdoing a lot, a lot of meetings
through, through remoteapplications and really, you
know, it's interesting to workfor us continued.
I, you know, I've said topeople, you know, when the
pandemic first started, what didthey tell everybody?
Well, they told everyone to washyour hands.
They told everyone to disinfectyour surfaces in your offices
(46:44):
and what do you need to washyour hands and disinfect
everything we need water.
Right.
And so, and so if anything, itjust further underscored the
importance of having a reliablesupply of water.
And it also meant that there aresome workers who don't get to
work from home, who aren't aslucky as I am and fortunate to
get to work from home, you know,three, four days a week that the
(47:06):
men and women who run thetreatment plants, the turn, the
valves, do the dam safety checksrun the wastewater treatment
plans.
Those people have to report towork no matter what.
And so for me, working at the Pone of the things that the
pandemic underscored is trulywhat essential, what services
were essential and what serviceswere not, what, you know, people
(47:30):
absolutely had to report to workand, and didn't necessarily, and
that doesn't make, you know, onesubset of people, quote, unquote
more important than it, thananother subset of people, a
subset of workers, but it reallyunderscores the vital nature of
the work that you are doing toprotect public health.
(47:50):
That I think the thing that getslost in the broader conversation
about drinking water is thatdrinking water really gets to
the heart of protecting publichealth.
Um, not only because you'redrinking it and cooking with it
and putting it into your body,but you're also right cleaning
surfaces and maintaining somedegree of hygiene in the places
(48:10):
where you live and work withthat water as well.
So, you know, just, just takingsome time to reflect on what the
pandemic means for a waterutility.
It really just shines a brightlight on the very, very
essential nature of water andwastewater and all the other
utilities where we want to wakeup in the morning and have
something and it's in our houseand it feels like it's always
(48:32):
there, but there's no guaranteethat it's always there.
It's because people are actuallyworking on somewhere to make
that happen.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Have you, I mean, we've experienced or at least,
you know, pattern in, in lookingat different sectors in the
Hudson Valley that almost everysector has, um, a problem with
recruitment of the nextgeneration of workforce.
Is that true for DEP as well?
Speaker 4 (48:57):
It's hugely true.
Um, so you know, not to bore youwith an anecdote, Jonathan, but
so the city got its firstfiltration waiver, right?
Which is, there's sort of thisthing called the filtration
avoidance determination, whichis a, a federal and state waiver
that allows New York city not tohave to filter its water.
(49:19):
And we have to do a bunch ofthings to keep that way for lots
and lots of things, but it gotthat first waiver in the 1990s.
And when it got that waiver, thecity had to ramp up a bunch of
programs, not only to monitorwater quality, but to work on
streams and farms and also, youknow, wastewater plants, all
sorts of projects that we had togo out and do in the watershed,
(49:40):
understanding that what happenson the land affects the quality
of the water.
And so the city hired hundredsand hundreds of people all at
the same time.
And they joined a cohort ofemployees who were largely that
same age.
And so all those people who werehired at the same time, largely
boomers are now retired, gettingready to retire all at the same
(50:01):
time.
We've seen this already.
Uh, it's really like a buildingwave.
And so about 50 to 60% of ouremployees are eligible retire in
the next six years, which ishuge.
That's a huge rate of turnover.
And, um, we've begun to see someof the ramifications of this,
uh, already because people areleaving in larger and larger
(50:24):
numbers and no surprise JonathanNew York, city's no than others.
The pandemic made it such thatwe were not allowed to hire
people for a certain period oftime.
There was a hiring freeze thatwas well-publicized.
Um, and so, you know, we havebeen out there and we need to,
and we're getting out thereincreasingly to say, Hey, there
are going to be lots and lots ofjobs working on this water,
(50:45):
supply the largest in thecountry.
And it is a really diverse rangeof jobs.
It's not just scientists andengineers, it's administrative
folks, it's, uh, projectplanners, it's police officers,
it's stream experts.
It's geologists, it's you nameit right there.
You name a profession in theengineering and sciences and
support staff.
(51:05):
And we have it in an importantway at DP.
And we've been trying to get outthere and say, Hey, you know, as
you're leaving high school,that's the age we really want to
get to and going to college andthinking, Hey, what do I want to
do?
Uh, you know, for the next 40years of my life, uh, think
about us.
Um, the jobs are interesting.
(51:25):
We're doing groundbreakingresearch all the time at DP, uh,
in water science and otherdisciplines.
So that has been quitedifficult.
One of the things that, um,makes it difficult is some of
these jobs, people just don'twant to get into anymore.
Uh, go out and find a, uh, a 19year old guy or gal who says, I
(51:47):
want to be a certifiedwastewater treatment operator.
I mean, that's not high on thelist of things that people are
striving to be, but guess whatis good?
Paying honest that's essential.
Yeah.
Good benefits, good paying work.
Um, there are certain thingswhere the jobs are changing.
One of the jobs that we needmore and more people for in the
(52:08):
future is something calledinstrumentation specialist.
This is sort of like kind of a,like a little bit of electric
work and a little bit ofcomputer work all mixed into
one.
We got a lot of instruments outthere on the water supply that
are automated.
A good example is we have thesebuoys that sit on the reservoir
and on the underside of thebuoy, there's an instrument that
goes up and down throughout thefull depth of the reservoir all
(52:31):
day long, sell it sending, um,real-time water quality data
back to our 24 operated 24 houroperations center so that we can
send, can see the quality ofwater at any depth in any
reservoir at any time.
Well, guess what thoseinstruments need to be
calibrated.
They need to be fixed.
And instrumentation specialistsare the people who do that.
(52:52):
And because there are more,there are more of those
instruments.
You need more of thosespecialists.
So instrumentation specialistsis sort of one of the jobs in
the future.
That's going to be in greaterdemand.
So recruitment is going to bevery, very important.
Um, and it's not always easy,uh, because, um, folks don't
always think about these sortsof jobs when they're signing up
(53:14):
for their four year or two yearprogram.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
So Adam Bosch, thanks for being with patterns and
paradigms.
Um, if anyone listening knows ofa 19 old that is looking for a
job, these are actually reallycool jobs, supplying an
essential part of our quality oflife.
So if you need any help, justcontact us.
(53:39):
We'll put you in touch with Adamand Adam will help you figure
out a pathway.
So Adam, thanks for joining us.
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Thank you for tuning in to patterns and paradigms the
pattern podcast.
