Patterns & Paradigms | The Pattern Podcast
Patterns & Paradigms | The Pattern Podcast
Season 2 Episode 16: The Marvel of Moving Water to NYC with Adam Bosch
New York City's water supply system is the largest municipal water supply system in the United States. This modern marvel of engineering consists of 19 reservoirs and 3 lakes that store 570 billion gallons of water when full, delivering that water through 400 miles of aqueducts to 8.5 million people in New York City and another 1 million people in 72 communities throughout the Hudson Valley - by gravity alone. This system shaped the design of older neighborhoods in New York City - the powerful force of gravity was capable of sending water to the 4th, 5th, even the 6th floors of those buildings, so that's how high they were built until the advent of strong electric pumps which could push the water to even higher heights. This system is also the largest unfiltered water system in the country, which means it's a priority to protect the quality of the water at the source, delivering it clean to the 9.5 million people who depend on it everyday.
This week's episode features Adam Bosch, Director of Public Affairs at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, discussing this powerful system, water quantity and water quality, as well as the jobs that support this incredible water supply.
We are experiencing a paradigm shift, a fundamental change in the way we usually do things. We are intentionally choosing to see the silver lining opportunity arises. We can shine a light on the things that weren't working well on those things that weren't really working at all, we can regroup reevaluate and re-engineer it's time to explore new patterns and paradigms those that inspire us to rise above the chaos and explore how the conditions of today can take us to a better tomorrow patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast from Hudson Valley pattern for progress. Your listening to season two, episode 16, the Marvel of moving water to New York city with your host pattern, president and CEO, Jonathan Dropkin.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, and welcome to patterns and paradigms. We hope that you felt the infectious enthusiasm from our conversation with summer Crockett Moore and Tony Glaser, as they discussed the film industry in the Hudson Valley, please remember to subscribe to our podcast at Apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite one. And take a moment to share an episode with a friend this week's bubble or trend planes, trains, and automobiles, the airline industry for touting the upsurge in the desire to fly accompanied by an increase in plane fares as a sign that the airline industry is coming back, people have been comfortable in cars for a while. So as long as there is a workplace to travel to or a vacation destination, the use of cars seems to be heading closer to whatever normal is. But here in New York, commuter trains are nowhere near capacity and do not appear to be heading in that direction. As long as New York city businesses are not requiring or having the need for workers to return to the office, ridership remains way down on the commuter lines. The longterm implications of this trend are potentially catastrophic higher fares with less service. As you'll hear with today's guest, the relationship between the Hudson Valley and New York city is often symbiotic, a healthy New York city is a good thing for the Valley, despite potentially short-term gains. I am here with my partner at pattern Joe Cheika. Hey Joe, we're in the midst of a broad reaching study about one of the potential benefits of that relationship with New York city. We call it who's moving in. We've discussed that pattern and progress. The impact of the exit is of New York city residents and the shortage in high-end housing, but there are a number of upsides simply put, um, there is a potential for adding educated people to the Hudson Valley's workforce. Um, we also know that people with means also have dollars to circulate in the local economy, and that's good for hospitality, retail, and restaurants. So, Joe, what do you think is gonna shape this study and how do you think it's going to proceed?
Speaker 3:Well, there's a lot to unpack in there. You know, we do, we are seeing this uptick in migration to the Hudson Valley and it seems to be coming from New York city and Northern New Jersey as well. Um, but you know, we don't really have the hard data yet. Um, so, you know, there's, there's a lot of questions to be asked. Um, is it a perceived increase based on what information we're hearing from real estate folks? Um, we're not, we're not quite sure yet. Um, what, what do we know? So skyrocketing prices and housing shortage of inventory. There's, uh, there's more buyers entering the Hudson Valley market, but I think there's a bigger question at hand, uh, in the real estate world. And is that sustainable? How high can these prices go before they either stop or they continue to go up a little bit or perhaps they drop a little bit, um, are people leaving the Hudson Valley at the same time as people are moving into the Hudson Valley? Is this a replacement demographic? If so, what are the age cohorts? So there is a low inventory, but what is it, what is actually getting built? I would say right now, primarily it's rental luxury rental, your transit and your major road systems. And if you look at the rentals that are being built, I think it's primarily studios, one bedrooms, some, two bedrooms, and almost no three bedrooms. So the household size of people moving into rentals is small. One people, two people, maybe three people subdivisions are, they still occurring somewhat. Um, but I think it's the same trend, big homes, big, lots hard, hard sell. Um, and so the existing inventory that is for sale, I think are, are modest homes, but the prices again are very, very high. So part of the calculus here, I think we should also find out who is moving where so prior to the pandemic, people were leaving New York state, some counties showed a slight increase, so more stable, but most, most were declining. Of course, the ability to work remotely has caused people to look at the Hudson Valley, but they also look at other States. So what do we know about other States? Well, North American van lines, 2020 report was just released a few months ago. The outbound leaders, which means people leaving their States include New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, and California. The inbound include Idaho, the Carolinas, Arizona, Tennessee, and Florida
Speaker 2:Wait back up a minute, Idaho, Idaho,
Speaker 3:Slower pace, less expensive, beautiful scenery. And if you like courses, that's the place to be. We also have to look at the weather and climate, and then you and I have discussed this in the past. You know, you can't really beat the, the weather and the climate here in the Hudson Valley. Sure. We have harsh winters, but it's only a few months of the year. So you have to look at the look at the weather a little bit more in a, uh, in a, in a larger, uh, parameter with the larger parameters. So while there's been an increase in weather events, the Hudson Valley, it certainly isn't the Gulf coast where hurricanes happen all the time. It certainly isn't tornado alley in the Midwest or the center of brush, brush fires and earthquakes out in on the West coast.
