Finish the breakfast dishes, take a shower, flush the toilet, brush your teeth, boil some water for tea and then sit down to hear reporting and interviews on the city’s billion-gallon-a-day empire of water.
WNYC and City Limits teamed up last month for a series of radio stories and investigative articles on the city’s water system. Now, like a great summer beach-read that’s been turned into a blockbuster movie, the entire project has been produced as an hour-long special.
A coalition of water-quality groups outline ways that policymakers, city workers and individual residents can make a dent in the amount of untreated water that taints New York’s creeks, rivers and bays.
The proposal aims to reduce sewage overflows in the salt-water section of the resilient little river. But the bigger obstacles to fishing and swimming it might lie upstream.
New York City’s ultraviolet disinfection facility combines steel, light and water in an effort to prevent waterborne illnesses from afflicting New Yorkers.
Of all the challenges facing the city’s awe-inspiring water system, the most contentious might be playing out now at Flushing Bay, the Bronx River and other waterways, where a push to make city waters open to swimming and fishing is running into concerns over cost.
The departments of health and environmental protection log purchases of stomach medicine from major drug-store chains as part of an effort to spot water contamination.
The federally mandated plant in the Bronx is finally operating, but neighbors still wonder why a site that was supposed to save money ended up costing $2 billion more than planned.
FEMA deals didn’t work for many upstate residents affected by 2011’s Tropical Storm Irene. So New York’s DEP is offering to buy some homeowners out—a way to improve city-watershed relations and pick up small but important tracts of land.
Since 1997, New York City has spent $438 million to protect 135,149 acres of land in the Catskill/Delaware watershed, a land area greater than Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens combined. Decades-old resentment in watershed towns has eased, but there are still points of tension.
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
Support local, investigative journalism that has informed and empowered New Yorkers for 45 years.
Support local, investigative journalism that has informed and empowered New Yorkers for 45 years.