For more information about thisepisode, visit our website
pattern for progress.org forwardslash podcast.
We are experiencing a paradigm shift, a fundamental
change in the way we usually dothings.
We are intentionally choosing tosee the silver lining
opportunity arises.
We can shine a light on thethings that weren't working well
(00:25):
on those things that weren'treally working at all, we can
regroup reevaluate andre-engineer it's time to explore
new patterns and paradigms thosethat inspire us to rise above
the chaos and explore how theconditions of today can take us
(00:47):
to a better tomorrow patternsand paradigms the pattern
podcast from Hudson Valleypattern for progress.
Your listening to season two,episode 16, the Marvel of moving
water to New York city with yourhost pattern, president and CEO,
Jonathan Dropkin.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Hi everyone, and welcome to patterns and
paradigms.
We hope that you felt theinfectious enthusiasm from our
conversation with summerCrockett Moore and Tony Glaser,
as they discussed the filmindustry in the Hudson Valley,
please remember to subscribe toour podcast at Apple podcast or
(01:29):
wherever you find your favoriteone.
And take a moment to share anepisode with a friend this
week's bubble or trend planes,trains, and automobiles, the
airline industry for touting theupsurge in the desire to fly
accompanied by an increase inplane fares as a sign that the
(01:53):
airline industry is coming back,people have been comfortable in
cars for a while.
So as long as there is aworkplace to travel to or a
vacation destination, the use ofcars seems to be heading closer
to whatever normal is.
(02:13):
But here in New York, commutertrains are nowhere near capacity
and do not appear to be headingin that direction.
As long as New York citybusinesses are not requiring or
having the need for workers toreturn to the office, ridership
remains way down on the commuterlines.
(02:35):
The longterm implications ofthis trend are potentially
catastrophic higher fares withless service.
As you'll hear with today'sguest, the relationship between
the Hudson Valley and New Yorkcity is often symbiotic, a
healthy New York city is a goodthing for the Valley, despite
(02:56):
potentially short-term gains.
I am here with my partner atpattern Joe Cheika.
Hey Joe, we're in the midst of abroad reaching study about one
of the potential benefits ofthat relationship with New York
city.
We call it who's moving in.
We've discussed that pattern andprogress.
(03:19):
The impact of the exit is of NewYork city residents and the
shortage in high-end housing,but there are a number of
upsides simply put, um, there isa potential for adding educated
people to the Hudson Valley'sworkforce.
Um, we also know that peoplewith means also have dollars to
(03:43):
circulate in the local economy,and that's good for hospitality,
retail, and restaurants.
So, Joe, what do you think isgonna shape this study and how
do you think it's going toproceed?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Well, there's a lot to unpack in there.
You know, we do, we are seeingthis uptick in migration to the
Hudson Valley and it seems to becoming from New York city and
Northern New Jersey as well.
Um, but you know, we don'treally have the hard data yet.
Um, so, you know, there's,there's a lot of questions to be
(04:18):
asked.
Um, is it a perceived increasebased on what information we're
hearing from real estate folks?
Um, we're not, we're not quitesure yet.
Um, what, what do we know?
So skyrocketing prices andhousing shortage of inventory.
There's, uh, there's more buyersentering the Hudson Valley
(04:39):
market, but I think there's abigger question at hand, uh, in
the real estate world.
And is that sustainable?
How high can these prices gobefore they either stop or they
continue to go up a little bitor perhaps they drop a little
bit, um, are people leaving theHudson Valley at the same time
(05:01):
as people are moving into theHudson Valley?
Is this a replacementdemographic?
If so, what are the age cohorts?
So there is a low inventory, butwhat is it, what is actually
getting built?
I would say right now, primarilyit's rental luxury rental, your
(05:22):
transit and your major roadsystems.
And if you look at the rentalsthat are being built, I think
it's primarily studios, onebedrooms, some, two bedrooms,
and almost no three bedrooms.
So the household size of peoplemoving into rentals is small.
(05:43):
One people, two people, maybethree people subdivisions are,
they still occurring somewhat.
Um, but I think it's the sametrend, big homes, big, lots hard
, hard sell.
Um, and so the existinginventory that is for sale, I
think are, are modest homes, butthe prices again are very, very
(06:05):
high.
So part of the calculus here, Ithink we should also find out
who is moving where so prior tothe pandemic, people were
leaving New York state, somecounties showed a slight
increase, so more stable, butmost, most were declining.
Of course, the ability to workremotely has caused people to
(06:27):
look at the Hudson Valley, butthey also look at other States.
So what do we know about otherStates?
Well, North American van lines,2020 report was just released a
few months ago.
The outbound leaders, whichmeans people leaving their
States include New York, NewJersey, Illinois, Maryland, and
(06:51):
California.
The inbound include Idaho, theCarolinas, Arizona, Tennessee,
and Florida
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Wait back up a minute, Idaho, Idaho,
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Slower pace, less expensive, beautiful scenery.
And if you like courses, that'sthe place to be.
We also have to look at theweather and climate, and then
you and I have discussed this inthe past.
You know, you can't really beatthe, the weather and the climate
here in the Hudson Valley.
(07:26):
Sure.
We have harsh winters, but it'sonly a few months of the year.
So you have to look at the lookat the weather a little bit more
in a, uh, in a, in a larger, uh,parameter with the larger
parameters.
So while there's been anincrease in weather events, the
Hudson Valley, it certainlyisn't the Gulf coast where
(07:47):
hurricanes happen all the time.
It certainly isn't tornado alleyin the Midwest or the center of
brush, brush fires andearthquakes out in on the West
coast.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
It might be a whole new marketing campaign come to
the Hudson Valley.
It's climate friendly,
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Absolutely.
And climate friendly andclothing appropriate.
As we like to say, if it's cold,put on an extra jacket, you'll
be fine.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
All right, Joe, I, it sounds like we're going to do
what we always do, which is take, um, a lot of anecdotal
information and try to distillit down to as the old TV show
used to say just the facts, man.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
That's right.
Mr.
Dragnet.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
All right.
Thanks, Joe.
Um, our guest today is AdamBosch.
Adam is director of publicaffairs for the New York city
water supply.
He manages the department ofenvironmental protections
efforts to educate the publicabout the largest municipal
water supply in the UnitedStates through community
(09:00):
outreach, education programs,and regular communication with
local elected officials andjournalists.
And speaking of journalists,Adam was once a very, very good
journalist for multiplepublications.
