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NYC Water: An Engineering Marvel · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Cuckoo Seattle. We're coming to see you. Yes, and your
0:06
Speaker 1: little horn announcement is one of my favorite things that
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Speaker 1: you do because I know it means we're going to
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Speaker 1: do a live show. And in this case, we're going
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Speaker 1: to the great state of Washington, the greatest city in
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Speaker 1: the United States, Seattle, at the greatest theater in the world.
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Speaker 1: The more the more we're going back. It's like our
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Speaker 1: home away from home in Seattle. We're going to be
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Speaker 1: there Thursday, January six, and tickets are already on sale
0:32
Speaker 1: and they're going like like uh Washington hot cakes fast. Yeah,
0:37
Speaker 1: they're going like chew car cherries. And you know what,
0:39
Speaker 1: if you want to save the few bucks, I think
0:41
Speaker 1: you can even go to the box office there buy
0:43
Speaker 1: them without those internet fees. Yes, Or if you don't
0:47
Speaker 1: care and you just want to buy them on the internet,
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Speaker 1: you can go to s y s K live dot
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Speaker 1: com and follow the links there and it will take
0:53
Speaker 1: you right to the beautiful ticket site. And also, f
0:56
Speaker 1: y I, if you go to buy tickets in person,
0:58
Speaker 1: you want to go to the box office of the
1:00
Speaker 1: Paramount Theater downtown, not the more the Paramount. We'll see
1:04
Speaker 1: you guys in January. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
1:08
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
1:17
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
1:19
Speaker 1: so Be, Chuck Bryant, There's guest producer Andrew. This is
1:23
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. Let's get this a I'm excited
1:28
Speaker 1: about this one. This was your your pick and I
1:33
Speaker 1: was like, what is Chuck talking about? Were you really yes?
1:37
Speaker 1: And then Chuck I happened to stumble upon I don't
1:40
Speaker 1: know what I was looking for, but an email from
1:42
Speaker 1: somebody who sent like a Google doc or something that's
1:47
Speaker 1: that was a list of episodes we said we should do,
1:52
Speaker 1: and people have said those in before, but this one
1:54
Speaker 1: was kind of condensed and that was on there. So
1:56
Speaker 1: I've I've stumbled upon your dirty little secret. I don't
1:59
Speaker 1: think that's where I got it. Oh really, I don't
2:02
Speaker 1: think so. But maybe I just know that I am
2:06
Speaker 1: always fascinated by not only New York City, but by
2:11
Speaker 1: the fact that New York City functions with that many
2:15
Speaker 1: people and all that everything. It's just all amazing to
2:19
Speaker 1: me that that city functions with that many people, that
2:22
Speaker 1: many buildings, that like I want to do an episode
2:24
Speaker 1: on trash removal. Okay, I want to do one on
2:30
Speaker 1: on wastewater treatment. Yeah, oh yeah, that's just New York
2:33
Speaker 1: in general. That's been long brewing. Are you okay with that? Yeah?
2:37
Speaker 1: Just just I mean we can mention New York or whatever.
2:41
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Dave Rouse, though, one of our great writers.
2:44
Speaker 1: They put this together and it's really really fascinating. Dave's
2:48
Speaker 1: just an amazing human. All of our writers are amazing,
2:51
Speaker 1: for sure. Dave is great as well. He's one of
2:53
Speaker 1: a few select amazing people. Right. So, um, the reason
2:58
Speaker 1: why New York, why anybody would ask about New York's
3:02
Speaker 1: water is because if you've ever interacted with the New Yorker,
3:05
Speaker 1: they talk about their water a lot. It's like kind
3:08
Speaker 1: of a thing in New York where they're like, our
3:11
Speaker 1: tap water is the best water in the country, and
3:13
Speaker 1: they have like a lot of um stuff to back
3:17
Speaker 1: that up with, and so much so that that that
3:20
Speaker 1: they say this this water is actually the reason why
3:23
Speaker 1: our bagels and our pizza are so good. Yeah, I was.
3:27
Speaker 1: We were both just there for our final shows of
3:29
Speaker 1: the year at the Bellhouse. Thanks for people who came out.
