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New York Times
25-03-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Salty Suburban Roads Are Clouding the Future of N.Y.C. Drinking Water
Road salt is leaching into the reservoirs that hold New York City's tap water and could make some of it unhealthy to drink by the turn of the century, according to a new study commissioned by city environmental officials. The study, released last week by the city's Department of Environmental Protection, found that while salt was edging upward throughout New York's vast watershed, it was especially pronounced in the New Croton Reservoir, just north of the city. In that supply, which provides about 10 percent of the city's drinking water, levels of chloride — a chemical found in salt and an indicator of salinity — tripled over the last 30 years. If the trend continues, drinking water from the New Croton Reservoir may not meet current safety standards by 2108, according to the report. While road salt is a main driver of salinity levels in drinking water throughout the United States, other contributing factors include wastewater treatment plant discharges and agriculture, according to the report. Elevated salt levels in fresh water can contribute to health issues like high blood pressure and can also damage the ecosystem, the study said. Reducing salinity levels throughout New York City's water system should start with more prudent use of road salt, said Rohit T. Aggarwala, the head of the environmental protection department, which manages the water supply and commissioned the report. 'We just need people who operate roads to start realizing that this is a chemical that we are adding to our environment, and we have to take that seriously,' Mr. Aggarwala said. Road salt is cheap and plentiful, but it is also dangerous for the environment and corrosive for infrastructure. In general, local municipalities, and often the state's Department of Transportation, make the decision to use salt on roadways — a crucial safety measure that melts ice. 'We understand that there is a delicate balance between protecting the environment and maintaining safe highways for motorists,' said Joseph Morrissey, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation. The department minimizes salt usage, Mr. Morrissey said, with methods that include adhering to prescribed application rates, calibrating equipment throughout the winter, training drivers on best practices and using brine, a liquid version of salt that is less concentrated but more expensive. Officials are focused on curbing the use of salt, while continuing to explore other affordable alternatives, like beet juice — which lessens salt's corrosive qualities when mixed with brine — and sand, which does not melt ice but provides traction. Recently, Pete Harckham, a Democratic state senator who represents parts of Westchester County and the Hudson Valley, introduced legislation to create a city and state task force that would explore the issue. 'We've got to use this as a teachable moment and rethink how we do things,' Mr. Harckham said. New York City's pristine tap water is a source of pride among residents and local leaders. Most of it, about 90 percent, comes from rural areas in the Catskill Mountains, a range that extends more than 125 miles north of New York City. It represents the largest unfiltered water supply in the United States. The remaining 10 percent from the New Croton Reservoir, a collection of 11 smaller reservoirs and three lakes, is filtered, but not for chloride. New Croton is in Westchester County, a relatively dense suburban area, which offers less of an opportunity for the natural environment to absorb runoff from salt on the road. In the less populated Catskills, more vacant land surrounds the water supply, and there have been only marginal increases of chloride levels, Mr. Aggarwala explained. Last fall, the city temporarily relied on the Croton reservoir for more of its drinking water when half the Catskills supply went offline for repairs to a major aqueduct. An unexpected drought halted the repairs. Should salinity levels continue to rise in the Croton reservoir, the city could lose a valuable resource, Mr. Aggarwala said. 'One of New York's greatest strengths is the fact that we have so many different sources of water, 19 reservoirs,' he said. 'If we lose the Croton system, that just makes New York City's water supply much less resilient, and that makes it much less reliable.' For several suburban towns that draw water directly from smaller reservoirs that feed into the New Croton, the salinity levels are more of an immediate concern. Somers, Yorktown and the City of Peekskill, all in Westchester, draw water from one of those smaller reservoirs, the Amawalk, where chloride levels could exceed safety standards in about 30 years, the study said. 'While I was alarmed by the report, I was not surprised in any way, because we've been dealing with this for some years now,' said Mr. Harckham, who represents many of these towns. Several private wells in the area have had to be taken offline because of salinity levels, he said. Methods that can help with over-salting roads, Mr. Harckham said, include thermal devices that can take a road's temperature, to avoid unnecessary applications. The solution, Mr. Harckham said, 'is an equation of knowledge, technology, best practices and money.'