He is the recipient of numerousawards and for full disclosure,
(09:22):
Adam did a tour of duty withpatent for progress.
Look forward to a really niceconversation with, uh, our
friend Adam, Hey Adam, how youdoing?
And, uh, has a family.
And how has this wholeexperience been?
Speaker 4 (09:38):
That's it's nice to see you.
It's been bizarre, I guess isthe word I was thinking about
what I could tell you about myfamily when we start this thing
and how everyone's been doing.
And, you know, I figured, youknow, pattern likes regional
solutions.
I'd tell you about my ownregional solution.
We came up with, so yeah, earlyon in the pandemic, when they
said, Hey, we're just going toshut everything down, including
(09:58):
the schools.
And you had to think about,well, how are you going to work
and teach and do all these sortsof things at the same time?
Uh, we have some neighbors wholived down the street and they
have a daughter who's in thesame grade as my son.
And they have a son who's twoyears younger and we decided
that we would all sort ofquarantine on our own for a
couple of days, make sureeveryone was feeling well.
(10:19):
And then essentially coquarantine together for the
remainder of the pandemic.
That way we could rotate thekids between each of the four
adults and each of the threeadults, the remaining three
adults would have essentiallyfour uninterrupted work days.
Um, and that the lone adultwould be in charge of the
raising and feeding andeducating of the three children,
(10:41):
which, I mean, it worked, itworked really well.
And I'm not saying this likeothers didn't do it, but, but it
, but it works really, reallywell.
And, um, it was good because youknow, my, my son is an only
child and you start to thinkabout who the pandemic's been
most difficult on.
It's been difficult on everyone,but I think it's been uniquely
(11:02):
difficult on kids at a certainage who are only children who
are at a stage where they'relearning a lot from interacting
with other kids.
And then that gets completelycut off from them.
And so it was really valuablefor my son to be with two other
kids, you know, five days a week, um, so that they could learn
together and bicker with eachother and do all the things that
(11:23):
kids that age do when they're,when they're trying to learn,
learn the things they need tolearn socially
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Well, that's, that's really clever.
And I'm glad that you were ableto figure out and navigate your
way through it, but I'm notsurprised.
So, so let's explain to ourlisteners what your, what your
day job is and how it may havechanged during the pandemic.
But why don't we explain toeverybody?
Speaker 4 (11:46):
So I'm the director of public affairs for New York
city's water supply system,which, uh, as many people may
know is the largest municipalwater supply system in the
United States.
So it is a system of reservoirs.
There's 19 reservoirs in threelakes, that store about 570
billion gallons of water.
When they're all full, theydeliver that water to New York
(12:07):
city through about 400 miles, avery large aqueducts.
It's considered a Marvel ofmodern engineering, the water
supply system.
And one of the reasons is notonly because of its scope and
scale, but also because all ofthat water that comes from the
reservoirs goes to the city bygravity alone.
And the force of gravity is notonly enough to get the water to
(12:27):
the city, but it's enough to getthe water up into the fourth,
fifth or sixth story of everybuilding in the city.
So, you know, when you go,Jonathan, you'll know, when you
go through some of the olderneighborhoods in New York city,
the most classic residentialbuilding is the four or five or
six story walk up, apartmentbuilding.
They were built that highbecause that's how high the
water could get in thosebuildings.
Before we had electric pumpsthat could pump them to a
(12:49):
rooftop tower and then allowgravity to take back over again.
So, uh, you know, the otherinteresting thing about the
system and Jonathan you'll knowthis, this is a regional thing
is not only does this greatwater supply system provide
water to eight and a halfmillion people in New York city.
Um, but it also supplies waterto another million people who
(13:10):
live in 72 communities, North ofthe city in Westchester, Putnam
orange and all start counties.
So there are lots of folks whorely on this system.
And, uh, my job as director ofpublic affairs is to not only
help with, uh, with explaining,sort of lifting the veil of
mystery off the system andexplaining all the work that we
(13:31):
do to operate, maintain, andprotect it so that it continue
to serve those roughly nine anda half million people now, and
for many decades into thefuture.
So,
Speaker 2 (13:39):
So Adam D so during the pandemic, there were a lot
of people that left New Yorkcity, you know, out of fear or
whatever, they try to find aplace up in the Hudson Valley.
Did that have any impact onwater supply?
Speaker 4 (13:53):
So, so it's interesting, you know, it didn't
have, uh, necessarilyinformation, uh, you know, an
impact on water supply.
It, it might've, but the way alot of people saw it was
actually in the wastewaterinfrastructure.
So, uh, at some of our right,the city actually owns six
wastewater treatment plants inthe Hudson Valley and Catskills
(14:14):
that it owns and operates, uh,they're near reservoirs.
So we, the city built them yearsago to protect the water quality
in the reservoirs.
But we also monitor a bunch ofother wastewater treatment
plants that we don't own just tomake sure that they're
functioning well, and that thewater they're putting back into
the environment is clean.
And we know from, from seeingthe data from those other plants
(14:35):
, that some wastewater treatmentplans, many wastewater treatment
plans in small communities inthe Hudson Valley, and pretty
deep into the Catskills.
We're seeing their flow into thewastewater treatment plants, you
know, double, triple, maybe evenquadruple, and was a result of
people using their second homesor summer places as full-time
(14:58):
homes.
So instead of having apopulation of X living there
during the spring or the fall,or the winter, you were having,
you know, two X or three X, youknow, the triple that amount and
the, and the, uh, localcommunities were actually seeing
that in their wastewater data,right?
You had more people flushing,washing, you know, bathing
(15:19):
drinking.
And that was picked up on thewastewater data.
And people were able to see, andin some cases kind of panicked
and said, Hey, we got a lot moreinflow coming into our
wastewater plant than we usuallydo.
What are we going to do aboutthis?
And so we did pick up on thatthroughout the pandemic,
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Uh, yet another aspect of this that, you know,
probably, um, people did notrealize was happening.
Yeah.
So I just, out of curiosity,what happened to water usage?
Was there anything obviouseither at first I was thinking,
are people moving up to theHudson Valley?
Maybe there was something tonotice here, but then with the
(15:59):
great Exodus out of New Yorkcity, I really it's the other
way that it may have beennoticeable in some regard or
not.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Yeah, no, for a period of time, what are used,
we could see it on the meteringwhen it went down in New York
city, it went down Oh, byapproximately a fifth.
Um, yeah.
Yeah.
But you know, you got toremember Jonathan, you know, uh,
what are you seeing?