Speaker 2:It might be a whole new marketing campaign come to the Hudson Valley. It's climate friendly,
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And climate friendly and clothing appropriate. As we like to say, if it's cold, put on an extra jacket, you'll be fine.
Speaker 2:All right, Joe, I, it sounds like we're going to do what we always do, which is take, um, a lot of anecdotal information and try to distill it down to as the old TV show used to say just the facts, man.
Speaker 3:That's right. Mr. Dragnet.
Speaker 2:All right. Thanks, Joe. Um, our guest today is Adam Bosch. Adam is director of public affairs for the New York city water supply. He manages the department of environmental protections efforts to educate the public about the largest municipal water supply in the United States through community outreach, education programs, and regular communication with local elected officials and journalists. And speaking of journalists, Adam was once a very, very good journalist for multiple publications. He is the recipient of numerous awards and for full disclosure, Adam did a tour of duty with patent for progress. Look forward to a really nice conversation with, uh, our friend Adam, Hey Adam, how you doing? And, uh, has a family. And how has this whole experience been?
Speaker 4:That's it's nice to see you. It's been bizarre, I guess is the word I was thinking about what I could tell you about my family when we start this thing and how everyone's been doing. And, you know, I figured, you know, pattern likes regional solutions. I'd tell you about my own regional solution. We came up with, so yeah, early on in the pandemic, when they said, Hey, we're just going to shut everything down, including the schools. And you had to think about, well, how are you going to work and teach and do all these sorts of things at the same time? Uh, we have some neighbors who lived down the street and they have a daughter who's in the same grade as my son. And they have a son who's two years younger and we decided that we would all sort of quarantine on our own for a couple of days, make sure everyone was feeling well. And then essentially co quarantine together for the remainder of the pandemic. That way we could rotate the kids between each of the four adults and each of the three adults, the remaining three adults would have essentially four uninterrupted work days. Um, and that the lone adult would be in charge of the raising and feeding and educating of the three children, which, I mean, it worked, it worked really well. And I'm not saying this like others didn't do it, but, but it, but it works really, really well. And, um, it was good because you know, my, my son is an only child and you start to think about who the pandemic's been most difficult on. It's been difficult on everyone, but I think it's been uniquely difficult on kids at a certain age who are only children who are at a stage where they're learning a lot from interacting with other kids. And then that gets completely cut off from them. And so it was really valuable for my son to be with two other kids, you know, five days a week, um, so that they could learn together and bicker with each other and do all the things that kids that age do when they're, when they're trying to learn, learn the things they need to learn socially
Speaker 2:Well, that's, that's really clever. And I'm glad that you were able to figure out and navigate your way through it, but I'm not surprised. So, so let's explain to our listeners what your, what your day job is and how it may have changed during the pandemic. But why don't we explain to everybody?
Speaker 4:So I'm the director of public affairs for New York city's water supply system, which, uh, as many people may know is the largest municipal water supply system in the United States. So it is a system of reservoirs. There's 19 reservoirs in three lakes, that store about 570 billion gallons of water. When they're all full, they deliver that water to New York city through about 400 miles, a very large aqueducts. It's considered a Marvel of modern engineering, the water supply system. And one of the reasons is not only because of its scope and scale, but also because all of that water that comes from the reservoirs goes to the city by gravity alone. And the force of gravity is not only enough to get the water to the city, but it's enough to get the water up into the fourth, fifth or sixth story of every building in the city. So, you know, when you go, Jonathan, you'll know, when you go through some of the older neighborhoods in New York city, the most classic residential building is the four or five or six story walk up, apartment building. They were built that high because that's how high the water could get in those buildings. Before we had electric pumps that could pump them to a rooftop tower and then allow gravity to take back over again. So, uh, you know, the other interesting thing about the system and Jonathan you'll know this, this is a regional thing is not only does this great water supply system provide water to eight and a half million people in New York city. Um, but it also supplies water to another million people who live in 72 communities, North of the city in Westchester, Putnam orange and all start counties. So there are lots of folks who rely on this system. And, uh, my job as director of public affairs is to not only help with, uh, with explaining, sort of lifting the veil of mystery off the system and explaining all the work that we do to operate, maintain, and protect it so that it continue to serve those roughly nine and a half million people now, and for many decades into the future. So,
Speaker 2:So Adam D so during the pandemic, there were a lot of people that left New York city, you know, out of fear or whatever, they try to find a place up in the Hudson Valley. Did that have any impact on water supply?