3:32
Speaker 1: They were great, a lot of fun and by the
3:35
Speaker 1: way the guy that fell asleep on the front row
3:38
Speaker 1: on night number two, I think it was nine number two.
3:42
Speaker 1: I was walking down the street and he randomly passed
3:45
Speaker 1: by driving in a car and rolled down his window
3:49
Speaker 1: and said, hey man. He said great show the other night, right,
3:53
Speaker 1: And I was waiting for him to say, is that
3:55
Speaker 1: Freedom Rock? And I said thanks dude. I was like
3:57
Speaker 1: front row And he was so excited that I remember
4:01
Speaker 1: front Row and he drove on before I had a
4:03
Speaker 1: chance to say, you fell asleep. He's like, I feel
4:08
Speaker 1: like I was there. Maybe I felt like a dream too,
4:11
Speaker 1: I don't know, but um, we were just there. And uh,
4:14
Speaker 1: there are many many restaurants in New York where there
4:18
Speaker 1: will be like a water cooler or a place where
4:21
Speaker 1: you can help yourself to your own cup of water,
4:23
Speaker 1: and it will have a big sign on it that
4:25
Speaker 1: says New York City tap water and proud all caps
4:30
Speaker 1: underlined letters yeah, and and they mean like they're just
4:34
Speaker 1: getting water out of the tap, Whereas in other cities
4:37
Speaker 1: that's a dirty, shameful secret that people don't talk about.
4:40
Speaker 1: In New York, they proudly boast about it. And um,
4:45
Speaker 1: that just the fact that New York or any New
4:48
Speaker 1: Yorker in the city gets water at all is pretty spectacular.
4:53
Speaker 1: It's like you said, there's a lot of people, there's
4:56
Speaker 1: a lot of buildings, and something like more than a
4:58
Speaker 1: billion gallon ends of water flow into New York through
5:02
Speaker 1: the taps every day, I said day with the d yes.
5:06
Speaker 1: It is the largest water system in the United States.
5:10
Speaker 1: People from all over the world government officials fly in
5:16
Speaker 1: and take meetings with the New York City water people
5:20
Speaker 1: just to see, like, how have you done it? They're
5:23
Speaker 1: just a goog how could we do better? So so
5:26
Speaker 1: that's impressive enough that a billion, more than a billion
5:29
Speaker 1: gallons of water is delivered every day to New Yorkers
5:32
Speaker 1: pretty great. But the idea that you can just drink
5:36
Speaker 1: it straight from the tap and it is unfiltered, that
5:42
Speaker 1: is a truly impressive feat. Yeah. And by unfiltered, we
5:46
Speaker 1: mean of the water is unfiltered and ten is filtered. Right,
5:52
Speaker 1: And you might say, look, how can you just filter
5:55
Speaker 1: of the water. Well, it comes from different places. So
5:59
Speaker 1: of the water comes from two places, two watersheds that
6:02
Speaker 1: combined are called the Catskill Delaware Watershed or water system
6:07
Speaker 1: I think um and then the other one from the
6:09
Speaker 1: Crow Croton. I always want to say crow towing, but
6:13
Speaker 1: from the Croton Reservoir, that ten percent is actually filtering.
6:16
Speaker 1: We'll get into all of that, but of New York's
6:21
Speaker 1: water is not It doesn't go through a filtering process,
6:24
Speaker 1: and that makes New York one of only five major
6:27
Speaker 1: cities in the United States to get a waiver from
6:30
Speaker 1: the e p A that says your water is so
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Speaker 1: deliciously pure and delightful that you don't need to filter it.
6:37
Speaker 1: Um Almost every other city has to have a filtering
6:40
Speaker 1: process before it gets delivered to taps. That's right. And
6:43
Speaker 1: the other four naturally Seattle, Portland, or against San Francisco.
6:48
Speaker 1: The one that's a bit of a surprise is Boston, Massachusetts.
6:51
Speaker 1: What that's that's that's how surprising it is, Chuck. That's right.
6:58
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about the history of
7:00
Speaker 1: New York in their water, because back in the day,
7:03
Speaker 1: we've always talked about how what a disgusting, disease ridden
7:08
Speaker 1: poop and horse urine ridden place New York City was. Yeah,
7:12
Speaker 1: like supposedly there was a good twelve inches of horse
7:15
Speaker 1: maneuver on the street at all times before they before
7:18
Speaker 1: they really started cleaning their place up. It's pretty bad.