New York city is not onlycomprised of the people who live
and work there, but it'scomprised of the people who are
(16:29):
traveling there for tourism andvisiting too.
Right.
So, so if your use is going downin places like hotels and
restaurants, that's a bigportion of your use.
So just because the use wentdown, doesn't necessarily, uh,
there's not a one-to-onecorrelation between the number
of people who are living in NewYork city and water use.
It also has a lot to do with howmany people were commuting from
(16:51):
areas to the right West, East,North, into the city to work.
Right.
And they would be flushing allday, preparing their lunch,
doing those sorts of things.
How many people were coming fromoutside New York to see Broadway
shows and go to all the museumsand do all the tourist things,
again, flushing, showering,doing all the things.
(17:11):
So it was really, uh, you know,I think more emblematic of the
fact that fewer people werecoming into the city, then
people going out of the city,but we did see a, uh, a drop of
a bell of about a fifth, a sixthor a fifth.
And that persisted for a while.
We've seen a good amount ofrecovery over the past couple
(17:32):
months.
Um, I think as some people aregetting back into the office and
doing things like that, we'reseeing the demand go up a little
bit more.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Um, I, I've been reading a lot about the future
of New York city and it's very,I don't know that anyone has a
really good ball, but they saythat tourism may take a year or
two years, three years to comeback.
And so, um, the demand for water, um, does it make it easier on
(18:02):
the system if there's less drawdown or does it
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Make it easier on the system?
You know, there, there's aninteresting story about
efficiency in the New York citywater supply system.
So if you go back to, asrecently as the 1990s, New York
city used about 1.5 billiongallons of water each day, just
as recently as the 1990s, sincethen, since the 1990s, the city
(18:29):
has grown by about a millionpeople.
It's a little more than that byabout what, about a million
people.
And the city now uses less thana billion gallons of water a
day.
So, you know, you may think,Hey, how can a city grow by a
million people, but use 33% or35% less water.
And it has to do with, yeah,good question.
(18:49):
Well, I'll answer it.
It has to do with two things.
Uh, one is some very, uh,purposeful investments that New
York city made in the 1990s.
So back in the 1990s, the citywas being looked at by the
federal government for combinedsewer overflows.
This is where right?
Your wastewater treatment planis designed to handle X amount
(19:11):
of inflow.
And when you get a big, big, bigrainstorm, all the water that
goes into the storm drains alsogoes into the wastewater plan.
The wastewater plant getsoverwhelmed and instead of
blowing itself to bits, it's, ithas an overflow design where it
actually overflows into whateverbody of water is connected to.
And it can overflow a certainamount of raw sewage into that
(19:32):
body of water.
So you want to cut off orminimize that amount.
So in the nineties, the city wasunder pressure to cut back on
that.
Well, guess what?
You can't change the amount ofrain that's going to fall.
You don't have control overthat.
So you have to think about whatinputs you do have control over.
And the one, one of the biginputs you have control over is
how much water you used.
Cause that's getting flushed.
(19:53):
It's going down the drain.
So the city decided the 1990s toinstall the first sort of
generation of smart metersthroughout the city.
It used to be in New York citythat you were billed for your
drinking water based on yourroad frontage.
So Jonathan, if you owned ahouse that was wider than mine,
you would pay more than water asI'm oversimplifying a little,
but that's essentially how itworked.
(20:15):
So now the city goes andinstalls meters.
And for the first time peopleare being built based on the,
based on their consumption,right?
Well, that really changespeople's habits, right?
If you were leaving the water onall day, if you had a drip in
your sink, if you had a runningtoilet and you heard that
someone down the hall or someoneon the floor above you saved a
(20:36):
bunch of money by getting allthese plumbing problems fixed,
while you were likely to do itto your, maybe take a shorter
shower, you would think aboutyour work consumption
differently.
And that helped drive down waterin the city.
But at the same time in the1990s, something else happened.
And that was advancements intechnology.
So in the 1990s is when yourfirst-generation of low flow
(20:57):
shower heads, low flow toilets,low flow washers, and
dishwashers began to come out.
And actually there was anepisode of Seinfeld that sort of
memorialize this, where Kramer'slandlord puts in a low flow
shower head, and he can't getthe shampoo out of his hair
anymore.
So he goes on into an alley onthe black market and buys one of
(21:18):
the high flow shower heads.
And it blasts so much water outof that.
It blows them out of the shower,but that was a joke.
But the joke was based onsomething real that was
happening in New York city inthe nineties, which has all
these low flow fixtures werecoming on to the market.
People were installing them.
I know I bought a house that wasbuilt in the eighties that had
toilets that flush with fourgallons of water.
(21:38):
We replaced them with toiletsthat flushed with one gallon of
water.
And you extrapolate that kind ofsavings over a city of 8 million
people.
And you're talking about, youknow, a real quantity of water.
So, you know, the, the, youknow, getting to sort of the
conclusion here is that, yeah,that was great, but it has some
unintended, um, benefits aswell.
(21:59):
So the next time you have adrought because you have not
been using as much waterthroughout the entire year.
You can last longer throughdroughts.
The droughts don't come up onyou as quickly because you're
not draining down the reservoirsystem as fast.
And so it not only helped thecity in terms of its wastewater
treatment, which was able toreally, really help.
(22:21):
And now we have the best Harborwater quality that New York
city's had since the civil war,since the mid 18 hundreds.
Um, but it also helped in termsof being able to withstand
droughts of the future.
So conservation helped the cityin so many ways.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So I remember the first time that you showed me
this, uh, graph and chart ofyes, the population went up, but
the water demand went down and Iwas the let's.
Well, let's see I was mystifiedby it, but I I'm trying to
(22:56):
remember the year 1978, that Iwas working for the New York
city council president at thetime, a position that doesn't
exist anymore.
And we had to vote on the first,uh, first set of funding for a
third water tunnel.
(23:17):
And the idea was this was goingto take 1978 to take like 40
something years to build.
But that the first tunnel wasbuilt in like 1918 or 17.
And then the second tunnel was1931.
And that the, what if you knowthe catastrophe and I, and I
remember, you know, so proudthat that we're building and
(23:41):
I've been down in the shaft andI've seen all that and that you
come in with chart and you'regoing to, uh, well, maybe we
don't need as much water in it.
And I said to you, well, hold ona second.
Does that mean we didn't have tobuild it?
And I remember your response,but let's see.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah, no, the re the response is, no, you definitely
need to build it.