Yahoo
22-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
There's too much salt in Westchester County reservoirs. The culprit? Rock salt from roads
So much rock salt has seeped into the water supply in the Lower Hudson Valley that a Westchester County reservoir that delivers drinking water to New York City might need to be shut down in 25 years. 'It will be too salty to drink,' Rohit T. Aggarwala, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection said during a press conference Friday in Croton Gorge Park, as water from the New Croton Dam cascaded down. Aggarwala came to discuss a new DEP study, which found rising levels of salinity in the Croton System reservoirs that provide water to New York City and Westchester County. Over a 30-year period, salt levels in the main New Croton Reservoir have tripled. At the current rate, the reservoir would reach the state's maximum allowable levels of chloride, salt's main component, by 2108. And the Amawalk Reservoir in Somers — one of the smallest of the Croton System's 12 reservoirs — might need to be shut down by 2050. Aggarwala likened the task ahead to government eradication efforts following studies linking pesticides and other contaminants to environmental harm. 'We now need to focus on road salt as something that is harming our environment and is going to undermine the infrastructure that our cities and our towns depend on every day,' Aggarwala said. The study said the reservoirs in Westchester County east of the Hudson River have abnormally high levels of salt, largely because of road salt runoff from the region's major thoroughfares — I-84, I-684 as well as the Taconic and Saw Mill parkways. Salt in drinking water can lead to hypertension and high blood pressure in humans and can do damage to watershed ecosystems, the study notes. Salt: Highway heads fear surge in rock salt costs if Gov. Hochul signs 'Buy American' bill To combat the rising levels, the DEP is encouraging the state and municipalities to reduce or eliminate the use of salt when de-icing roads and to consider alternatives like brine, calcium magnesium acetate and potassium acetate, the study said. State Sen. Pete Harckham and Assemblywoman MaryJane Shimsky, Democrats representing the Lower Hudson Valley, have introduced legislation to address concerns highlighted by the DEP study. 'We must take the corrective steps needed to protect this resource, and we must do it right away,' Shimsky said. 'If we don't, the damage to our residents, agriculture, and wildlife will be irreversible and the cost of replacing our water infrastructure far more expensive.' Harckham said wells in the northern Westchester County towns he represents have been shut down in recent years because of rising salt levels. 'You can look at that as the canary in the coal mine,' Harckham said. 'This is not about blame. This is about a teachable moment and a call to change behavior.' Tolls: Thruway toll evaders owe big bucks. How much? The legislation would evaluate the use of alternatives that would do less harm to the environment. The DEP study acknowledged the safety contributions of road salt. One study found that accident rates are eight times higher before salt spreading than they are after it's spread. And road salt use reduced traffic accident costs by 85%. Thomas C. Zambito covers energy, transportation and economic growth for the USA Today Network's New York State team. He's won dozens of state and national writing awards from the Associated Press, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Deadline Club and others during a decades-long career that's included stops at the New York Daily News, The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Record of Hackensack. He can be reached at tzambito@ This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Westchester, NYC reservoirs have high salt levels from road rock salt
New York Times
18-03-2025
- General
- New York Times
A Second Act for Gatehouses at the Central Park Reservoir?
Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll learn about the gatehouses in Central Park that the city wants to repurpose. And, with 99 days to the Democratic primary for mayor, we'll also get details on how much money the candidates have raised so far. To many New Yorkers, the reservoir in Central Park is a body of water surrounded by a 1.5-mile path they can run, jog or just walk on. Rohit Aggarwala sees it that way. He jogs there himself. But Aggarwala, the commissioner of the city's Department of Environmental Protection, also sees possibilities in the two stone gatehouses at opposite ends of the reservoir. The city is looking to repurpose the two gatehouses, built during the Civil War as control points for water from upstate flowing into Manhattan through aqueducts. The reservoir no longer feeds into the city's water supply; the gatehouses now control only the water levels in the reservoir. They were designed as monuments, as municipal structures often were in the 19th century. The south gatehouse, not far from Fifth Avenue and the 86th Street Transverse, is topped by an imposing clock with whitish Roman numerals on a dark round face. According to a description from Aggarwala's agency, the back door leads to a balcony with 'stunning views' of the site (whose official name is the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir), Central Park and the cityscape. But inside that gatehouse? It 'isn't exactly pretty,' Aggarwala said. The factorylike space is dominated by water-pumping machinery that probably predates World War II. The question is how to adapt the gatehouses. Aggarwala is looking for ideas and 'appropriate entities' to tackle a transformation. He said the south gatehouse 'could be a museum of water' or perhaps 'a classroom where kids come and learn about the water system.' But nothing is set. His agency has issued a 'request for information,' a call for ideas from groups that could develop plans to use the gatehouses as 'multifunctional space accessible to the public.' The deadline to respond is April 7. Aggarwala said that the agency would remove 'equipment we don't need anymore' — huge motors that once drove pumps to increase the pressure of reservoir water going into mains. But the equipment to control levels in the reservoir will remain. It was decommissioned as a source of drinking water in 1993. 