Speaker 4:So, so it's interesting, you know, it didn't have, uh, necessarily information, uh, you know, an impact on water supply. It, it might've, but the way a lot of people saw it was actually in the wastewater infrastructure. So, uh, at some of our right, the city actually owns six wastewater treatment plants in the Hudson Valley and Catskills that it owns and operates, uh, they're near reservoirs. So we, the city built them years ago to protect the water quality in the reservoirs. But we also monitor a bunch of other wastewater treatment plants that we don't own just to make sure that they're functioning well, and that the water they're putting back into the environment is clean. And we know from, from seeing the data from those other plants, that some wastewater treatment plans, many wastewater treatment plans in small communities in the Hudson Valley, and pretty deep into the Catskills. We're seeing their flow into the wastewater treatment plants, you know, double, triple, maybe even quadruple, and was a result of people using their second homes or summer places as full-time homes. So instead of having a population of X living there during the spring or the fall, or the winter, you were having, you know, two X or three X, you know, the triple that amount and the, and the, uh, local communities were actually seeing that in their wastewater data, right? You had more people flushing, washing, you know, bathing drinking. And that was picked up on the wastewater data. And people were able to see, and in some cases kind of panicked and said, Hey, we got a lot more inflow coming into our wastewater plant than we usually do. What are we going to do about this? And so we did pick up on that throughout the pandemic,
Speaker 2:Uh, yet another aspect of this that, you know, probably, um, people did not realize was happening. Yeah. So I just, out of curiosity, what happened to water usage? Was there anything obvious either at first I was thinking, are people moving up to the Hudson Valley? Maybe there was something to notice here, but then with the great Exodus out of New York city, I really it's the other way that it may have been noticeable in some regard or not.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, for a period of time, what are used, we could see it on the metering when it went down in New York city, it went down Oh, by approximately a fifth. Um, yeah. Yeah. But you know, you got to remember Jonathan, you know, uh, what are you seeing? New York city is not only comprised of the people who live and work there, but it's comprised of the people who are traveling there for tourism and visiting too. Right. So, so if your use is going down in places like hotels and restaurants, that's a big portion of your use. So just because the use went down, doesn't necessarily, uh, there's not a one-to-one correlation between the number of people who are living in New York city and water use. It also has a lot to do with how many people were commuting from areas to the right West, East, North, into the city to work. Right. And they would be flushing all day, preparing their lunch, doing those sorts of things. How many people were coming from outside New York to see Broadway shows and go to all the museums and do all the tourist things, again, flushing, showering, doing all the things. So it was really, uh, you know, I think more emblematic of the fact that fewer people were coming into the city, then people going out of the city, but we did see a, uh, a drop of a bell of about a fifth, a sixth or a fifth. And that persisted for a while. We've seen a good amount of recovery over the past couple months. Um, I think as some people are getting back into the office and doing things like that, we're seeing the demand go up a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Um, I, I've been reading a lot about the future of New York city and it's very, I don't know that anyone has a really good ball, but they say that tourism may take a year or two years, three years to come back. And so, um, the demand for water, um, does it make it easier on the system if there's less draw down or does it
Speaker 4:Make it easier on the system? You know, there, there's an interesting story about efficiency in the New York city water supply system. So if you go back to, as recently as the 1990s, New York city used about 1.5 billion gallons of water each day, just as recently as the 1990s, since then, since the 1990s, the city has grown by about a million people. It's a little more than that by about what, about a million people. And the city now uses less than a billion gallons of water a day. So, you know, you may think, Hey, how can a city grow by a million people, but use 33% or 35% less water. And it has to do with, yeah, good question. Well, I'll answer it. It has to do with two things. Uh, one is some very, uh, purposeful investments that New York city made in the 1990s. So back in the 1990s, the city was being looked at by the federal government for combined sewer overflows. This is where right? Your wastewater treatment plan is designed to handle X amount of inflow. And when you get a big, big, big rainstorm, all the water that goes into the storm drains also goes into the wastewater plan. The wastewater plant gets overwhelmed and instead of blowing itself to bits, it's, it has an overflow design where it actually overflows into whatever body of water is connected to. And it can overflow a certain amount of raw sewage into that body of water. So you want to cut off or minimize that amount. So in the nineties, the city was under pressure to cut back on that. Well, guess what? You can't change the amount of rain that's going to fall. You don't have control over that. So you have to think about what inputs you do have control over. And the one, one of the big inputs you have control over is how much water you used. Cause that's getting flushed. It's going down the drain. So the city decided the 1990s to install the first sort of generation of smart meters throughout the city. It used to be in New York city that you were billed for your drinking water based on your road frontage. So Jonathan, if you owned a house that was wider than mine, you would pay more than water as I'm oversimplifying a little, but that's essentially how it worked. So now the city goes and installs meters. And for the first time people are being built based on the, based on their consumption, right? Well, that really changes people's habits, right? If you were leaving the water on all day, if you had a drip in your sink, if you had a running toilet and you heard that someone down the hall or someone on the floor above you saved a bunch of money by getting all these plumbing problems fixed, while you were likely to do it to your, maybe take a shorter