You know, New York, city's watersupply in so many ways, benefits
from redundancy, right?
You have a problem at onereservoir while you've got 18
others, you have a problem inone system.
Well, the system is comprised ofthree systems.
You can go to one of the othertwo, and it's the same, the same
is true about the water tunnels.
So just so everyone understands,you know, the way the reservoir
(24:21):
system works is, is the waterright?
Starts in the Catskills, startsin the Hudson Valley, and it
goes down successively to nextreservoir and the next
reservoir, the next reservoir.
And then when you get to thelast reservoir, it goes down
into it's really four, but mostpeople think of it as three
large tunnels that run throughthe five boroughs, gigantic
(24:41):
tunnels that deliver that waterup into trunk mains, which are
the big, big water mains, andthen smaller mains.
And then the service lines thatfeed each building.
You think of them like straws,if you want.
So these big, big tunnels,right?
City tunnel one and two andthree, um, are, are the big ones
that delivered in the city soforever, right?
For a long, long time, it wasjust city tunnel one and two.
(25:03):
But the reason you need citytunnel three, regardless of
demand is at some point, youwant to be able to take city
tunnel one or two off out ofservice so that you can go in
and inspect it.
Hey, how's it doing after ahundred years?
Hey, how's it doing after 70,you know, 60 or 70 years, and
you might go in and inspect andfind, Hey, this thing's like as
(25:24):
good as the day we built it,which happens quite often on the
New York city water supply.
When we get in things we haven'tseen in a hundred years, and
you're shocked by how, how goodit is.
Um, or you might see somespalling or some cracks or some
things that you want to, that,you know, superficial things
that happen in infrastructureover time that you want to patch
up before it becomes a biggerproblem.
(25:45):
But the key is you can't takethose other two water tunnels
out of service.
If you don't have the third one,cause you need to, you need to,
to run the city.
So, so that's important.
And that's why you need citytunnel.
Number three, city tunnel,number three.
Uh, yeah, I mean, it's finished.
The tunnel is finished.
There's water running throughit.
The only thing that's left to dois build two final chefs.
(26:07):
Again, the chefs, although allthat does is it allows the water
to come from, you know, 500 ishfeet below the surface, much
closer to the surface to get thewater into the smaller mains
that feed the buildings.
A number of the chefs are done.
So there's actually waterrunning through tunnel three.
That's actively feeding thepopulation of the city now as we
speak.
And we're just going to buildthese last two.
(26:28):
And that's, that's part of thework that's upcoming here, uh,
to finish those final two chefsso that it can essentially, uh,
feed the maximum number ofpeople that it was intended,
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You know, and with all this talk in Washington,
right of a new infrastructurebill, um, one of the things that
I always thought about the, thewater tunnel, when I went down
into the shaft, I became anhonorary San hock, uh, Sam for
people that don't know it is theunion at that.
Actually the workers thatactually build this, it is as
(27:02):
remarkable a piece ofinfrastructure as any bridge you
will have seen, but you can'tsee it.
That's why, you know, when, whencommunities up in the Hudson
Valley needed to build sewer,water and other things that are
underground, there's just not alot of support for it until it's
a problem.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The stuff you can't see, isn'tsexy.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
It, it, it, you know, ribbon cutting for, you know,
the, the sewer plant or, or thesewer line, you know, is just
never that great to docommunities in the Hudson
Valley.
So you mentioned that there aresome that actually benefit from
this whole, um, connectivity tothe, uh, water supply upstate,
(27:51):
but there are communities thatalready benefit from it.
And then there was recent storyabout one of the fastest growing
communities in the HudsonValley.
That would be curious, Joel, nowPalm tree actually built their
own big pipeline and they'regoing to connect to it within
the next year or so.
(28:12):
What was that project like andhow has it been that some
communities do actually tap intothis?
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Sure.
So there are 72 communities, asI said, that are connected to
the water splash to say 72communities North of the city.
Um, I'm smart enough to not callthem upstate communities.
They're not all upstatecommunities are 72 communities
North of the city.
Um, that includes about half ofWestchester County.
So in Westchester County, you'retalking about places like
Yonkers and Mount Vernon and rye, and, you know, your big
(28:41):
population centers inWestchester County all get their
water through the New York citywater supply system.
As you get further up the line,you're talking about places like
Newburg, new Windsor Newpaltzright.
So, um, you know, our smallestcus smallest, uh, our smallest,
uh, customer North of the city,I think has 200 connections.
That's high falls and UlsterCounty.
(29:03):
And they use like 30,000 gallonsa day or something.
And then our largest Yonkers ismany, many, many thousands of
connections.
And I think, uh, they usesomething like 23 million
gallons a day.
So it really runs the gamut ofsmall and large communities.
All of those communitiesactually have a legal right to
the water.
Now, how did that come about?
(29:23):
Um, the first system that NewYork city built when it needed,
uh, drinking water was theCroton system.
So those are reservoirs inWestchester and Putnam County.
That system was activated 1842,and it allowed the city to grow
hugely through the 18 hundreds.
You're talking about explosivegrowth from 200,000 people or so
(29:44):
living in New York city, whenthat system was activated in
1842 to about 3.5 million peopleliving in New York city, just,
you know, uh, 60 years later.
So a period of explosive growth,unlike anything that's been seen
there since.
Um, but then they began to runout of water.
So they had to go looks far andwide for where the next source
(30:05):
of water would be.
They looked out to the Berkshiremountains of Massachusetts.
They look to places we'refamiliar with like the Wallkill
river and the mood and theCreek.
They looked actually all the wayup to the Adirondacks and drew
up a grand plan to bring thewaters of Lake George and in New
York city through a massivetunnel.
And they ended up in theCatskills for a number of
reasons, water quality and waterquantity.
(30:26):
But in order to build that nextpart of the water supply, the
city needed certain rights to goacquire the lands and just sort
of get the work going.
And those rights were providedto the city by something known
as the water supply act of 1905.
And that is a really interestingpiece of legislation, not only
because it gave the city, theauthority to use eminent domain,
(30:47):
to forcibly purchase the lands,it needed to build the
reservoirs and the aqueducts.
Um, it also required that thecity would have to provide two
forms of access to thereservoirs forever.
Those being fishing and icecutting, because there was no
refrigeration back then, right?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Hold on a second, Adam.
So New York city's eminentdomain, Maine to access water
extends into the Hudson Valley.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
Yeah, that's right.