7:22
Speaker 1: I think that was in the Wynn Chries Typhoid Merry episode,
7:25
Speaker 1: which is a great one. Another great New York episode.
7:28
Speaker 1: So if we're talking New Amsterdam, pre New York City. Uh,
7:32
Speaker 1: they got water where you would think from ponds and
7:35
Speaker 1: natural springs, underwater springs, and they had a forty eight
7:39
Speaker 1: acre pond it's about sixty ft deep, uh in Tribeca
7:44
Speaker 1: what is now Tribeca called the Collect and also the
7:47
Speaker 1: little Collect that was just south of there. Uh. And
7:50
Speaker 1: that name comes from the Dutch word kulk, which means
7:55
Speaker 1: small body of water. And the Collect was where they
7:58
Speaker 1: got their water for a long time. And of the
8:00
Speaker 1: city let Uh, some tanners built a tannery on the
8:05
Speaker 1: shores of the not smart New York which ruined everything. Yeah,
8:10
Speaker 1: because it started to get polluted. They also were able
8:13
Speaker 1: to drill wells and stuff around places where people pooped
8:17
Speaker 1: and pete and then dumped their poop and pee. Um.
8:20
Speaker 1: It was a dirty, dirty place. Because this is pretty
8:23
Speaker 1: germ theory, or at least around the time the germ
8:26
Speaker 1: theory was being developed and people didn't understand it. Um.
8:29
Speaker 1: And I think it was our great stink episode where
8:32
Speaker 1: they traced to cholera epidemic to a public well, um
8:36
Speaker 1: a public water pump. John Snow, if I remember correctly,
8:40
Speaker 1: did that, and this would have been around the time
8:42
Speaker 1: that New Yorkers were suffering from cholera epidemics, one of
8:45
Speaker 1: which took place, and they think the eighteen thirties, eighteen
8:48
Speaker 1: thirty two. It killed thirty New Yorkers and that was
8:52
Speaker 1: a substantial amount of of the population at the time,
8:56
Speaker 1: and another hundred thousand New Yorkers had to flee just
8:59
Speaker 1: to get away from this caller epidemic. And it was
9:02
Speaker 1: because their sewage and their water was coexisting in very
9:06
Speaker 1: unhealthy ways. So New York said, maybe we should try
9:10
Speaker 1: something else. Let's look a little further outside the city
9:13
Speaker 1: where we're dumping our waists and everything, and see if
9:15
Speaker 1: we can get our water from there. And they did.
9:17
Speaker 1: They built the Croton Reservoir. They dammed the river and
9:20
Speaker 1: reservoir collected and they said, now we have some beautiful
9:23
Speaker 1: pure water. We will never need to do anything again
9:26
Speaker 1: to get our water. That's right. Previous to that, though,
9:29
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century, they had these public pumps like
9:32
Speaker 1: you were talking about on street corners about every four
9:35
Speaker 1: blocks or so a big wooden pump where you would
9:38
Speaker 1: get your water from uh underground underground streams and springs
9:43
Speaker 1: and stuff. But there were only a few of these
9:46
Speaker 1: that actually delivered good water. A lot of it was
9:48
Speaker 1: really brackish and gross tasting. And Americans and early European
9:53
Speaker 1: settlers obviously loved their tea, and so they marked this
9:57
Speaker 1: was almost like an early yelp or whatever. They had
10:00
Speaker 1: these pumps that actually delivered the like the two or
10:03
Speaker 1: three good pumps in the city that delivered good water
10:06
Speaker 1: labeled tea water pumps, but like it was good enough
10:08
Speaker 1: to use for tea, good enough to use for making
10:11
Speaker 1: good tea, and so they would go to these tea
10:13
Speaker 1: water pumps. You would have to buy the water. Um.
10:16
Speaker 1: The best one was apparently at Chathaman Roosevelt there was
10:20
Speaker 1: another and sort of what the Lower East Side is
10:23
Speaker 1: today that was a good tea water pump. And this
10:26
Speaker 1: worked out for a long time until uh, the uh
10:31
Speaker 1: the collect and all this stuff it started to sort
10:33
Speaker 1: of um get nasty and stinky, and so they built
10:36
Speaker 1: a canal to channel that water into the river. Like that,
10:41
Speaker 1: we gotta get rid of it and drain this thing.