shower, you would think about your work consumption differently. And that helped drive down water in the city. But at the same time in the 1990s, something else happened. And that was advancements in technology. So in the 1990s is when your first-generation of low flow shower heads, low flow toilets, low flow washers, and dishwashers began to come out. And actually there was an episode of Seinfeld that sort of memorialize this, where Kramer's landlord puts in a low flow shower head, and he can't get the shampoo out of his hair anymore. So he goes on into an alley on the black market and buys one of the high flow shower heads. And it blasts so much water out of that. It blows them out of the shower, but that was a joke. But the joke was based on something real that was happening in New York city in the nineties, which has all these low flow fixtures were coming on to the market. People were installing them. I know I bought a house that was built in the eighties that had toilets that flush with four gallons of water. We replaced them with toilets that flushed with one gallon of water. And you extrapolate that kind of savings over a city of 8 million people. And you're talking about, you know, a real quantity of water. So, you know, the, the, you know, getting to sort of the conclusion here is that, yeah, that was great, but it has some unintended, um, benefits as well. So the next time you have a drought because you have not been using as much water throughout the entire year. You can last longer through droughts. The droughts don't come up on you as quickly because you're not draining down the reservoir system as fast. And so it not only helped the city in terms of its wastewater treatment, which was able to really, really help. And now we have the best Harbor water quality that New York city's had since the civil war, since the mid 18 hundreds. Um, but it also helped in terms of being able to withstand droughts of the future. So conservation helped the city in so many ways.
Speaker 2:So I remember the first time that you showed me this, uh, graph and chart of yes, the population went up, but the water demand went down and I was the let's. Well, let's see I was mystified by it, but I I'm trying to remember the year 1978, that I was working for the New York city council president at the time, a position that doesn't exist anymore. And we had to vote on the first, uh, first set of funding for a third water tunnel. And the idea was this was going to take 1978 to take like 40 something years to build. But that the first tunnel was built in like 1918 or 17. And then the second tunnel was 1931. And that the, what if you know the catastrophe and I, and I remember, you know, so proud that that we're building and I've been down in the shaft and I've seen all that and that you come in with chart and you're going to, uh, well, maybe we don't need as much water in it. And I said to you, well, hold on a second. Does that mean we didn't have to build it? And I remember your response, but let's see.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, the re the response is, no, you definitely need to build it. You know, New York, city's water supply in so many ways, benefits from redundancy, right? You have a problem at one reservoir while you've got 18 others, you have a problem in one system. Well, the system is comprised of three systems. You can go to one of the other two, and it's the same, the same is true about the water tunnels. So just so everyone understands, you know, the way the reservoir system works is, is the water right? Starts in the Catskills, starts in the Hudson Valley, and it goes down successively to next reservoir and the next reservoir, the next reservoir. And then when you get to the last reservoir, it goes down into it's really four, but most people think of it as three large tunnels that run through the five boroughs, gigantic tunnels that deliver that water up into trunk mains, which are the big, big water mains, and then smaller mains. And then the service lines that feed each building. You think of them like straws, if you want. So these big, big tunnels, right? City tunnel one and two and three, um, are, are the big ones that delivered in the city so forever, right? For a long, long time, it was just city tunnel one and two. But the reason you need city tunnel three, regardless of demand is at some point, you want to be able to take city tunnel one or two off out of service so that you can go in and inspect it. Hey, how's it doing after a hundred years? Hey, how's it doing after 70, you know, 60 or 70 years, and you might go in and inspect and find, Hey, this thing's like as good as the day we built it, which happens quite often on the New York city water supply. When we get in things we haven't seen in a hundred years, and you're shocked by how, how good it is. Um, or you might see some spalling or some cracks or some things that you want to, that, you know, superficial things that happen in infrastructure over time that you want to patch up before it becomes a bigger problem. But the key is you can't take those other two water tunnels out of service. If you don't have the third one, cause you need to, you need to, to run the city. So, so that's important. And that's why you need city tunnel. Number three, city tunnel, number three. Uh, yeah, I mean, it's finished. The tunnel is finished. There's water running through it. The only thing that's left to do is build two final chefs. Again, the chefs, although all that does is it allows the water to come from, you know, 500 ish feet below the surface, much closer to the surface to get the water into the smaller mains that feed the buildings. A number of the chefs are done. So there's actually water running through tunnel three. That's actively feeding the population of the city now as we speak. And we're just going to build these last two. And that's, that's part of the work that's upcoming here, uh, to finish those final two chefs so that it can essentially, uh, feed the maximum number of people that it was intended,
Speaker 2:You know, and with all this talk in Washington, right of a new infrastructure bill, um, one of the things that I always thought about the, the water tunnel, when I went down into the shaft, I became an honorary San hock, uh, Sam for people that don't know it is the union at that. Actually the workers that actually build this, it is as remarkable a piece of infrastructure as any bridge you will have seen, but you can't see it. That's why, you know, when, when communities up in the Hudson Valley needed to build sewer, water and other things that are underground, there's just not a lot of support for it until it's a problem.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah. The stuff you can't see, isn't sexy.