So into the Hudson Valley andinto the Catskills, and
Speaker 2 (31:18):
That's, that's an incredible thing that probably
most people do not know
Speaker 4 (31:22):
That's right.
So right.
It allowed that sort of, youknow, access to the public
forever for fishing and for icecutting.
It was kind of progressive inthe way of thought about labor.
So everyone working on the watersupply, right.
Thousands and thousands of menat the time were forced to be
subject to a 40 hour work week,which was like 35 years before
the fair labor standards act waspassed.
(31:44):
So they thought about how totreat the workers well in this
legislation, which I findinteresting.
And the other thing it requiredwas that any community in any
County that hosts any part ofNew York city's water supply has
a legal right to tap into thesystem to draw water for itself,
which means that New York citydoes not get to say yes or no.
(32:06):
Okay.
So if you live, if you, if youare a community in Westchester,
Putnam, orange, Ulster,Sullivan, Delaware, green, or
SCO, hairy counties, you have alegal right to tap into the
system to get water for yourcommunity.
The only thing New York city hasthe authority over is really two
things.
One is the engineering of thatconnection to ensure that your
(32:30):
connection does not damage thesystem in some way that would
harm New York city or the othercommunities that depend on the
system.
And the other thing is werequire everyone to have an
adequate backup supply becausewe've run into situations over
the years where, uh, eitherbecause of an emergency or
because of plannedinfrastructure work, we need to
(32:52):
shut off some part of thesystem, right?
That's, that's very common, youknow, Hey, we have to repair a
dam, we have to repair a valve,we have to repair an aqueduct.
So we're going to shut this partof the system off.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Didn't you do that over towards the, you know,
orange County, Ulster County,giant aqueduct, or some thing in
order for you to,
Speaker 4 (33:12):
Well, yeah.
The, so the community that, thathas a hard time with this when
we do it as Newpaltz, becauseNewpaltz sort of outgrew its
backup supply.
It has a number of reservoirsgoing up the road that heads up
toward Mohawk, but thosereservoirs are small and new
Paltz sort of, you know, as thecollege, it has a lot of
economic activity outgrew itsbackup supply over the years.
(33:34):
And so we had to go to greatlengths to pump water from
another part of our system.
And we had to shut down theCatskill aqueduct to ensure that
Newpaltz, didn't go dry and toits credit.
New is actually working rightnow on, you know, the process of
developing a adequate backupsupply.
Once again, because you know,planned infrastructure outages
(33:55):
are one thing.
But if we had an emergency, youknow, we had to shut down a part
of the system in an emergency.
We got to make sure that allthose communities have water to
sustain their population in anemergency situation.
So, so those are really the twothings we check the engineering
of the connection.
We want to make sure everyonehas an adequate backup supply so
that, uh, they're not 100%beholden to the city system,
(34:18):
100% of the time.
Um, so that's how a communitylike Palm tree curious, Joel,
you know, has a right to thatwater.
We don't get to say yes or no.
And so they are going throughthe process of building the
infrastructure that they need tomake that connection safely.
And we're continuing to reviewtheir plans to make sure that
(34:40):
their connection will be notonly safe but effective, right.
Uh, want to make sure that itactually works and they're going
through the process of makingsure that they have an adequate
backup supply as well.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Um, okay.
So, so the communities of theHudson Valley actually have this
right to tap into it and it wasmaking me think, Adam, so water,
um, you and I often are part ofa discussion about food
security, the interrelationshipbetween New York city and the
(35:18):
Hudson Valley is much deeperthan people ever really
understand.
They, they, Oh, those New Yorkcity people are, we don't want
New York city to do this to us,but the connectivity, uh, the
commuter lines from Metro North,you know, that go into New York
city, there is such strongsymbiotic relationship.
(35:40):
I worry a little bit about, youknow, what's happening to New
York city.
And I don't know that that's anarea that you want to speculate
on.
I always, of course will applyand on almost anything, but you
know, it, the health of New Yorkcity post pandemic is very
important to that's invalid.
Um, and I think that it'ssomething that we, you know, as
(36:04):
opposed to, Oh, those New Yorkcity people, we should actually
be saying it's important for NewYork city to come back.
I don't know if that's somethingyou want to.
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
I mean, I've, listen, I won't, I won't talk about
things I don't know about, butthere are certainly, as, as you
said, a symbiotic relationshipbetween the two, I mean, um, you
know, New York city is aneconomic engine for the state.
It's the largest economic enginefor the state.
I don't think anyone woulddisagree with that.
(36:35):
And in being, so it needs a lotof, uh, goods and services that
can come from within the cityitself.
Uh, and that includes water.
That includes, you know,agricultural products that
includes workers.
I mean, the very fact that wehave people who live in
Westchester, Putnam Duchess,orange, Rockland, I mean, so
(36:58):
many of those people work in thecity and then bring that income
they make in the city and spendit on businesses that are in
their backyard.
So, I mean, there's such asymbiotic relationship there.
The, the, uh, stronger New Yorkcity is economically the better
it is for the Hudson Valley and,and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Does, does New York city DEP is there any limits
though, that on growth, based onwater, I started looking at
Rocklin County and startedpondering that where it's kind
of a weird private systems Suez.
I think that really controls thewater.
Nothing.
I, you know, it's, I think it'sfine that you can have a private
(37:39):
system that does it, but doesthat put limitations on growth?
You know, the amount of wateryou, you were talking about the
earliest in New York, going froma couple of hundred thousand,
all of a sudden found a newwater supply and went to a
couple of million people.
So
Speaker 4 (37:55):
Yeah, you know, I'm reminded of, uh, I'm reminded of
something from early in myjournalism career.
I was a journalist in the HudsonValley for almost 15 years.
And my very first job was at aweekly paper based out of Walton
called the Walnut Valley times.
And I covered, uh, the Hamlet ofWallkill and Montgomery and
(38:16):
Maybrook and pine Bush.
And I used to have to go to alot of planning board and zoning
board meetings as youngreporters, uh, hopefully still
have to it's good training.
And I remember one in particularin the town of Crawford, pine
Bush, where there was some bigproject that wanted to come to
town and it could, and Iremember asking the town
(38:37):
officials at the time, why itwas going to be problematic and
it come to find out pine Bushactually sits over top of a very
small aquifer.
You know, we're, we're fortunateto live in a region of the
country that is water rich.
Right.
