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SPEAKER_06: Howdy, everybody. I hope you're having a lovely Saturday wherever you are in the world. Chuck here with a Saturday select selection, and I'm going to go with from November 2019. not even so long ago as The Crow Flies. The episode is NYC Water colon, an engineering marvel. I love New York City. Everyone knows that. I go on and on about that city on the show and I'm constantly amazed that that city runs and that the trash gets taken away and the mail gets delivered and that people have enough drinking water and water to bathe in and cook with. And so it's a pretty unique situation there in New York, how they get their water. And here's that story. Please to enjoy.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_07: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's guest producer Andrew. This is Stuff You Should Know. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. Guest producer Andrew. This is Stuff You Should Know. Let's get busy.
SPEAKER_06: I'm excited about this one.
SPEAKER_07: This was your pick. And I was like, what is Chuck talking about? Were you really? Yes, and then Chuck, I happened to stumble upon, I don't know what I was looking for, but an email from somebody who sent like a Google doc or something that was a list of episodes that we said we should do. And people have sent those in before, but this one was kind of condensed and that was on there. So I've stumbled upon your dirty little secret.
SPEAKER_06: I don't think that's where I got it. Oh really? I don't think so, but maybe. Okay. I just know that I am always fascinated by not only New York City, but by the fact that New York City functions.
SPEAKER_07: With that many people and all that?
SPEAKER_06: Everything. All amazing to me that that city functions with that many people, that many buildings. I want to do an episode on trash removal.
SPEAKER_07: Okay. I want to do one on Mail. On wastewater treatment. Yeah, oh yeah. Not just New York in general though. That's been long brewing. Are you okay with that? Yeah. I mean, we can mention New York or whatever. Big thanks to Dave Ruzdo, one of our great writers.
SPEAKER_06: They put this together and it's really, really fascinating.
SPEAKER_07: Dave's just an amazing human. He's great. All of our writers are amazing for sure. Dave is great as well. He's one of a few select amazing people. Right. The reason why New York, why anybody would ask about New York's water is because if you've ever interacted with a New Yorker, they talk about their water a lot. It's like kind of a thing in New York where they're like, are tap waters the best water in the country? They have a lot of stuff to back that up with. So much so that they say this water is actually the reason why our bagels and our pizza are so good.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, we were both just there for our final shows of the year at the Bell House, thanks to the people who came out. Yes. They were great, a lot of fun. And by the way, the guy that fell asleep on the front row on night number two, I think it was night number two, I was walking down the street and he randomly passed by driving in a car and rolled down his window and said, hey man, he said great show the other night.
SPEAKER_07: I was waiting for him to say, is that Freedom Rock?
SPEAKER_06: And I said, thanks dude. I was like, front row. And he was so excited that I remembered. That's cute. And he said, front row. And he drove on before I had a chance to say, you fell asleep.
SPEAKER_07: He's like, I feel like I was there. Maybe I felt like a dream too. I don't know.
SPEAKER_06: We were just there and there are many, many restaurants in New York where there will be like a water cooler or a place where you can help yourself to your own cup of water. And it will have a big sign on it that says, New York City tap water. In proud, all caps, underlined letters.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. And they mean like they're just getting water out of the tap. Whereas in other cities, that's a dirty, shameful secret that people don't talk about. That's right. In New York, they proudly boast about it. And just the fact that New York or any New Yorker in the city gets water at all is pretty spectacular. It's like you said, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of buildings and something like more than a billion gallons of water flow into New York through the taps every day.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: I said day with a D.
SPEAKER_06: Yes, it is the largest water system in the United States. People from all over the world, government officials, fly in and take meetings with the New York City water people just to see like, how have you done it?
SPEAKER_07: They're just a gog. How could we do better? So that's impressive enough that a billion, more than a billion gallons of water is delivered every day to New Yorkers. Pretty great. But the idea that you can just drink it straight from the tap and it is 90% unfiltered, that is a truly impressive feat.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and by 90% unfiltered, we mean 90% of the water is unfiltered and 10% is filtered.
SPEAKER_07: Right, and you might say, well, how can you just filter 90% of the water? Well, it comes from different places. So 90% of the water comes from two places, two watersheds that combined are called the Catskill Delaware watershed or water system, I think. And then the other one from the Croton, I always wanna say Cro-toan, but from the Croton Reservoir, that 10% is actually filtered. And we'll get into all of that. But 90% of New York's water is not, it doesn't go through a filtering process. And that makes New York one of only five major cities in the United States to get a waiver from the EPA that says your water is so deliciously pure and delightful that you don't need to filter it. Almost every other city has to have a filtering process before it gets delivered to TAPS.
SPEAKER_06: That's right, and the other four, naturally, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, the one that's a bit of a surprise is Boston, Massachusetts. What?