Speaker 2:It, it, it, you know, ribbon cutting for, you know, the, the sewer plant or, or the sewer line, you know, is just never that great to do communities in the Hudson Valley. So you mentioned that there are some that actually benefit from this whole, um, connectivity to the, uh, water supply upstate, but there are communities that already benefit from it. And then there was recent story about one of the fastest growing communities in the Hudson Valley. That would be curious, Joel, now Palm tree actually built their own big pipeline and they're going to connect to it within the next year or so. What was that project like and how has it been that some communities do actually tap into this?
Speaker 4:Sure. So there are 72 communities, as I said, that are connected to the water splash to say 72 communities North of the city. Um, I'm smart enough to not call them upstate communities. They're not all upstate communities are 72 communities North of the city. Um, that includes about half of Westchester County. So in Westchester County, you're talking about places like Yonkers and Mount Vernon and rye, and, you know, your big population centers in Westchester County all get their water through the New York city water supply system. As you get further up the line, you're talking about places like Newburg, new Windsor Newpaltz right. So, um, you know, our smallest cus smallest, uh, our smallest, uh, customer North of the city, I think has 200 connections. That's high falls and Ulster County. And they use like 30,000 gallons a day or something. And then our largest Yonkers is many, many, many thousands of connections. And I think, uh, they use something like 23 million gallons a day. So it really runs the gamut of small and large communities. All of those communities actually have a legal right to the water. Now, how did that come about? Um, the first system that New York city built when it needed, uh, drinking water was the Croton system. So those are reservoirs in Westchester and Putnam County. That system was activated 1842, and it allowed the city to grow hugely through the 18 hundreds. You're talking about explosive growth from 200,000 people or so living in New York city, when that system was activated in 1842 to about 3.5 million people living in New York city, just, you know, uh, 60 years later. So a period of explosive growth, unlike anything that's been seen there since. Um, but then they began to run out of water. So they had to go looks far and wide for where the next source of water would be. They looked out to the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. They look to places we're familiar with like the Wallkill river and the mood and the Creek. They looked actually all the way up to the Adirondacks and drew up a grand plan to bring the waters of Lake George and in New York city through a massive tunnel. And they ended up in the Catskills for a number of reasons, water quality and water quantity. But in order to build that next part of the water supply, the city needed certain rights to go acquire the lands and just sort of get the work going. And those rights were provided to the city by something known as the water supply act of 1905. And that is a really interesting piece of legislation, not only because it gave the city, the authority to use eminent domain, to forcibly purchase the lands, it needed to build the reservoirs and the aqueducts. Um, it also required that the city would have to provide two forms of access to the reservoirs forever. Those being fishing and ice cutting, because there was no refrigeration back then, right?
Speaker 2:Hold on a second, Adam. So New York city's eminent domain, Maine to access water extends into the Hudson Valley.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's right. So into the Hudson Valley and into the Catskills, and
Speaker 2:That's, that's an incredible thing that probably most people do not know
Speaker 4:That's right. So right. It allowed that sort of, you know, access to the public forever for fishing and for ice cutting. It was kind of progressive in the way of thought about labor. So everyone working on the water supply, right. Thousands and thousands of men at the time were forced to be subject to a 40 hour work week, which was like 35 years before the fair labor standards act was passed. So they thought about how to treat the workers well in this legislation, which I find interesting. And the other thing it required was that any community in any County that hosts any part of New York city's water supply has a legal right to tap into the system to draw water for itself, which means that New York city does not get to say yes or no. Okay. So if you live, if you, if you are a community in Westchester, Putnam, orange, Ulster, Sullivan, Delaware, green, or SCO, hairy counties, you have a legal right to tap into the system to get water for your community. The only thing New York city has the authority over is really two things. One is the engineering of that connection to ensure that your connection does not damage the system in some way that would harm New York city or the other communities that depend on the system. And the other thing is we require everyone to have an adequate backup supply because we've run into situations over the years where, uh, either because of an emergency or because of planned infrastructure work, we need to shut off some part of the system, right? That's, that's very common, you know, Hey, we have to repair a dam, we have to repair a valve, we have to repair an aqueduct. So we're going to shut this part of the system off.