10:43
Speaker 1: So they build this canal forty ft wide, they channel it.
10:46
Speaker 1: Right after they finish it, this canal begins to sink
10:49
Speaker 1: and in one it got so bad. The smell was
10:52
Speaker 1: so bad that they eventually just covered up the canal.
10:56
Speaker 1: And guess what that became. I don't know, Central Park,
11:01
Speaker 1: Canal Street. Oh, how about that? So stupid? How wasn't
11:07
Speaker 1: even in the right part of the city. We've even
11:10
Speaker 1: done an episode on Central Park and that wouldn't forget it. Yes,
11:13
Speaker 1: Canal Street obviously, that's where Canal Street came from. There
11:16
Speaker 1: was literally a canal and then eventually an underground sewage
11:19
Speaker 1: system under running under Canal Street. Uh. And there's another
11:23
Speaker 1: cool little tidbit if you want, like your little New
11:25
Speaker 1: York history, if you like to walk around on subways
11:27
Speaker 1: and tell people about cool things. Um. One of the
11:30
Speaker 1: first public reservoirs in the city was dug by Aaron
11:33
Speaker 1: Burr and his Manhattan company, and that didn't work out.
11:38
Speaker 1: They transported it through wooden logs as pipes bury beneath
11:42
Speaker 1: the city. Somebody found a piece of that wooden log.
11:45
Speaker 1: It's in one of the museums up there. Now, Oh,
11:47
Speaker 1: no way, Yeah, that is very cool. But the water
11:51
Speaker 1: didn't taste great and it didn't work out for Aaron Burr,
11:54
Speaker 1: so he uh change. He still kept the Manhattan Company,
11:57
Speaker 1: but he got into banking, and the Manhattan Company he
12:00
Speaker 1: became Chase Manhattan Bank. I saw somewhere that that was
12:04
Speaker 1: his aim all along, that the water thing was just
12:07
Speaker 1: basically a fleece to raise money to found the lake,
12:10
Speaker 1: and that that's why the water was so shoddy and
12:14
Speaker 1: the delivery was so shoddy. But what they were selling
12:16
Speaker 1: was so bad supposedly the horses wouldn't even drink it,
12:19
Speaker 1: so it was a scam. It was basically a scam.
12:21
Speaker 1: Aaron Burr was not the greatest historical American shot Alexander
12:26
Speaker 1: Hamilton's I know that that's enough right there, right, And
12:29
Speaker 1: then also scammed a bunch of people out of their
12:33
Speaker 1: their um water investment, because I mean, if you want
12:37
Speaker 1: to invest in a bank, you want to invest in
12:38
Speaker 1: a bank. If you want to invest in a water outfit,
12:40
Speaker 1: you want to invest in a water outfit. You want
12:43
Speaker 1: people to be above the boards with stuff like that.
12:45
Speaker 1: That's right, that's my tirade. So you mentioned the Croton
12:50
Speaker 1: Dam and the Croton Reservoir. I want to say crotone
12:53
Speaker 1: as well. Uh, that became and that aqueduct became operational
12:58
Speaker 1: and things were okay, but then a tragedy struck with
13:02
Speaker 1: the Great Fire of eighteen thirty five. Yes, which actually
13:05
Speaker 1: I guess that the Great Fire took place right before
13:08
Speaker 1: the reservoir was open, which is why the Great bad. Yeah.
13:12
Speaker 1: So in eighteen thirty five, Uh, in on a night
13:16
Speaker 1: in December, a warehouse caught fire and it just leveled
13:20
Speaker 1: Lower Manhattan, like just destroyed something like, um, seventeen city blocks,
13:26
Speaker 1: fifty acres of the most densely populated part of New
13:29
Speaker 1: York at the time, and um, luckily only two people died.
13:34
Speaker 1: Two is too too many, But considering that it was
13:37
Speaker 1: seventeen city blocks that got reduced to ash, that's not
13:41
Speaker 1: bad actually, especially considering that the way that they ended
13:45
Speaker 1: up fighting this fire was by setting buildings on the
13:48
Speaker 1: perimeter on fire because they didn't have the amount of
13:51
Speaker 1: water that they needed. Yeah, that the reason for that.