SPEAKER_07: That's how surprising it is, Chuck. Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_06: So let's talk a little bit about the history of New York and their water. Because back in the day, we've always talked about what a disgusting disease-ridden poop and horse urine-ridden place New York City was.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, like supposedly there was a good 12 inches of horse manure on the street at all times before they really started cleaning their place up. Yeah, it's pretty bad. I think that was in the When Cries Typhoid Mary episode, which was a great one.
SPEAKER_06: Another great New York episode. So if we're talking New Amsterdam, pre-New York City, they got water where you would think, from ponds and natural springs, underwater springs, and they had a 48-acre pond, it's about 60 feet deep, in Tribeca, what is now Tribeca, called the Colect, and also the Little Colect that was just south of there. And that name comes from the Dutch word kalk, which means small body of water.
SPEAKER_06: And the Colect was where they got their water for a long time until the city let some tanners, built a tannery on the shores of the Colect. Not smart New York. Which ruined everything.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, because it started to get polluted. They also were able to drill wells and stuff around places where people pooped and peed and then dumped their poop and pee. It was a dirty, dirty place, because this is pre-germ theory, or at least around the time that germ theory was being developed and people didn't understand it. And I think it was our great stink episode where they traced a cholera epidemic to a public well, a public water pump. John Snow, if I remember correctly, did that. And this would have been around the time that New Yorkers were suffering from cholera epidemics, one of which took place in, I think, the 1830s, 1832. It killed 3,500 New Yorkers. And that was a substantial amount of the population at the time. And another 100,000 New Yorkers had to flee just to get away from this cholera epidemic. And it was because their sewage and their water was coexisting in very unhealthy ways. So New York said, maybe we should try something else. Let's look a little further outside of the city where we're dumping our waste and everything and see if we can get our water from there. And they did. They built the Croton Reservoir. They dammed the river and reservoir collected and they said, now we have some beautiful, pure water. We will never need to do anything again to get our water.
SPEAKER_06: That's right. Previous to that, though, in the 18th century, they had these public pumps, like you were talking about, on street corners, about every four blocks or so, a big wooden pump where you would get your water from underground streams and springs and stuff. But there were only a few of these that actually delivered good water. A lot of it was really brackish and gross tasting. And Americans and early European settlers obviously loved their tea. And so they marked, this was almost like an early Yelp or whatever. They had these pumps that actually delivered, like the two or three good pumps in the city that delivered good water labeled tea water pumps.
SPEAKER_07: Like it was good enough to use for tea?
SPEAKER_06: Good enough to use for making good tea. Okay. And so they would go to these tea water pumps. You would have to buy the water. The best one was apparently at Chatham and Roosevelt. There was another in sort of what the Lower East Side is today that was a good tea water pump. And this worked out for a long time until
SPEAKER_06: the collect and all this stuff, it started to sort of get nasty and stinky. And so they built a canal to channel that water into the river. Like we gotta get rid of it and drain this thing. Right. So they build this canal 40 feet wide. They channel it right after they finish it. This canal begins to sink. And in 1821, it got so bad, the smell was so bad that they eventually just covered up the canal. And guess what that became? I don't know.
SPEAKER_07: Central Park. Canal Street. Oh. How about that? You're so stupid.
SPEAKER_07: I wasn't even in the right part of the city. That's all right. We've even done an episode on Central Park and that wouldn't have, forget it. Yes, Canal Street, obviously.
SPEAKER_06: That's where Canal Street came from. There was literally a canal and then eventually an underground sewage system running under Canal Street. Right. And there's another cool little tidbit. If you want your little New York history, if you like to walk around on subways and tell people about cool things. Yeah. One of the first public reservoirs in the city was dug by Aaron Burr and his Manhattan company.
SPEAKER_06: And that didn't work out. They transported it through wooden logs as pipes buried beneath the city. Somebody found a piece of that wooden log.
SPEAKER_07: It's in one of the museums up there now.
SPEAKER_06: Oh, no way. Yeah. That is very cool. But the water didn't taste great and it didn't work out for Aaron Burr. So he, Shane, he still kept the Manhattan company but he got into banking and the Manhattan company became Chase Manhattan Bank.
SPEAKER_07: I saw somewhere that that was his aim all along, that the water thing was just basically a fleece to raise money to found this bank. Oh, really? And that that's why the water was so shoddy and the delivery was so shoddy. But what they were selling was so bad that supposedly the horses wouldn't even drink it. So it was a scam. It was basically a scam. Aaron Burr was not the greatest historical American. Shot Alexander Hamilton. I know, that's enough right there.
SPEAKER_07: Right, and then also scammed a bunch of people out of their water investment. That's right. Because I mean, if you want to invest in a bank, you want to invest in a bank. If you want to invest in a water outfit, you want to invest in a water outfit. You want people to be above the boards with stuff like that. That's right. I'm sorry, that's my tirade.