Speaker 2:Didn't you do that over towards the, you know, orange County, Ulster County, giant aqueduct, or some thing in order for you to,
Speaker 4:Well, yeah. The, so the community that, that has a hard time with this when we do it as Newpaltz, because Newpaltz sort of outgrew its backup supply. It has a number of reservoirs going up the road that heads up toward Mohawk, but those reservoirs are small and new Paltz sort of, you know, as the college, it has a lot of economic activity outgrew its backup supply over the years. And so we had to go to great lengths to pump water from another part of our system. And we had to shut down the Catskill aqueduct to ensure that Newpaltz, didn't go dry and to its credit. New is actually working right now on, you know, the process of developing a adequate backup supply. Once again, because you know, planned infrastructure outages are one thing. But if we had an emergency, you know, we had to shut down a part of the system in an emergency. We got to make sure that all those communities have water to sustain their population in an emergency situation. So, so those are really the two things we check the engineering of the connection. We want to make sure everyone has an adequate backup supply so that, uh, they're not 100% beholden to the city system, 100% of the time. Um, so that's how a community like Palm tree curious, Joel, you know, has a right to that water. We don't get to say yes or no. And so they are going through the process of building the infrastructure that they need to make that connection safely. And we're continuing to review their plans to make sure that their connection will be not only safe but effective, right. Uh, want to make sure that it actually works and they're going through the process of making sure that they have an adequate backup supply as well.
Speaker 2:Um, okay. So, so the communities of the Hudson Valley actually have this right to tap into it and it was making me think, Adam, so water, um, you and I often are part of a discussion about food security, the interrelationship between New York city and the Hudson Valley is much deeper than people ever really understand. They, they, Oh, those New York city people are, we don't want New York city to do this to us, but the connectivity, uh, the commuter lines from Metro North, you know, that go into New York city, there is such strong symbiotic relationship. I worry a little bit about, you know, what's happening to New York city. And I don't know that that's an area that you want to speculate on. I always, of course will apply and on almost anything, but you know, it, the health of New York city post pandemic is very important to that's invalid. Um, and I think that it's something that we, you know, as opposed to, Oh, those New York city people, we should actually be saying it's important for New York city to come back. I don't know if that's something you want to. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, I've, listen, I won't, I won't talk about things I don't know about, but there are certainly, as, as you said, a symbiotic relationship between the two, I mean, um, you know, New York city is an economic engine for the state. It's the largest economic engine for the state. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. And in being, so it needs a lot of, uh, goods and services that can come from within the city itself. Uh, and that includes water. That includes, you know, agricultural products that includes workers. I mean, the very fact that we have people who live in Westchester, Putnam Duchess, orange, Rockland, I mean, so many of those people work in the city and then bring that income they make in the city and spend it on businesses that are in their backyard. So, I mean, there's such a symbiotic relationship there. The, the, uh, stronger New York city is economically the better it is for the Hudson Valley and, and vice versa.
Speaker 2:Does, does New York city DEP is there any limits though, that on growth, based on water, I started looking at Rocklin County and started pondering that where it's kind of a weird private systems Suez. I think that really controls the water. Nothing. I, you know, it's, I think it's fine that you can have a private system that does it, but does that put limitations on growth? You know, the amount of water you, you were talking about the earliest in New York, going from a couple of hundred thousand, all of a sudden found a new water supply and went to a couple of million people. So
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know, I'm reminded of, uh, I'm reminded of something from early in my journalism career. I was a journalist in the Hudson Valley for almost 15 years. And my very first job was at a weekly paper based out of Walton called the Walnut Valley times. And I covered, uh, the Hamlet of Wallkill and Montgomery and Maybrook and pine Bush. And I used to have to go to a lot of planning board and zoning board meetings as young reporters, uh, hopefully still have to it's good training. And I remember one in particular in the town of Crawford, pine Bush, where there was some big project that wanted to come to town and it could, and I remember asking the town officials at the time, why it was going to be problematic and it come to find out pine Bush actually sits over top of a very small aquifer. You know, we're, we're fortunate to live in a region of the country that is water rich. Right. But, uh, so you don't hear about this a lot, but pine Bush sits over top of a very small aquifer that didn't have a lot of bandwidth plus it left. And it, it didn't have a lot of water left to provide beyond what the Hamlet was already using. And I remember, I don't remember what the project was specifically, Jonathan, but I remember it was something that was relatively water-intensive if it were to be built and the town fear that it didn't have enough water left in the aquifer to actually sustain that business and other things. Now they may have come up with a solution since that time and found another source of what are they could tap into. But I remember early in my journalism career, that being the first time, uh, that I had ever come across where I said, wow, something got turned back because there wasn't enough water to sustain it as a viable project. And, and that goes for communities as well. We, you know, no communities, small, medium, or large can survive and thrive without an adequate supply of water. And so for New York city's part, right, you want to talk about a history. There've been all sorts of studies done over the years. And, and I like to dig back in the history of New York city's water supply system. Every time there's a big drought, there was another investigation into what New York city could do for the next drought and the drought of the 1980s. I think that's the one where correct me if I'm wrong, where mayor Kotch actually came up to Ulster County and stood in the base of the Michelle can reservoir, which was almost completely dry and actually prayed for rain from inside the reservoir.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I would have been on the other side of that. I would have been in New York city when the restrictions were placed on how often you could water your lawn and yes.