'There was no controlling what a runner might throw in,' he said. The reservoir was built from 1858 to 1862 as a holding tank for water from the city's new upstate watersheds. At first, Aggarwala said, the gatehouses controlled 'how much water flowed down Fifth Avenue' to two other reservoirs, one on the site of the Great Lawn in the park, the other at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, where the New York Public Library was built in the 1890s. The city invited the public to see the reservoir before it was filled for the first time. The New York Times was awe-struck by the pipes and valves controlling the reservoir, noting that there was enough water 'to supply the entire city, at the present rate of consumption, for about a month.' That's about what the city uses in a day now, Aggarwala said. The level is currently low because the reservoir has not been refilled since a drought watch was lifted in January. The city's reservoirs were 83 percent full on Friday, though the normal level at this time of year is 92.4 percent. The gatehouses were not just functional when they were new; they were something to look at — although some New Yorkers didn't like what they saw. William H. Rideing panned them in Scribner's magazine in 1877 as 'very conspicuous and, also, very ugly because they pretend to be decorative.' He loved the look of the machinery inside, though: 'Every bit of brass and steel work is as bright as a new pin.' The gatehouses, like the reservoir itself, reflected a level of civic pride that was 'right up there with Lincoln saying we will keep building the Capitol' in Washington during the Civil War, Aggarwala said, adding: 'New York City said we would keep building the water system' and the gatehouses, which he called 'great examples of New York City building style from that period — a lot of ornamentation that said, 'This is New York City investing in its future.'' Expect a sunny day with a high in the low 60s. The evening will be clear, and the temperature will drop into the mid-40s. In effect until March 31 (Eid al-Fitr). The latest New York news Money pours in for mayoral candidates The Democratic primary for mayor is 99 days away, and the campaign contributions are rolling in. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a progressive from Queens, are leading the Democrats who want to unseat Mayor Eric Adams, whose campaign declined to say before a Monday deadline how much he had taken in. The deadline was for the candidates to submit their most recent fund-raising reports. The figures gave an indication of who seems best positioned to spend heavily on advertising. Cuomo, who has led in polls, raised $1.5 million from more than 2,800 donors in the 13 days after he announced his candidacy on March 1. Among those donating to his campaign were Geoffrey Berman, whom President Trump fired as the U.S. attorney in 2020; Jessica Seinfeld, a cookbook author who is married to the comedian Jerry Seinfeld; and Cuomo's former wife, Kerry Kennedy. Cuomo said he had been 'humbled by the depth and breadth of the outpouring of support.' He expects to receive matching funds based on $330,000 in eligible contributions from donors who live in the city. Mamdani has raised more than $840,000 over the past two months and has more than 16,000 donors — an unusually good showing for a candidate who was not widely known until recently. Among other candidates, Brad Lander, the city comptroller, raised $225,000 during the recent filing period that ran from January to March, bringing his total fund-raising haul to roughly $6.7 million with public matching funds. And Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker who announced her campaign on March 5, raised $128,000 in her first five days in the race. Her campaign said she had not yet met the threshold for the city's public matching-funds program, which awards $8 for every dollar donated by a city resident, up to $250 per contributor. That puts her campaign at a disadvantage; the earliest she could receive public matching funds would be May 30, less than a month before the primary. At the theater Dear Diary: I went with good friends to a performance of the Nancy Harris play 'The Beacon' at the Irish Repertory Theater on 22nd Street. It is a powerful play about a dysfunctional family hiding secrets, and it hit home hard for me. 'Did you like the play?' one of my friends asked me innocently after the performance. Still reeling, I said I would rather not discuss it and that I had found the play difficult to take. A friendly woman standing nearby spoke up. 'I'm a psychologist,' she said with a smile, 'in case you'd like to schedule a session.' — Howard Husock Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@ Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