SPEAKER_06: So you mentioned the Croton Dam and the Croton Reservoir. I want to say Croaton as well. That became and that aqueduct became operational and things were okay. But then a tragedy struck with the Great Fire of 1835.
SPEAKER_07: Yes, which actually I guess that the Great Fire took place right before the reservoir was opened, which is why the Great Fire was so bad. So in 1835, on a night in December, a warehouse caught fire and it just leveled lower Manhattan. Like just destroyed something like 17 city blocks, 50 acres of the most densely populated part of New York at the time. And luckily only two people died, which two is too many. But considering that it was 17 city blocks that got reduced to ash, that's not bad actually. Especially considering that the way that they ended up fighting this fire was by setting buildings on the perimeter on fire, because they didn't have the amount of water that they needed.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, the reason for that, it was just sort of really bad luck. There were two smaller fires that drained our, our, like I'm a New Yorker, listen to me. You're an honorary New Yorker, I would guess. It drained the cisterns, the reserve cisterns that they had. And because of those two smaller fires, they didn't have enough to fight the great fire. And the long and short of all of this is New York said, we gotta really speed up this Croton reservoir work.
SPEAKER_07: Yep, and they did. And so the Croton reservoir was brought online in the middle of the 19th century, and they had a big old parade and everything. And it delivered something like 90 million gallons of delicious pure water to New York in the middle of the 19th century. It was a really big deal, and it worked really well for a very long time. But there was also, they built the Murray Hill reservoir. So the Croton reservoir would be where the water collected upstate. And then they built an aqueduct system, which is still around in parts today, an elevated aqueduct, to what's called the Murray Hill reservoir, which is a four acre above ground swimming pool, basically.
SPEAKER_06: It's pretty cool if you look at pictures.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it was like a real spot in the city while it was around, I think something till 1842 to 1900, it was around, and people used to take strolls around it and make paintings of it and that kind of thing. And it is where the New York Public Library is now today, where the Ghostbusters did some of their early work. That's right. Right, but it worked really well for the time. But then as New York grew and grew and grew, it became very painfully obvious, yet again, that New York had outgrown its water supply.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, they needed more water, 90 million gallons a day wasn't enough. And then what made matters worse was in 1898, New York City officially made it a declaration that we are now not just Lower Manhattan, of course they didn't call it Lower Manhattan at the time. That was just sort of where the city ended. They called it Manahatta. Yeah, Manahatta.
SPEAKER_07: I saw that episode, by the way. It was one of the better ones ever. Which one? Of What We Do in the Dark. Oh, that's right. Where they go to party in Manhattan.
SPEAKER_06: Manahatta. What We Do in the Shadows? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm so stupid. That's all right. The five boroughs were included in 1898 officially. So New York and the water needed to get to the people was officially grown to more than three million people by the time the 20th century turned.
SPEAKER_07: Right, which is just precious today. Three million New Yorkers, oh my gosh, what will they do? So they started to look upstate again because they had hit upon a pretty good idea. The city is a cesspool. We need our water from outside of the cesspool. And they started looking upstate. So this time they looked up to the Catskills and they found two watersheds, which we did an episode on watersheds that I would love to forget, but it came up just now. Oh, I thought it was good, no? Oh man, it was horrendous. Was it? Yes, I thought it was terrible and boring. January 2017? I don't remember when it came out. Like I said, I tried to forget that it ever happened. I thought it was pretty good. But anyway, so a watershed is basically a specific topographical area where rain, snow, whatever precipitation falls down into this area and is delivered to a specific creek, river, stream, something like that that eventually empties into like a lake or a reservoir or something like that. So there's two watersheds, the Delaware and the Catskill watershed that put together, create something like 2,000 square miles of water catching goodness. And it delivers it to a number of different reservoirs. And that is now today where New York gets like 90% of its water.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so obviously they had to dam up rivers to create these reservoirs. And this all happened in the early 1900s. And then finally they were like, great, we've got all these reservoirs in the Catskills. But let me remind you, we're on the Lower East Side of Manhattan surrounded by horse urine. And a lot of it. And poop. We need our fresh water, how do we get it here? So in 1917, the engineers of New York City completed the 92-mile Catskill Aqueduct, which is amazing. It's basically a big concrete tunnel that sends water 92 miles from the Catskills down to New York. It's as wide as 30 feet in some places. It is not a tunnel the entire length, as we will see here in a minute. Not a continuous tunnel. Right. I'm not sure what that means. What is it, just like open at some point?
SPEAKER_07: There's parts of it that aren't technically a tunnel in that it's a covered trench. Okay. They cut a trench and then they covered it back up, which I don't know how you do that, but it's not technically a tunnel like a circle or a tube. Interesting.
SPEAKER_06: And here is to me one of the facts of the show. You get this water down there in the aqueduct and you get to the Hudson River, and what are you gonna do? You gotta go under it.
