Big Think Interview With Alex Matthiessen | Big Think

Big Think Interview With Alex Matthiessen

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A discussion with Alex Matthiessen, Riverkeeper of New York’s Hudson River and President of the organization Riverkeeper.

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Alex Matthiessen:

Alex Matthiessen is the President of Riverkeeper, a New York State-based clean water advocacy organization widely considered to be among the most successful non-profits of its kind. Prior to his tenure at Riverkeeper, Mr. Matthiessen was a Special Assistant at the U.S. Department of the Interior, where he developed the Green Energy Parks initiative. He has also served as a macroeconomic policy analyst in Indonesia for the Harvard Institute for International Development and worked at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Hudson River Improvement Fund, Catskill Mountainkeeper, and Waterkeeper Alliance.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Where does New York City's drinking water come from?

Alex Matthiessen: Okay, very good question, and surprisingly I would guess that if you surveyed New Yorkers on the street, only a small fraction of them would actually know where their water comes from. They might have some vague idea that it comes from somewhere upstate, but in fact New York City and Westchester County, so 8 million from the five boroughs of New York City plus a million for Westchester County, 9 million total, get their daily drinking water supply from a 2000 square mile area that mostly is in the Catskills, 1500 square miles of that is in the Catskill Mountains, and then the other 500 square miles is throughout Putnam and Westchester County. The system is basically based on capturing rainwater from rainfall that is moved down the mountainside and obviously gets collected through a system of streams and reservoirs, some natural reservoirs, natural lakes, and other man-made lakes, 19 of them in total that capture that water and then through a series of aqueducts that were built starting in the mid-19th century, all the way to the early part of the 20th century make their way through gravitation, there’s no pumps involved at, this is in other words basically from the source up in the Catskills down to New York City there is an elevation drop, it is very, very small, you know, per foot per mile but it is enough to keep the water moving through gravitation down to the city’s buildings and internal pipes.

So that’s essentially where the water comes from, about 90% of the supply, the 1.5 billion gallons that come to New York City every day comes from the Catskill Delaware system essentially which is basically the Catskill watershed which is the water that falls east off of the Catskill Mountains and the Delaware watershed which falls west of the Catskill Mountains and eventually would have made its way down to the Delaware River were it not captured in these upstate reservoirs. So 90% comes from that source, it’s a very, very clean source because of the relatively minor amount of development up in that region. The 10% roughly that comes from the east of Hudson System or the Westchester and Putnam system actually is not quite as clean. I mean it’s safe enough to drink but it has much more pressure on it and is much more exposed to potential contaminants because of the heavy development that’s happen in Putnam and Westchester over the last, you know, 50 to 100 years.

Just to back up a second but New Yorkers may not know that the source of their drinking water is unfiltered, it’s treated with a little bit of chlorine to hit basic pathogens, it’s treated with a little bit of fluoride to avoid tooth decay and beyond that it’s not filtered, it’s one of the last remaining unfiltered systems. So that’s why it tastes so delicious and it’s so clean. The problem is you’ve got to then protect the water at its source up in the Catskills and in east of Hudson. Unfortunately because of all the development of the east of Hudson part of the system the EPA decided at New York you gotta build a filtration plant that’s the only way you can absolutely safeguard that part of the water supply. The problem is of course is once you build that filtration plant, it takes pressure off of New York City, off of those upstate communities who live in the watershed to actually protect the water at its source and a filtration plant is not bullet proof. Now you can still have pathogens get through a filtration plant and cause outbreaks of disease.

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