But, uh, so you don't hear aboutthis a lot, but pine Bush sits
over top of a very small aquiferthat didn't have a lot of
(38:59):
bandwidth plus it left.
And it, it didn't have a lot ofwater left to provide beyond
what the Hamlet was alreadyusing.
And I remember, I don't rememberwhat the project was
specifically, Jonathan, but Iremember it was something that
was relatively water-intensiveif it were to be built and the
town fear that it didn't haveenough water left in the aquifer
to actually sustain thatbusiness and other things.
(39:22):
Now they may have come up with asolution since that time and
found another source of what arethey could tap into.
But I remember early in myjournalism career, that being
the first time, uh, that I hadever come across where I said,
wow, something got turned backbecause there wasn't enough
water to sustain it as a viableproject.
And, and that goes forcommunities as well.
(39:44):
We, you know, no communities,small, medium, or large can
survive and thrive without anadequate supply of water.
And so for New York city's part,right, you want to talk about a
history.
There've been all sorts ofstudies done over the years.
And, and I like to dig back inthe history of New York city's
water supply system.
Every time there's a bigdrought, there was another
(40:06):
investigation into what New Yorkcity could do for the next
drought and the drought of the1980s.
I think that's the one wherecorrect me if I'm wrong, where
mayor Kotch actually came up toUlster County and stood in the
base of the Michelle canreservoir, which was almost
completely dry and actuallyprayed for rain from inside the
reservoir.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Well, I, I would have been on the other side of that.
I would have been in New Yorkcity when the restrictions were
placed on how often you couldwater your lawn and yes.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Right.
But at that time they hired somefolks to go come and commission
the study to look at, Hey, whatare the other viable options for
water?
And they came up with all sortsof ideas.
They came up with the idea topump water out of the Hudson
river, near red hook somewhereand run it down a pipeline.
Actually, someone came up withan idea to do what was called
(40:59):
skimming, skimming water off thetop of the great lakes and
finding a way to get it into thecity, all sorts of ideas, but it
gets back to that idea ofconservation.
The best idea was just to limitin a more year round way through
technology, right throughmetering the amount of water
that that people are using.
But still we go through when wedo what's called safe yield
(41:21):
studies, right.
Essentially how much water doesthe city use and how much water
could the reservoir systemprovide during the worst drought
that we can put in through acommute, through a computer
model, right?
We have the ability now as aresult of technology to model,
right, take the record droughtof the sixties, model it, even
(41:42):
make it worse, run it through acomputer and see, okay, how long
can the city last?
And, and essentially the goodnews is that New York city will
keep going on because of all thework that we've done with this
conservation.
So what our quantity is not achallenge for New York city, but
I've certainly seen instances inmy career where it is a
(42:03):
challenge for others, and itaffects the things that you can
do
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Well.
And, and I, you know, I caughtthat when you said water, water,
quantity.
No, but you've been involved indiscussions in the Hudson Valley
about water quality,
Speaker 4 (42:20):
Right.
Both are equally important.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
So maybe give us one example of, um, you know, where
is it, what are we looking forabout water quality?
We've seen this all over Flint,Michigan being one of the great
examples, but in the HudsonValley Newburgh was I think one
where they discovered somethingin the water that they said,
(42:42):
Nope, can't be here.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Sure.
So, you know, water, quantityand water quality are equal.
Either.
You don't have enough.
Or the water that you do have isnot drinkable for some reason.
And so, you know, we've seendifferent communities who have
issues.
Some of them are seasonal.
Some of them are more longlasting in terms of water
quality for New York city'swater supply system, right?
(43:07):
The city, our, our water supplysystem is the largest unfiltered
water supply system in thecountry as well.
And so the way we think aboutwhat our quality is, we think
about water quality isprotecting the water at its
source.
Essentially we do lots ofinvestments in lots of programs
up in the Catskills to protectthe quality of the water where
it's coming from.
(43:28):
And that means that you canprevent, uh, essentially having
to filter it.
So, right.
You've got two choices.
Jonathan, you either protect thewater where it comes from and
deliver it right, cleans yourconsumers, or that water is
allowed to get dirty or taintedin some way.
And then you have to use a wholebunch of energy and a whole
bunch of chemicals to try totake those contaminants out in a
(43:51):
big industrial plant at the endof a pipe, right?
Those are your two.
Those are your two choices,really.
And so clearly in recent years,there's been a lot more
attention paid to water qualityas places like Newburg, right.
Have found out that they hadperfluorinated compounds per
(44:12):
floral alcohol substances is thefright, the big umbrella that
these chemicals fit into and, uh, other places have found other
contaminants that they've got tofigure out.
And the process of getting thesecontaminants out of water is
very, is very difficult and verycostly.
So you know, that right bringsyou right back to the beginning
of, you know, what work do weneed to do to protect this water
(44:35):
at its source, rather thanallowing it to become
contaminated.
It also highlights somethingelse for me though, is that, you
know, we're sometimes we'revictims of our own desire for
convenience, right?
So where did these per floralalcohol substances come from?
Yes, they came from firefightingfoam because we wanted to make
sure that if an airplane caughton fire, there was a way to put
it out, right.
(44:56):
That's, that's understandable.
That's not convenience.
That's a legitimate publicsafety.
And, and, you know, thechemicals, uh, perhaps were not,
uh, um, uh, vetted or theprocess.
Wasn't going through to thinkabout how to contain them in a
way that wouldn't let themaffect groundwater and surface
water and all those sorts ofthings.
But let's not also forget thatthese per flora, alcohol
(45:18):
substances were used in pizzaboxes because we didn't want our
pizza stick into the box andthat they were used in, in, you
know, dental floss, because wewanted that floss to glide nice
and smoothly through our teethwhen we flossed our teeth.
So sometimes, you know, we don'tthink about the long-term
consequences, uh, in our sort ofnever ending search for
(45:40):
convenience and making sure thateverything works just so, and,
uh, you know, we've got to thinkabout, you know, chemicals that
we develop, other things that wedo and how that can affect, uh,
our natural resources in thelongterm, I think is, uh, is a
big lesson that comes out ofthis.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Did, did the period that we've just gone through,
give DEP time to do some moreplanning or, you know, cause I
was trying to think you usuallyare the spokesperson show up at
meetings all over the placewhere you doing meetings by zoom
now.
And yeah,
Speaker 4 (46:20):
We were doing a lot of meetings by zoom.
We use Microsoft teams aboutdoing a lot, a lot of meetings
through, through remoteapplications and really, you
know, it's interesting to workfor us continued.