SPEAKER_07: Right? To me it'd just be like, just pump it in the Hudson and hope it comes out the other side. But then I would have gotten fired immediately when I raised that idea. He's no engineer.
SPEAKER_06: No, he's a sham. He's a rapscallion. So it gets to the Hudson River and then it goes way down into the ground, about 1100 feet below sea level, and then climbs back up the other side and it does all this via gravity.
SPEAKER_07: Yes, and they did that not just to show off, but because they decided, I read this awesome, you know how I'm always like, read the contemporary articles. I read one from 1907 where they were talking about the construction of the aqueduct and they said that the reason why they were going down that far is because they wanted to hit bedrock because it would be fisher free, meaning there would be no leakage, and they could just pump the water through the hole that they bored in the bedrock. Well, they thought the bedrock was gonna be about 500 feet down. And by 1907, when they wrote the Scientific American article they'd reached like 700 feet, still hadn't hit it. It ended up being like 1100 feet below sea level where they finally hit bedrock. And that's why they had to drill so far down. And they drilled a tunnel, a vertical shaft from the Hudson down to that tunnel. And they built like a tube to pressurize it. So the water 1100 feet under the Hudson is at like 15 tons per square foot of pressure, which also helps. But the fact that there's no pumps or anything, it's all gravity and pressure driven.
SPEAKER_06: Yes, and sadly though, that story has a sad ending because it took so long that their Fisher Free and 03 t-shirts were all rendered useless.
SPEAKER_03: What?
SPEAKER_07: No? I don't know. That was a great joke. I'm gonna go back and listen to it and I'll probably think it's hilarious. So compliments on it in advance.
SPEAKER_06: Oh man, that was a quality joke.
SPEAKER_07: Fisher Free and 03. Oh, gotcha, okay, sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotcha. All right, we're all together now. Okay, that was a pretty good joke.
SPEAKER_06: Geez, should we take a break? After that, yeah. All right, let's take a break. We'll talk a little bit more about this so-called aqueduct right after this.
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SPEAKER_09: Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.
SPEAKER_07: Okay, Chuck, so we've got the Catscale Aqueduct delivering water. There's another one too called the Delaware Aqueduct and this one actually is like a genuine tunnel. Yes, it's 85 miles completed in 44. I'm not gonna make a t-shirt joke about that. I'm just gonna make a joke about that. It's a little bit of a joke. It's a little bit of a joke, but you've got the aqueduct
SPEAKER_06: delivering water. It's a little bit of a joke. Not gonna make a t-shirt joke about that. And it is still the longest continuous tunnel in the world at 85 miles and they did this all, you know, just this digging process is amazing in and of itself. Digging these tunnels and these trenches with steam shovels and pouring the concrete tunnel, which I was like, how do you do that even? You do the bottom half, let it set, and then you do the top half. And let that set. So they were like Charles Bronson in The Great Escape. They were digging tunnels.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I mean, we're talking like dynamite and stuff like that. Like they really did it the old school way to build these aqueducts and they're still in use today, so much so that there's three tunnels. Tunnel number one and tunnel number two have been in operation since 1917 and 1936. They've never stopped operating. They've never been stopped up and drained and inspected in over 100 years for tunnel number one.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I think the current memo going around is, I'm sure it's fine.
SPEAKER_07: Well, so they're building tunnel number three and they decided to start building tunnel number three in 1954. They actually started in 1970. They are still not done with tunnel number three. That's amazing. Parts of it are online and when it does fully come online, tunnel number three will have a capacity enough so that they can individually stop and drain and inspect and repair tunnel number one and then eventually tunnel number two. So that's the plan. Yeah, tunnel number three will save the other two and it's good that they're doing it now, but I saw that it's gonna be fully operational in 2021, they think. Oh, wow. So we're almost there. Almost, man.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's New York's longest running municipal project. Five billion dollar price tag so far and counting, I guess. And then those three tunnels are two and however many parts of three are working, deliver 1.3 gallons of water a day through a network of mains and then individual pipes leading to apartments and homes and businesses and skyscrapers and all of those pipes, if you total them up, would lay out about 7,000 miles.
SPEAKER_07: That's pretty impressive. I would also like to point out that I think you meant 1.3 billion gallons. What'd I say? 1.3 gallons. Did I really? Which would be hilarious that they went to all this trouble, spent all this money and they're like, we can crank out 1.3 gallons a day, New York, gather around and get your water.
SPEAKER_06: I was still thinking about my t-shirt joke. It was a good joke, man. And here's the kicker too, another great fact of the show, only 5% of all of the city's water relies on pumps to get to its final destination, which means your tap.
SPEAKER_07: It's pretty awesome. Yeah, so that means that it can't break down or if something does happen, they still have things like gravity to help things along, it's great. So the reason why the EPA gave New York a waiver and said you don't have to filter the water coming from the Catskill and the Delaware watersheds is because-
SPEAKER_06: Because Giuliani greased the palms of the EPA.