13:55
Speaker 1: It was just sort of really bad luck. There were
13:57
Speaker 1: two smaller fires that drained our hour. Like I'm a
14:01
Speaker 1: New Yorker, listen to me, You're an honorary New Yorker.
14:03
Speaker 1: I would guess it drained the cisterns, the reserve cisterns
14:07
Speaker 1: that they had, and because of those two smaller fires,
14:09
Speaker 1: they didn't have enough to fight the Great Fire. And
14:12
Speaker 1: the long and short of all of this is New
14:14
Speaker 1: York said, we got to really speed up this Croton
14:16
Speaker 1: Reservoir work. Yep, and they did. And so the Croton
14:19
Speaker 1: Reservoir was brought online in the middle of the nineteenth
14:22
Speaker 1: century and they had a big old parade and everything, um,
14:26
Speaker 1: and it delivered something like ninety million gallons of delicious
14:32
Speaker 1: pure water to New York. Um in the in the
14:35
Speaker 1: middle of the nineteenth century was a really big deal
14:38
Speaker 1: and it worked really well for a very long time.
14:40
Speaker 1: But um, there was also they built the murray Hill
14:43
Speaker 1: Reservoir so the the the Croton Reservoir would be where
14:48
Speaker 1: the water collected up state. And then they build an
14:50
Speaker 1: aqueduct system which is still around in parts today and
14:53
Speaker 1: elevated aqueduct to what's called the murray Hill Reservoir, which
14:57
Speaker 1: is a four acre above ground swimming pool. Basically, it's
15:02
Speaker 1: pretty cool if you look at pictures. Yeah, yeah, it's
15:04
Speaker 1: it was like a real um spot in the city.
15:08
Speaker 1: While it was around, I think something. Untill eighty two,
15:13
Speaker 1: it was around and people used to take strolls around
15:15
Speaker 1: it and make paintings of it and that kind of thing.
15:17
Speaker 1: And it is where the New York Public Library is
15:20
Speaker 1: now today, where the Ghostbusters did some of their early work.
15:24
Speaker 1: All right, right, but the the it worked really well
15:27
Speaker 1: for for you know, the time. But then as New
15:30
Speaker 1: York grew and grew and grew, it became very painfully
15:33
Speaker 1: obvious yet again that New York had outgrown its water supply. Yeah,
15:37
Speaker 1: they needed more water. Ninety million gallons a day wasn't enough. Uh.
15:42
Speaker 1: And then what made matters worse was New York City
15:47
Speaker 1: officially made it a declaration that we are now not
15:51
Speaker 1: just Lower Manhattan. Of course, they didn't call Lower Manhattan
15:54
Speaker 1: at the time. That was just sort of where the
15:56
Speaker 1: city ended. They called it Manahatta Manhatta. I saw that episode,
16:00
Speaker 1: by the way, it was one of the better ones ever,
16:03
Speaker 1: which one of think of what we do in the dark,
16:06
Speaker 1: that's right where they go to party in Manhattan. Man
16:09
Speaker 1: I had a um, what we do in the shadows?
16:13
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, um, so stupid, that's all right. The
16:17
Speaker 1: five boroughs were included in officially, so New York um
16:22
Speaker 1: and the water needed to get to the people was
16:24
Speaker 1: officially uh grown to more than three million people by
16:28
Speaker 1: the time the century turned right, which is just precious today.
16:33
Speaker 1: Three million New Yorkers, Oh my gosh, they do. So
16:36
Speaker 1: they started to look up state again because they had
16:38
Speaker 1: hit upon like a pretty good idea. The city is
16:41
Speaker 1: is a cess pool. Um, we need our water from
16:44
Speaker 1: outside of the cess pool. And they started looking up state.