I, you know, I've said topeople, you know, when the
pandemic first started, what didthey tell everybody?
Well, they told everyone to washyour hands.
They told everyone to disinfectyour surfaces in your offices
(46:44):
and what do you need to washyour hands and disinfect
everything we need water.
Right.
And so, and so if anything, itjust further underscored the
importance of having a reliablesupply of water.
And it also meant that there aresome workers who don't get to
work from home, who aren't aslucky as I am and fortunate to
get to work from home, you know,three, four days a week that the
(47:06):
men and women who run thetreatment plants, the turn, the
valves, do the dam safety checksrun the wastewater treatment
plans.
Those people have to report towork no matter what.
And so for me, working at the Pone of the things that the
pandemic underscored is trulywhat essential, what services
were essential and what serviceswere not, what, you know, people
(47:30):
absolutely had to report to workand, and didn't necessarily, and
that doesn't make, you know, onesubset of people, quote, unquote
more important than it, thananother subset of people, a
subset of workers, but it reallyunderscores the vital nature of
the work that you are doing toprotect public health.
(47:50):
That I think the thing that getslost in the broader conversation
about drinking water is thatdrinking water really gets to
the heart of protecting publichealth.
Um, not only because you'redrinking it and cooking with it
and putting it into your body,but you're also right cleaning
surfaces and maintaining somedegree of hygiene in the places
(48:10):
where you live and work withthat water as well.
So, you know, just, just takingsome time to reflect on what the
pandemic means for a waterutility.
It really just shines a brightlight on the very, very
essential nature of water andwastewater and all the other
utilities where we want to wakeup in the morning and have
something and it's in our houseand it feels like it's always
(48:32):
there, but there's no guaranteethat it's always there.
It's because people are actuallyworking on somewhere to make
that happen.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Have you, I mean, we've experienced or at least,
you know, pattern in, in lookingat different sectors in the
Hudson Valley that almost everysector has, um, a problem with
recruitment of the nextgeneration of workforce.
Is that true for DEP as well?
Speaker 4 (48:57):
It's hugely true.
Um, so you know, not to bore youwith an anecdote, Jonathan, but
so the city got its firstfiltration waiver, right?
Which is, there's sort of thisthing called the filtration
avoidance determination, whichis a, a federal and state waiver
that allows New York city not tohave to filter its water.
(49:19):
And we have to do a bunch ofthings to keep that way for lots
and lots of things, but it gotthat first waiver in the 1990s.
And when it got that waiver, thecity had to ramp up a bunch of
programs, not only to monitorwater quality, but to work on
streams and farms and also, youknow, wastewater plants, all
sorts of projects that we had togo out and do in the watershed,
(49:40):
understanding that what happenson the land affects the quality
of the water.
And so the city hired hundredsand hundreds of people all at
the same time.
And they joined a cohort ofemployees who were largely that
same age.
And so all those people who werehired at the same time, largely
boomers are now retired, gettingready to retire all at the same
(50:01):
time.
We've seen this already.
Uh, it's really like a buildingwave.
And so about 50 to 60% of ouremployees are eligible retire in
the next six years, which ishuge.
That's a huge rate of turnover.
And, um, we've begun to see someof the ramifications of this,
uh, already because people areleaving in larger and larger
(50:24):
numbers and no surprise JonathanNew York, city's no than others.
The pandemic made it such thatwe were not allowed to hire
people for a certain period oftime.
There was a hiring freeze thatwas well-publicized.
Um, and so, you know, we havebeen out there and we need to,
and we're getting out thereincreasingly to say, Hey, there
are going to be lots and lots ofjobs working on this water,
(50:45):
supply the largest in thecountry.
And it is a really diverse rangeof jobs.
It's not just scientists andengineers, it's administrative
folks, it's, uh, projectplanners, it's police officers,
it's stream experts.
It's geologists, it's you nameit right there.
You name a profession in theengineering and sciences and
support staff.
(51:05):
And we have it in an importantway at DP.
And we've been trying to get outthere and say, Hey, you know, as
you're leaving high school,that's the age we really want to
get to and going to college andthinking, Hey, what do I want to
do?
Uh, you know, for the next 40years of my life, uh, think
about us.
Um, the jobs are interesting.
(51:25):
We're doing groundbreakingresearch all the time at DP, uh,
in water science and otherdisciplines.
So that has been quitedifficult.
One of the things that, um,makes it difficult is some of
these jobs, people just don'twant to get into anymore.
Uh, go out and find a, uh, a 19year old guy or gal who says, I
(51:47):
want to be a certifiedwastewater treatment operator.
I mean, that's not high on thelist of things that people are
striving to be, but guess whatis good?
Paying honest that's essential.
Yeah.
Good benefits, good paying work.
Um, there are certain thingswhere the jobs are changing.
One of the jobs that we needmore and more people for in the
(52:08):
future is something calledinstrumentation specialist.
This is sort of like kind of a,like a little bit of electric
work and a little bit ofcomputer work all mixed into
one.
We got a lot of instruments outthere on the water supply that
are automated.
A good example is we have thesebuoys that sit on the reservoir
and on the underside of thebuoy, there's an instrument that
goes up and down throughout thefull depth of the reservoir all
(52:31):
day long, sell it sending, um,real-time water quality data
back to our 24 operated 24 houroperations center so that we can
send, can see the quality ofwater at any depth in any
reservoir at any time.
Well, guess what thoseinstruments need to be
calibrated.
They need to be fixed.
And instrumentation specialistsare the people who do that.
(52:52):
And because there are more,there are more of those
instruments.
You need more of thosespecialists.
So instrumentation specialistsis sort of one of the jobs in
the future.
That's going to be in greaterdemand.
So recruitment is going to bevery, very important.
Um, and it's not always easy,uh, because, um, folks don't
always think about these sortsof jobs when they're signing up
(53:14):
for their four year or two yearprogram.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
So Adam Bosch, thanks for being with patterns and
paradigms.
Um, if anyone listening knows ofa 19 old that is looking for a
job, these are actually reallycool jobs, supplying an
essential part of our quality oflife.
So if you need any help, justcontact us.
(53:39):
We'll put you in touch with Adamand Adam will help you figure
out a pathway.
So Adam, thanks for joining us.
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Thank you for tuning in to patterns and paradigms the
pattern podcast.
For more information about thisepisode, visit our website
pattern for progress.org forwardslash podcast.
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