SPEAKER_07: Exactly, well, it started out as so pure and pristine and just great water to begin with, but they have taken steps along the way to ensure that it stayed that way. Because one of the things that happened with the Croton Reservoir is development was allowed to grow up around it, agriculture was allowed to pollute it. It just got, it turned. And after that, the EPA, I think in the 90s, the late 90s said, yep, you guys have to start filtering that water, it's no longer unfilterable. It's not drinkable as is. So they had to start filtering. It used to be 100% of New York's water was unfiltered. That Croton Reservoir now is 10% that is filtered. So they learned a valuable lesson from that. And now they're very proactive in keeping the Delaware and Catskill Reservoir, watershed water, from becoming corrupted by things like development
SPEAKER_06: and agriculture. Yeah, and by, you know, the lesson they learned is money. Because you might be thinking, like what's the big deal? Why don't they just filter all of it? It's a lot cheaper to take care of the land and make sure you never have to filter it than to install a filtering plant.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, because they estimate that a filtering plant would cost something like $10 billion up front and then $100 million a year to operate. New York is spending something like $1 billion every several years to protect the Delaware and the Catskill watersheds. So it is an enormous investment. But also it's great because it's natural water that's unfiltered.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and you know, they do this in a number of ways, aside from buying up 40% of the land, which was a good move, and making sure nothing happens to it. Yep, so New York City owns a lot of land upstate.
SPEAKER_07: Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_07: Just FYI.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, 40%. Yeah. That's a lot of land. It is. Not 40% of New York state, but 40% of the property around the Catskill and Delaware watersheds. They also did things like, hey, let's look at all the wastewater treatment facilities upstream and let's invest a lot of money in upgrading those. Hey, all you people that have septic tanks that are falling apart, that matters, so we're gonna reimburse you 5,200 homeowners. Yeah, that's impressive. Yeah, install a new septic tank and we're gonna pay for it. Yep. They removed dead trees. They replaced those with little sapling trees who apparently have roots that are young and can absorb a lot of harmful nutrients from that rainwater. And here's another good fact of the show. Some of the water from those reservoirs, or from that watershed, can take up to a full year to make its way down to the tap that you're drinking out of.
SPEAKER_07: That's a good one. I like that one. It's almost like how long it takes sunlight to reach us. I knew you were gonna say that. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. They also, did you talk about farmers?
SPEAKER_06: The only difference between those stats is you don't have to explain what a photon is. You can just say water.
SPEAKER_07: It's a tiny packet of light. It's the carrier of electromagnetic energy. That's right. What did you ask right before that? Did you talk about the farmers, how they train farmers upstate too?
SPEAKER_06: I did not.
SPEAKER_07: So they say, hey, you hicks, you're gonna learn these techniques. Oh man. I'm just kidding, I love farmers. I would actually, as a matter of fact, Chuck, when I retire, I really, really want a small, working farm. Oh yeah? Very small. Like what do you want? Like a tenth of an acre small.
SPEAKER_06: No, no, no, what kind of stuff do you want to farm? What do you want on it?
SPEAKER_07: Oh, I don't care. Animals? Yeah, oh yeah, some animals, but just having pigs around, not to eat or milk, but to, Pig milk, delicious. To like basically, but to like, to churn up like a field, so that I can plan it the next year and move the pigs to the next part of the land. And that kind of stuff, or chickens to just walk around and eat their eggs and things like that. All right, so you want some chickens, some pigs,
SPEAKER_06: you want some, Probably a couple goats. A couple of goats, you want some planting, you want to farm some plants and vegetables.
SPEAKER_07: Sure, yeah, but mainly just to have something to do, like with the earth. So I was 100 million percent teasing when I said that New York was calling the farmers hicks. New York probably did call the farmers hicks, but I wasn't condoning that. I was just making a joke.
SPEAKER_06: Right, you're the guy who wants a tenth of an acre one day to do something on that you're not sure.
SPEAKER_07: Those pigs are gonna be like, this is some pretty tight quarters around here. Oh, you know what else I would do? What? And I would need more than a tenth of an acre for this. Raise bees, that is where I will eventually raise bees. It's on Josh's farm.
SPEAKER_06: Well, brother, you better get some land soon because it's leaving at a rapid pace.
SPEAKER_07: Land is leaving?
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I mean, people are buying land. I remember my parents looking at land when I was like 10 years old, and they didn't buy it. They said it's leaving. And it's a different deal now. It's a lot harder to find the land that you want. You know, people bought it all up.
SPEAKER_07: I know, and you can still get it, but you gotta pay through the nose for it.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, or it's up to them if they wanna sell it or not. Sure. We're getting sloppy seconds.
