Originally published at: The longest tunnel in the world is about to shut down - Boing Boing
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From Gail Sherman…
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Still has nothing on the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel.
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just remembered the massive New York City Water Tunnel No.3 in Die Hard with a Vengeance and realised the story of NYCs water supply could lead me into a deep rabbit-hole;
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I wish I could heart that like a dozen more times.
On the original article: I was shocked by the 1.3 billion gallons a day figure. But the MYC metro area has a population of 19.5 million. I doubt they all get their water from that aqueduct but if they did that’s a mere 67 gallons a day per person. The average American uses about 82 gallons of water per day* so that’s about right. Add in business usage and I’m sure a lot of those people are getting water from other sources. Wow.
*what googles shitty ai bit told me
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- The New Croton Aqueduct, completed in 1890, brings water from the New Croton Reservoir in Westchester and Putnam counties.
- The Catskill Aqueduct, completed in 1916, is significantly larger than New Croton and brings water from two reservoirs in the eastern Catskill Mountains.[15]
- The Delaware Aqueduct, completed in 1945, taps tributaries of the Delaware River in the western Catskill Mountains and provides approximately half of New York City’s water supply.[16]
distribution;
- New York City Water Tunnel No. 1, completed in 1917.[15] It runs from the Hillview Reservoir under the central Bronx, Harlem River, West Side, Midtown,[15] and Lower East Side of Manhattan, and under the East River to Brooklyn where it connects to Tunnel 2. It is expected to undergo extensive repairs upon completion of Tunnel No. 3.
- New York City Water Tunnel No. 2, completed in 1935. It runs from the Hillview Reservoir under the central Bronx, East River, and western Queens to Brooklyn, where it connects to Tunnel 1 and the Richmond Tunnel to Staten Island. When completed, it was the longest large diameter water tunnel in the world.[26]
- The partially-completed New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, the largest capital construction project in New York City’s history (see Ongoing repairs and upgrades).[27] It starts at Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers, New York then crosses under Central Park in Manhattan, to reach Fifth Avenue at 78th Street. From there it runs under the East River and Roosevelt Island into Astoria, Queens. From there it will continue on to Brooklyn.
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You can visit parts of the Old Croton Aqueduct, which was the first major aqueduct supplying New York City. The OCA was about 41 miles long, less than half the length of the Delaware, but an impressive piece of engineering when you consider that it was built in the 1830s, with only minimal help from machinery.
Without the OCA, New York as it is today probably wouldn’t exist. At the time it was built, the city was pretty much running out of water, and the water sources that did exist were increasingly polluted. If they hadn’t been able to bring water from elsewhere, the city’s growth would probably have come to a hard stop before the second half of the 19th century.
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If that isn’t nifty enough, it fed the Croton Reservoir, now the site of the main branch of the New York Public Library in Manhattan.
The maintenance of this infrastructure is part of a long epic (although not always a heroic one), complete with impressive monuments.
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Not just the Distributing Reservoir, but the Receiving Reservoir in Central Park too. Robert Moses finally turned the Receiving Reservoir into the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond, which is probably one of the least malign things he ever did. It seems he was nicer to turtles than to human beings with what he considered the “wrong” skin color.
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Yep, and we’re stuck with the infrastructure he wanted built to this day.
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I remember reading about small towns upstate where the water was leaking underground and causing problems-- capillary action would bring it up into basements and yards.
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As a Brit that’s horrifying!
My water company bills me for 14m3 per year, about 9 gallons per day.
Yes I shower daily, cook at home and do laundry once per week.
WTF are you all doing with that water?
It’s worth noting that your gallons are larger than our gallons, but not that much larger. A typical shower head here is 2.5 gallons per minute, so a 10 minute shower would use 25 gallons. Not sure how you’d shower daily with 9 gallons unless you’re doing a navy shower. (turn on, get wet, turn off, soap, turn on, rinse SUPER quick, turn off.)
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