The Quadrangle

Issue date: 10/1/08 Section: Features

photo courtesy of flashfood.com

Many Manhattan College students start their day with a shower in Overlook, Jasper, or Horan. Then they brush their teeth, and perhaps after make some tea or coffee. They carry Nalgene bottles to the gym and to class. All of these daily activities involve water - but how many students ever really stop and think about how the water gets into their faucet?
On September 16, Manhattan College students and faculty were given the opportunity to become a little more educated on exactly where their water comes from. The New York State Society of Professional Engineers, Tappan Zee Section of the American Society of Chemical Engineering, and the Department of Chemical Engineering, presented a talk entitled "History of the New York City Water Supply System" in the Scala Room of the Leo Engineering Building.
The speaker and professional engineer, Joel Miele Sr., was introduced as "having accomplished everything an engineer could hope to" in his career. Among many other accomplishments, Miele had served as the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for approximately 6 years. The Department of Environmental Protection is a government organization that is responsible for all of the drinking water in New York City, as well as other regulatory and safety issues regarding water.
In his talk, Miele discussed the interesting history behind the development of New York City's water supply system. In the 1600s, the main source of drinking water for New York (which was called New Amsterdam at the time) was a 48-acre pond in lower Manhattan. In the 1700s, the British seized New Amsterdam, occupied it, and renamed it New York. At this time, New York was made up of many farming communities and many people owned cattle, which means there was of course, a great deal of cattle excrement. Over time, too much of the cattle excrement was washed into the pond by rain water and New York's water source became undrinkable.
For some time after, New York City took to transporting its drinking water from Brooklyn, but in the 1800s the city experienced a great deal of water supply problems. The Great Fire of 1835 only made matters worse because so much of the city was lost in this tragedy. The city looked to John B. Jervis, a civil engineer, and Major David Bates Douglas, a military engineer, to solve the drinking water problem. The two men proposed a clean drinking water supply system that was the beginning of the water system we have today.

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