SPEAKER_07: Oh, God. Oh, man, that's gonna be one of those things that our younger listeners is gonna be in college smoking pot in a dorm room, and it'll just hit them what you just said, like 15 years on. Oh, goodness.
SPEAKER_06: So you mentioned the Croton Watershed needs the filtering, and they're trying to avoid that at all costs with the other watersheds, but the Croton Water Supply, when they built this filtering system, it cost $3.2 billion, and it's under a golf course in New Jersey.
SPEAKER_07: Which is so appropriate. That's where the tainted water is, under a golf course in Jersey. In Bedminster, perhaps. I don't know what that is, but it sounds right.
SPEAKER_06: Oh, some people will get that one.
SPEAKER_07: New York's like, hey, you Hicks, build a golf course over this. New York just calls everybody else Hicks, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_06: That's right, they do. When we fly in, they say, welcome, Hicks.
SPEAKER_07: So have we taken our second break yet?
SPEAKER_06: No, we probably should, though. This is a good time.
SPEAKER_07: Okay, we're gonna take another break, and we're gonna come back and explain what New York does due to its water and whether or not it is a secret ingredient in bagels and pizza. During the holidays, many suffer from SAD, or streaming annoyance disorder. SAD is caused by too many streaming apps and passwords and the inability to find something to watch. But Prime Video simplifies your streaming so you can find your holiday happy place. Run or buy your favorites, head on hundreds of channels, and get classics or new releases like Candy Cane Lane, starring Eddie Murphy, included with Prime, in one app with one password. Find your holiday happy place, Prime Video. Restrictions apply. See amazon.com slash Amazon Prime for details.
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SPEAKER_10: All right, Chuck.
SPEAKER_07: So one thing that you're gonna wanna say, if you're a New Yorker and you're boasting about your tap water, there are some things you should know. Number one, it's chlorinated. Number two, it's been run through a UV filter. Even if it hasn't been filtered, filtered, there's still things that are done to it. It's not like it's coming straight out of the CAT skills into your tap.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, they take it very seriously, obviously. Here's a good stat. In one year, there are more than 15,000 water samples taken and analyzed at the source. So this is upstream. They have AI, well not AI, or is it AI?
SPEAKER_07: There's AI involved somehow. There always is.
SPEAKER_06: I always ask if it's AI. I always ask you, because you know. Sure, I know. Thanks to The End of the World with Josh Clark. Oh, thanks for the plug. Still available on iTunes. The iHeart podcast app or wherever you find your podcasts.
SPEAKER_07: Wow, that wasn't just a plug, that was an ad. So they have these robotic buoys
SPEAKER_06: that monitor the Kinsico Reservoir, one of the reservoirs that feeds down into New York. And these things take 1.9 million measurements a year and wirelessly transmit that back to the Department of Environmental Protection in New York.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, which is pretty awesome. And they had a buoy before, but they had to remove it in winter because ice would mess with it. And this new one apparently is ice-loving. Oh yeah? Yeah. They also, if you walk down the street, there's something like 1,300, no. 965. 965 little gray boxes that if you could open up, you would find a little sink and a faucet. It's adorable. Maybe a little sample size of L'Occitane soap. And that's a water sampling station. It says NYDEP, Department of Environmental Protection. And scientists walk up to these things, unlock them and take samples and test for all sorts of different things to make sure that the water getting to New York is good.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it says more than that. It says New York City Drinking Water Sampling Station on the front of it.
SPEAKER_07: Oh wow, they really. They really spell it out. Yeah, it said Fisher Free in 03. Stamped on there.
SPEAKER_06: So they're testing, they take 1,300 water samples a month. I'm not sure if you said that, but they were from these particular stations. And they do all kinds of tests. They're testing obviously for turbidity, which is cloudiness, pH, chlorine, bacteria. Does it stink? Like all kinds of tests that they're doing.
SPEAKER_07: Right. And usually the New York City water is going to pass all these tests. Like there's not gonna be a problem. This is just a extra little quality assurance that they're doing. Because by the time it reaches these testing stations, that's where it's going to the taps anyway. It's tapping into the tap water basically. That's right. So that 10% of water goes through a couple extra steps that the other 90% doesn't go through. One of the first things it does in a treatment plan is it's mixed with alum, which is a component of aluminum, right? And alum attracts organic compounds and basically says rise to the surface with me and creates flock, which is a white frothy sludge. And all that is just skimmed off the top. That's step one.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, this sounds so gross and it is. But like in the end you get your good water. The next thing that happens is it flows through these giant water filters. Dave put it as like these giant Brita filters. It's essentially sort of the same thing. And this is just gonna further purify the water passing through the layers and layers of stuff like sand and anthracite. And then comes the ultraviolet light that you referenced earlier, right?