Speaker 4:Right. But at that time they hired some folks to go come and commission the study to look at, Hey, what are the other viable options for water? And they came up with all sorts of ideas. They came up with the idea to pump water out of the Hudson river, near red hook somewhere and run it down a pipeline. Actually, someone came up with an idea to do what was called skimming, skimming water off the top of the great lakes and finding a way to get it into the city, all sorts of ideas, but it gets back to that idea of conservation. The best idea was just to limit in a more year round way through technology, right through metering the amount of water that that people are using. But still we go through when we do what's called safe yield studies, right. Essentially how much water does the city use and how much water could the reservoir system provide during the worst drought that we can put in through a commute, through a computer model, right? We have the ability now as a result of technology to model, right, take the record drought of the sixties, model it, even make it worse, run it through a computer and see, okay, how long can the city last? And, and essentially the good news is that New York city will keep going on because of all the work that we've done with this conservation. So what our quantity is not a challenge for New York city, but I've certainly seen instances in my career where it is a challenge for others, and it affects the things that you can do
Speaker 2:Well. And, and I, you know, I caught that when you said water, water, quantity. No, but you've been involved in discussions in the Hudson Valley about water quality,
Speaker 4:Right. Both are equally important.
Speaker 2:So maybe give us one example of, um, you know, where is it, what are we looking for about water quality? We've seen this all over Flint, Michigan being one of the great examples, but in the Hudson Valley Newburgh was I think one where they discovered something in the water that they said, Nope, can't be here.
Speaker 4:Sure. So, you know, water, quantity and water quality are equal. Either. You don't have enough. Or the water that you do have is not drinkable for some reason. And so, you know, we've seen different communities who have issues. Some of them are seasonal. Some of them are more long lasting in terms of water quality for New York city's water supply system, right? The city, our, our water supply system is the largest unfiltered water supply system in the country as well. And so the way we think about what our quality is, we think about water quality is protecting the water at its source. Essentially we do lots of investments in lots of programs up in the Catskills to protect the quality of the water where it's coming from. And that means that you can prevent, uh, essentially having to filter it. So, right. You've got two choices. Jonathan, you either protect the water where it comes from and deliver it right, cleans your consumers, or that water is allowed to get dirty or tainted in some way. And then you have to use a whole bunch of energy and a whole bunch of chemicals to try to take those contaminants out in a big industrial plant at the end of a pipe, right? Those are your two. Those are your two choices, really. And so clearly in recent years, there's been a lot more attention paid to water quality as places like Newburg, right. Have found out that they had perfluorinated compounds per floral alcohol substances is the fright, the big umbrella that these chemicals fit into and, uh, other places have found other contaminants that they've got to figure out. And the process of getting these contaminants out of water is very, is very difficult and very costly. So you know, that right brings you right back to the beginning of, you know, what work do we need to do to protect this water at its source, rather than allowing it to become contaminated. It also highlights something else for me though, is that, you know, we're sometimes we're victims of our own desire for convenience, right? So where did these per floral alcohol substances come from? Yes, they came from firefighting foam because we wanted to make sure that if an airplane caught on fire, there was a way to put it out, right. That's, that's understandable. That's not convenience. That's a legitimate public safety. And, and, you know, the chemicals, uh, perhaps were not, uh, um, uh, vetted or the process. Wasn't going through to think about how to contain them in a way that wouldn't let them affect groundwater and surface water and all those sorts of things. But let's not also forget that these per flora, alcohol substances were used in pizza boxes because we didn't want our pizza stick into the box and that they were used in, in, you know, dental floss, because we wanted that floss to glide nice and smoothly through our teeth when we flossed our teeth. So sometimes, you know, we don't think about the long-term consequences, uh, in our sort of never ending search for convenience and making sure that everything works just so, and, uh, you know, we've got to think about, you know, chemicals that we develop, other things that we do and how that can affect, uh, our natural resources in the longterm, I think is, uh, is a big lesson that comes out of this.