16:47
Speaker 1: So this time they looked up to the cat Skills
16:50
Speaker 1: and they found two watersheds, which we did an episode
16:53
Speaker 1: on watersheds that I would love to forget, but it
16:55
Speaker 1: came up just now. I thought it was good. Oh man,
16:58
Speaker 1: it was horrendous. What was it? Yes, I thought it
17:00
Speaker 1: was terrible and boring January. I don't remember when it
17:05
Speaker 1: came out. Like I said, I tried to forget that
17:06
Speaker 1: it ever happened. I thought it was pretty good. But anyway, So,
17:09
Speaker 1: a watershed is basically a specific topographical air area where rain, snow,
17:17
Speaker 1: whatever precipitation falls down into this area and is delivered
17:21
Speaker 1: to a specific creek, river stream, something like that that
17:25
Speaker 1: eventually and empties into like a lake or a reservoir
17:28
Speaker 1: or something like that. So there's two watersheds, the Delaware
17:31
Speaker 1: and the Catskill Watershed that put together create something like
17:36
Speaker 1: um two thousand square miles of water catching goodness, and
17:41
Speaker 1: it delivers it to a number of different reservoirs. And
17:44
Speaker 1: that is now today where New York gets like its water. Yeah.
17:49
Speaker 1: So you know, obviously they had too damn up rivers
17:51
Speaker 1: to create these reservoirs. And this all happened to, you know,
17:54
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds. And then finally they were like, great,
17:58
Speaker 1: We've got all these reservoirs and the skills. But let
18:01
Speaker 1: me remind you, we're on the lower eas side of Manhattan,
18:05
Speaker 1: surrounded by horse, hearon and and poop. We need our
18:09
Speaker 1: fresh water. How do we get it here? So in
18:14
Speaker 1: the engineers of New York City completed the ninety two
18:17
Speaker 1: mile cat Skill Aqueduct, which is amazing. It's basically a
18:23
Speaker 1: big concrete tunnel that sends water two miles from the
18:29
Speaker 1: cats Skills down to New York. It's as wide as
18:32
Speaker 1: thirty feet in some places. It is not a tunnel
18:36
Speaker 1: the entire length as we will see here in a minute.
18:39
Speaker 1: Not a continuous tunnel. I'm not sure what that means.
18:42
Speaker 1: What is it just like open. So there's parts of
18:45
Speaker 1: it that aren't technically a tunnel in that it's a
18:48
Speaker 1: covered trench. They cut a trench and then they covered
18:51
Speaker 1: it back up, which I don't know how you do that,
18:53
Speaker 1: but it's not technically a tunnel like a circle or tube. Interesting,
18:57
Speaker 1: And here is to me one of the facts of
18:59
Speaker 1: the show. You get this water down there in the
19:01
Speaker 1: aqueduct and you get to the Hudson River, and what
19:05
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? You gotta go under it. To me,
19:09
Speaker 1: it just be like just pump it in the Hudson
19:10
Speaker 1: and hope it comes out the other side. But then
19:14
Speaker 1: I would have gotten fired immediately when I he's no engineer,
19:18
Speaker 1: he's a shamp he's a rapscallion. So it gets to
19:23
Speaker 1: the Hudson River and then it goes way down into
19:26
Speaker 1: the ground, about eleven feet below sea level and then
19:30
Speaker 1: climbs back up the other side. And it does all
19:33
Speaker 1: this via gravity. Yes, and they did that not just
19:38
Speaker 1: to show off, but because they decided. I read this awesome,
19:41
Speaker 1: you know how I'm always like read the contemporary articles.
19:44
Speaker 1: I read one from seven where they were talking about
19:47
Speaker 1: the construction of the aqueduct and they said that the
19:50
Speaker 1: reason why they were going down that far is because
19:53
Speaker 1: they wanted to hit bedrock because it would be fisher free,
19:57
Speaker 1: meaning there would be no leakage and they could just
20:00
Speaker 1: pumped the water through the hole that they board in
20:02
Speaker 1: the bedrock. Well. They thought the bedrock was going to
20:04
Speaker 1: be about five feet down, and by seven when they
20:07
Speaker 1: wrote the Scientific American article, they'd reached like seven feet
20:11
Speaker 1: still hadn't hit it. It ended up being like eleven
20:13
Speaker 1: hundred feet below sea level where they finally hit bedrock.
20:17
Speaker 1: And that's why they had to drill so far down.