SPEAKER_07: Yes, and 100% of New York's water is sent through a UV filter because UV filters are really good at disrupting reproduction of bacteria. And so all water is zapped, but that 90% of water that's not filtered, that goes through a separate UV filtering plant that's built just for those. That's right. And that's where like a billion gallons of water a day are zapped with UV lights. But so all of that gets combined together eventually and comes out your tap. And New Yorkers drink it straight from the tap literally. It is very bizarre because I don't know if it's a placebo effect or what, but I feel like it does taste pretty good for tap water. It does. But at the same time, I typically don't drink just straight tap water. So my frame of reference isn't necessarily right there. You wanna hear something funny?
SPEAKER_06: You know what my brother's favorite water is? And it's probably just a bit, but he claims it's true. Hose water.
SPEAKER_07: Oh, I know what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, like when you're watering the car or watering the car when you're washing the car.
SPEAKER_07: You're right, grow car.
SPEAKER_06: When you're watering your mini so it grows into an SUV.
SPEAKER_07: Right, so I think the reason why Scott is onto something is because when you're drinking from a hose, it's summertime and it's hot out.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and you're probably working hard.
SPEAKER_07: Maybe so. It definitely does taste different for sure.
SPEAKER_06: So when it comes to New York water, everyone says it's the best in the country. There are rankings actually, and it is 13 out of 100 metro areas in the US.
SPEAKER_07: So it's not the best literally by definition, not the best water in the country.
SPEAKER_06: You gotta move to Arlington, Texas if you want. And this was from 10 years ago, but I'm not sure what the current status is. I imagine Arlington's still up there though.
SPEAKER_07: Sure, but you're gonna have to have a lot more reasons than that to move to Arlington, Texas. Ouch. That one I'm not taking back.
SPEAKER_06: What are some of the problems though with New York water?
SPEAKER_07: Well, there's two big problems. Turbidity, which you mentioned earlier, which is sediment suspension in the water, which gives it kind of a cloudy or dark or gritty kind of look, which is it's not just that it looks bad. Pathogens can cling to that sediment, so it's not something you want suspended. Plus, it also makes it much more difficult to filter that stuff out. It's like extra work that has to be done to get rid of that sediment. And if you're not filtering your water to begin with, that's kind of a problem. And then secondly, the other one is nutrients. It's over nutrient, meaning it's just packed with riboflavin.
SPEAKER_06: Well, what it actually is is fertilizer runoff. You know, those farmers are doing their best, but there is fertilizer that goes downstream and runs into the watersheds, and phosphorus is one of the biggest problems, because farmers do fertilize with phosphorus. And if it runs off, the phosphorus alone is not great, because it can cause algae blooms and stuff like that, and it can taste bad and stink. Yeah, because when the algae dies,
SPEAKER_07: it decays and it does not smell good.
SPEAKER_06: No, it does not smell good. But a bigger problem though, is when you combine that with the chlorine, because like we said, New York water is chlorinated and fluoridated. We had the t-shirts to prove it.
SPEAKER_07: I don't think we said it was fluoridated, but yeah, everybody knows. Yeah, it's fluoridated.
SPEAKER_06: And when you combine that chlorine with the phosphorus, it can create byproducts called disinfection byproducts, and that is no good at all.
SPEAKER_07: No, those are nasty. They're called DBPs, and they are basically like chemicals that are accidentally made from sanitizing water, and not just with chlorine, but chlorine, chloramine. There's a bunch of different stuff that they use to disinfect water, and all of them can combine with organic compounds to create really just nasty stuff like carcinogens. Some can produce miscarriages. It's just really, really bad stuff that can be produced in the drinking water.
SPEAKER_06: Chloroform is one of those byproducts.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, which is why New Yorkers frequently faint when they're drinking tap water.
SPEAKER_06: But this all sounds super scary. New York City, they are, I think there are eight known contaminants, but they are still apparently well under the legal limit, depending on what you think about how the legal limits are set, of course. Right, exactly, it's a good caveat.
SPEAKER_06: But New York City drinking water is 30.9 parts per billion chloroform, and the national average is 11, so they're way higher on chloroform. But as far as all of those DBPs total, they're far below the legal limit and just a little bit above average nationally.
SPEAKER_07: Right, and then the total number of DBPs that they have is actually less than those in Arlington, so. Oh, interesting. Chew on that, Arlington.
SPEAKER_06: That's right, chew on that.
SPEAKER_07: Bad pizza. Speaking of chewing, Chuck, and pizza, let's just answer this question. Is New York City's water the key ingredient to New York City bagels and pizza?
SPEAKER_06: I think, I mean, you can't definitively say, but I think it does have something to do with it for sure. It's got to, because science is involved.
SPEAKER_07: So here's the thing. The water from the Catskills and from the Delaware is naturally soft, meaning that it's low in calcium and magnesium. Where do you fall on loving softer hard water?
