New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection is building a water filtration plant in the Bronx capable of purifying 300 million gallons of water a day. It will be one of the largest in the world when completed in 2012. The 10-story-deep hole for the plant was blasted out of bedrock (Fordham gneiss), which forms the pit's walls, and will filter water from the Croton watershed in Westchester County. The original cost estimate for the project in 1998 was $660 million but the cost is now estimated to be $3 billion.
The pipe that will bring in untreated water from the Croton reservoir system is 12 feet in diameter. The two outflow pipes have 9-foot diameters. The water will be purified in a “stacked dissolved air flotation system,” which uses several layers of filters to remove impurities.
The city was forced to build the plant because water from the Croton watershed did not meet federal standards for safety and purity. Although the Croton system can supply nearly 30 percent of the city’s 1.1 billion gallons a day of drinking water, generally it supplies just 10 percent, mostly in the Bronx and northern Manhattan. The rest of the city’s water comes from the Catskill Mountains and the Delaware System and is so clean that the city last year won a 10-year exemption from federal regulations requiring that all surface drinking water be filtered. (The New York Times)
The pipe that will bring in untreated water from the Croton reservoir system is 12 feet in diameter. The two outflow pipes have 9-foot diameters. The water will be purified in a “stacked dissolved air flotation system,” which uses several layers of filters to remove impurities.
The city was forced to build the plant because water from the Croton watershed did not meet federal standards for safety and purity. Although the Croton system can supply nearly 30 percent of the city’s 1.1 billion gallons a day of drinking water, generally it supplies just 10 percent, mostly in the Bronx and northern Manhattan. The rest of the city’s water comes from the Catskill Mountains and the Delaware System and is so clean that the city last year won a 10-year exemption from federal regulations requiring that all surface drinking water be filtered. (The New York Times)
1 comment:
Let's hope that this one would inspire other states and even other countries to improve their water filtering system. The price doesn't make it easier to accomplish, but the investment is beneficial in the long run.
- Katherine Inman
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