Liquid Assets

The New York City water system is, by every measure, an engineering marvel. Delivering 1.2 billion gallons of water each day to more than nine million people, it is a complex network of reservoirs stretched out over a vast upstate region and connected by a web of subterranean aqueducts to rival the aqueducts of the ancient Romans. The system, so pivotal to the development of the nation's largest city and its northern suburbs, was realized over the past century and a half, and indeed is still being built beneath the subways and skyscrapers of New York. But clean, abundant water has not come without peril and pain. Thousands of people were forced to relinquish their homes in dozens of communities leveled to make way for the reservoirs of the Croton, Catskill, and Delaware Supplies. Hundreds of workers died building the tunnels and dams; countless more were injured. The story of the New York water system is one of genius and daring, sacrifice and tragedy. It is peopled with visionaries, scoundrels and "the little men with the picks and shovels" who tore away mountains and built new ones to capture the sweet essence of wild rivers far from the Big Apple's teeming streets.