20:20
Speaker 1: And they drilled a tunnel, a vertical shaft from the
20:25
Speaker 1: from the Hudson down to that tunnel, and they built
20:29
Speaker 1: like a tube to pressurize it. So the water even
20:33
Speaker 1: feet under the Hudson is that like fifteen tons per
20:37
Speaker 1: square foot of pressure, which also helps. But the fact
20:40
Speaker 1: that there's no pumps or anything, it's all gravity and
20:42
Speaker 1: pressure driven. Yes, And sadly though, that story has a
20:46
Speaker 1: sad ending because it took so long that their fisher
20:50
Speaker 1: free and oh three T shirts were all rendered useless.
20:55
Speaker 1: What No, I don't know. That's a great joke. I'm
21:01
Speaker 1: gonna go back and listen to it and I'll probably
21:04
Speaker 1: think it's hilarious, So compliments on it in advance. Oh man,
21:10
Speaker 1: that was a quality joke. Three got you? Okay, sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
21:16
Speaker 1: I got you? All right, I got you. We're all
21:18
Speaker 1: together now, Okay, that was a pretty good joke. Uh geez.
21:21
Speaker 1: Should we take a break after that? Yeah, all right,
21:24
Speaker 1: let's take a break. We'll talk a little bit more
21:26
Speaker 1: about this so called aqueduct right after this stuff you
21:47
Speaker 1: should know, gosh and shuck stuff you should know. Okay, chuck.
22:07
Speaker 1: So we've got the Catskill Aqueduct delivering water. Um. There's
22:12
Speaker 1: another one too, called the um the Delaware Aqueduct. And
22:17
Speaker 1: this one actually is like a genuine tunnel. Yes, it's
22:20
Speaker 1: eighty five miles, completed in forty four. I'm not gonna
22:24
Speaker 1: make a T shirt joke about that, and it is
22:27
Speaker 1: still the longest continuous tunnel in the world at eighty
22:32
Speaker 1: five miles. And they did this all, you know, just
22:35
Speaker 1: this digging process is amazing in and of itself, digging
22:39
Speaker 1: these tunnels and these trenches with steam shovels and pouring
22:43
Speaker 1: the concrete tunnel, which I was like, how do you
22:46
Speaker 1: do that? Even you do the bottom half, let it set,
22:49
Speaker 1: and then you do the top half and let that's set.
22:52
Speaker 1: So they were like Charles Bronson in The Great Escape,
22:55
Speaker 1: they were digging tunnels. Yeah, I mean we're talking like
22:58
Speaker 1: dynamite and stuff like that. Like the really did it
23:00
Speaker 1: the old school way to build these aqueducts, and they're
23:03
Speaker 1: still in use today, so much so that there's there's
23:06
Speaker 1: three tunnels. Tunnel number one and tunnel number two have
23:09
Speaker 1: been in operation since nineteen seventeen and nineteen thirty six.
23:13
Speaker 1: They've never stopped operating. They've never been stopped up and
23:17
Speaker 1: drained and inspected in over a hundred years. For tunnel
23:21
Speaker 1: number one, Yeah, I think the current memo going around
23:24
Speaker 1: is I'm sure it's fine. Well, so they're building tunnel
23:28
Speaker 1: number three, and they decided to start building tunnel number
23:31
Speaker 1: three nineteen fifty four. They actually started in nineteen seventy.
23:34
Speaker 1: They are still not done with Tunnel number three. Parts
23:38
Speaker 1: of it are online, and when it does fully come online,
23:41
Speaker 1: tunnel number three will have a capacity enough so that
23:44
Speaker 1: they can individually stop and drain and inspect and repair
23:48
Speaker 1: Tunnel number one and then eventually tunnel number two. Tunnel
23:51
Speaker 1: number three. Yeah, tonnel tunnel number three will will save
23:55
Speaker 1: the other two. And it's good that they're doing it now.
23:57
Speaker 1: But I saw that it's gonna be fully operation all
24:00
Speaker 1: in one. They think, so we're almost there. Almost man. Yeah,
24:05
Speaker 1: it's the New York's longest running municipal project. Uh five
24:10
Speaker 1: billion dollar price tags so far and counting, I guess.