Speaker 2:Did, did the period that we've just gone through, give DEP time to do some more planning or, you know, cause I was trying to think you usually are the spokesperson show up at meetings all over the place where you doing meetings by zoom now. And yeah,
Speaker 4:We were doing a lot of meetings by zoom. We use Microsoft teams about doing a lot, a lot of meetings through, through remote applications and really, you know, it's interesting to work for us continued. I, you know, I've said to people, you know, when the pandemic first started, what did they tell everybody? Well, they told everyone to wash your hands. They told everyone to disinfect your surfaces in your offices and what do you need to wash your hands and disinfect everything we need water. Right. And so, and so if anything, it just further underscored the importance of having a reliable supply of water. And it also meant that there are some workers who don't get to work from home, who aren't as lucky as I am and fortunate to get to work from home, you know, three, four days a week that the men and women who run the treatment plants, the turn, the valves, do the dam safety checks run the wastewater treatment plans. Those people have to report to work no matter what. And so for me, working at the P one of the things that the pandemic underscored is truly what essential, what services were essential and what services were not, what, you know, people absolutely had to report to work and, and didn't necessarily, and that doesn't make, you know, one subset of people, quote, unquote more important than it, than another subset of people, a subset of workers, but it really underscores the vital nature of the work that you are doing to protect public health. That I think the thing that gets lost in the broader conversation about drinking water is that drinking water really gets to the heart of protecting public health. Um, not only because you're drinking it and cooking with it and putting it into your body, but you're also right cleaning surfaces and maintaining some degree of hygiene in the places where you live and work with that water as well. So, you know, just, just taking some time to reflect on what the pandemic means for a water utility. It really just shines a bright light on the very, very essential nature of water and wastewater and all the other utilities where we want to wake up in the morning and have something and it's in our house and it feels like it's always there, but there's no guarantee that it's always there. It's because people are actually working on somewhere to make that happen.
Speaker 2:Have you, I mean, we've experienced or at least, you know, pattern in, in looking at different sectors in the Hudson Valley that almost every sector has, um, a problem with recruitment of the next generation of workforce. Is that true for DEP as well?
Speaker 4:It's hugely true. Um, so you know, not to bore you with an anecdote, Jonathan, but so the city got its first filtration waiver, right? Which is, there's sort of this thing called the filtration avoidance determination, which is a, a federal and state waiver that allows New York city not to have to filter its water. And we have to do a bunch of things to keep that way for lots and lots of things, but it got that first waiver in the 1990s. And when it got that waiver, the city had to ramp up a bunch of programs, not only to monitor water quality, but to work on streams and farms and also, you know, wastewater plants, all sorts of projects that we had to go out and do in the watershed, understanding that what happens on the land affects the quality of the water. And so the city hired hundreds and hundreds of people all at the same time. And they joined a cohort of employees who were largely that same age. And so all those people who were hired at the same time, largely boomers are now retired, getting ready to retire all at the same time. We've seen this already. Uh, it's really like a building wave. And so about 50 to 60% of our employees are eligible retire in the next six years, which is huge. That's a huge rate of turnover. And, um, we've begun to see some of the ramifications of this, uh, already because people are leaving in larger and larger numbers and no surprise Jonathan New York, city's no than others. The pandemic made it such that we were not allowed to hire people for a certain period of time. There was a hiring freeze that was well-publicized. Um, and so, you know, we have been out there and we need to, and we're getting out there increasingly to say, Hey, there are going to be lots and lots of jobs working on this water, supply the largest in the country. And it is a really diverse range of jobs. It's not just scientists and engineers, it's administrative folks, it's, uh, project planners, it's police officers, it's stream experts. It's geologists, it's you name it right there. You name a profession in the engineering and sciences and support staff. And we have it in an important way at DP. And we've been trying to get out there and say, Hey, you know, as you're leaving high school, that's the age we really want to get to and going to college and thinking, Hey, what do I want to do? Uh, you know, for the next 40 years of my life, uh, think about us. Um, the jobs are interesting. We're doing groundbreaking research all the time at DP, uh, in water science and other disciplines. So that has been quite difficult. One of the things that, um, makes it difficult is some of these jobs, people just don't want to get into anymore. Uh, go out and find a, uh, a 19 year old guy or gal who says, I want to be a certified wastewater treatment operator. I mean, that's not high on the list of things that people are striving to be, but guess what is good? Paying honest that's essential. Yeah. Good benefits, good paying work. Um, there are certain things where the jobs are changing. One of the jobs that we need more and more people for in the future is something called instrumentation specialist. This is sort of like kind of a, like a little bit of electric work and a little bit of computer work all mixed into one. We got a lot of instruments out there on the water supply that are automated. A good example is we have these buoys that sit on the reservoir and on the underside of the buoy, there's an instrument that goes up and down throughout the full depth of the reservoir all day long, sell it sending, um, real-time water quality data back to our 24 operated 24 hour operations center so that we can send, can see the quality of water at any depth in any reservoir at any time. Well, guess what those instruments need to be calibrated. They need to be fixed. And instrumentation specialists are the people who do that. And because there are more, there are more of those instruments. You need more of those specialists. So instrumentation specialists is sort of one of the jobs in the future. That's going to be in greater demand. So recruitment is going to be very, very important. Um, and it's not always easy, uh, because, um, folks don't always think about these sorts of jobs when they're signing up for their four year or two year program.
Speaker 2:So Adam Bosch, thanks for being with patterns and paradigms. Um, if anyone listening knows of a 19 old that is looking for a job, these are actually really cool jobs, supplying an essential part of our quality of life. So if you need any help, just contact us. We'll put you in touch with Adam and Adam will help you figure out a pathway. So Adam, thanks for joining us. Thanks.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast. For more information about this episode, visit our website pattern for progress.org forward slash podcast.