SPEAKER_06: I'm a hard water guy. Same here, man. When I lived in Arizona, they had soft water. Where I lived, and my sister's house that I lived in, and most of the houses had water softening, or I guess hardening units or whatever in the house.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, because you can't feel clean. Like, you never feel like you got the shampoo or the soap off. It's awful. It's just awful. Does anyone like soft water?
SPEAKER_06: I don't know. Weirdos, probably. I mean, hard water, sorry. No. I had it all backwards.
SPEAKER_07: Okay, so you like soft water.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's why I actually, that's why I misspoke. They had water softeners in Arizona because the water was hard. New York water is soft. I like soft.
SPEAKER_07: Okay, I like hard water typically, because I feel like I'm clean afterward. But soft water, like just the New York water is fine with me, but a softened, like a chemically softened water, I can't stand.
SPEAKER_06: Oh, really? Yes. Interesting.
SPEAKER_07: But New York's is naturally soft, so it doesn't have calcium or magnesium, or it's very low in those things comparatively. And that actually has an effect on taste. Like calcium and magnesium can provide like a bitter taste to water. So there's one thing that they're saying, like, okay, the dough isn't going to taste naturally bitter because of the calcium magnesium. That's something.
SPEAKER_06: That is something. And it also interacts with the flour. If you're going to make a bagel or a bialli or pizza crust, you're going to be, or, you know, a lot of things when you're baking, but those are the big three in New York. You're going to be using flour and water as your base for your dough. And hard water, the minerals in those tap water are going to fortify the gluten, and they're going to make it tough and less flexible. You don't want it too soft though, because it'll have the opposite effect. It'll be gooey and you won't be able to work it as well. And apparently the American Chemical Society says, New York City tap water is the Goldilocks of bagel water. It is just right.
SPEAKER_07: Yep, not too hard, not too soft, just perfect for a bagel and for a pizza. And that American Chemical Society quote came from a Smithsonian article, and they went on to say, probably though it's actually the techniques that New Yorkers use to make bagels. Like they poach the bagel dough first, like they boil it.
SPEAKER_06: That's the only way to do a bagel. Sure. It's not a bagel. No, it's not. That's like a baked donut, and it's not a donut.
SPEAKER_07: Basically. And then they also will, they'll let the yeast sit for a little while, they'll make it ferment, which creates volatile flavor compounds. So it just tastes better. They're saying probably those are the reasons why New Yorkers make better bagels or pizza, and it's not really the water. The water just contributes a very small amount. I think it's all those things. Why not? No one can say for certain, so let's just say yes. It is all those things. Exactly. Well, if you wanna know more about New York City's tap water, go on to New York City and try their tap water. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail, everybody. I'm gonna call this house rolling.
SPEAKER_06: And we talked about TPing houses. Yep. Love the podcast, guys. Just finished up trick or treating. And you were talking about rolling houses. I grew up in Franklin, Tennessee. We used to roll houses all the time. And Franklin, Tennessee, for people who don't know, is where a lot of big shot Nashville bigwigs live, because you can buy a huge house with lots of land.
SPEAKER_06: That was Chuck speaking. Right. Funny thing though, guys, I'm back to being Brandon. Okay. Funny thing though, guys, my neighbor was Brad Paisley. This was a couple of years before his first Grammy Award. And once we found this out, we knew that we had to get him. So my sister and I gathered all of our friends, dressed in black, and snuck out to roll this country music star's house. We were halfway through the job when his freaking tour bus rolled up on us. At first, we all ran away frightened, but we were pretty much caught in the act, nowhere to go. He got off the bus and was super nice about the whole thing, actually. He gave us a quick tour of the tour bus, chatted us up for a little while. We even cleaned up the little bit of mess we had made and left starstruck. I highly doubt he remembers that night at all, but my friends and I will certainly never forget. Anyway, that's all I got, guys. Have a spooky Halloween. That is from Brandon Saunders.
SPEAKER_07: That is very nice, Brandon. Thanks a lot for that email. And hats off to Brad Paisley for being so cool. He doesn't take his hat off. But all right, exactly. But also, how about just a hat tip then?
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, or actually I was thinking Kenny Chesney,
SPEAKER_07: because he's bald. None of those guys take their hats off, dude. But also he hangs out with Peyton Manning, which means that he must be a good guy, right? Oh yeah? Isn't Peyton a good dude?
SPEAKER_06: Sure, I'm just tired of seeing him on my TV. Oh, that's not gonna happen anytime soon.
SPEAKER_07: Pretty soon you'll see him in augmented reality in front of you everywhere you go. Like it or not, Charles. Okay, well if you wanna get in touch with us like Brad Paisley did, you can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and check out our social links. And you can also send us a good old-fashioned email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom with some good old country goodness, and send it off to stuffpodcast.com.
SPEAKER_02: ["I Heart Radio"] Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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