24:14
Speaker 1: And then those three tunnels are two, and however many
24:17
Speaker 1: parts of three are working deliver one point three gallons
24:22
Speaker 1: of water a day through a network of mainz and
24:28
Speaker 1: then individual pipes leading to apartments and homes and businesses
24:35
Speaker 1: and skyscrapers, and all of those pipes, if you total
24:38
Speaker 1: them up, would lay out about seven thousand miles. That's
24:42
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. I would also like to point out that
24:45
Speaker 1: I think you met one point three billion gallons? Would
24:47
Speaker 1: I say? One point three gallons? Really? Which should be
24:52
Speaker 1: hilarious that they went to all this trouble, spend all
24:55
Speaker 1: this money and they're like, we can crank out one
24:58
Speaker 1: three gallons a day, New York. Gather around and get
25:02
Speaker 1: your water. I was still thinking about my T shirt joke.
25:06
Speaker 1: It's a good joke. And here's the kicker to another
25:09
Speaker 1: great fact of the show. Only five of all of
25:12
Speaker 1: the city's water relies on pumps to get to its
25:16
Speaker 1: final destination, which it means your tap. It's pretty awesome. Yeah,
25:19
Speaker 1: so that means that it can't break down or if
25:22
Speaker 1: something does happen, they still have things like gravity to
25:25
Speaker 1: help things along. It's great. So um. The reason why
25:30
Speaker 1: the e p A gave New York a um a
25:33
Speaker 1: waiver and said you don't have to filter the water
25:36
Speaker 1: coming from the cat skill in the Delaware water sheds
25:39
Speaker 1: is because because Juliani Greece, the palms of the e
25:42
Speaker 1: p A. Exactly it started well, it started out is
25:46
Speaker 1: so pure and pristine and just great um water to
25:50
Speaker 1: begin with, but they have taken steps along the way
25:53
Speaker 1: to ensure that it stayed that way. Because one of
25:56
Speaker 1: the things that happened with the Croton Reservoir is development
26:00
Speaker 1: was allowed to grow up around it. Um, agriculture was
26:03
Speaker 1: allowed to pollute it. Um. It just got it turned.
26:07
Speaker 1: And after that the e p A, I think in
26:09
Speaker 1: the nineties the late nineties, said yep, you guys have
26:12
Speaker 1: to start filtering that water. It's no longer unfilterable. Um.
26:16
Speaker 1: It's it's it's not drinkable as is. So they had
26:19
Speaker 1: to start filtering. It used to be a hundred percent
26:21
Speaker 1: of New York's water was unfiltered that Croton Reservoir now
26:26
Speaker 1: is ten percent that is filtered. But but so they
26:30
Speaker 1: learned a valuable lesson from that, and now they're very
26:32
Speaker 1: proactive in keeping the Delaware and cat Skill Reservoir or
26:37
Speaker 1: um watershed water from becoming corrupted by things like development
26:43
Speaker 1: and agriculture. Yeah. And but you know, the lesson they
26:45
Speaker 1: learned is money. Because you might be thinking, like, what's
26:48
Speaker 1: a big deal, why don't they just filter all of it.
26:51
Speaker 1: It's a lot cheaper to take care of the land
26:53
Speaker 1: and make sure you never have to filter it than
26:55
Speaker 1: to install a filtering plant. Yeah, because they estimate that
26:59
Speaker 1: a filtering plant would cost something like ten billion dollars
27:02
Speaker 1: up front and then a hundred million dollars a year
27:04
Speaker 1: to operate. New York is spending something like one billion
27:08
Speaker 1: dollars every several years to protect them, the Delaware and
27:13
Speaker 1: the Catskill watersheds. So it is an enormous investment. But
27:16
Speaker 1: also it's great because it's natural water that's unfiltered. Yeah.
27:20
Speaker 1: And you know, they do this in a number of ways,
27:21
Speaker 1: aside from buying up the land, which was a good
27:25
Speaker 1: move and making sure nothing happens to it. Yep. So,
27:29
Speaker 1: so New York City owns a lot of land up state.
27:33
Speaker 1: Just y Yeah, it's a lot of land. Um, not
27:38
Speaker 1: forty percent of New York State, but the property around
27:41
Speaker 1: the Catskill and Delaware water sheds. They also did things like, hey,
27:45
Speaker 1: let's look at all the wastewater treatment facilities upstream, and
27:49
Speaker 1: let's invest a lot of money in upgrading those. Um. Hey,
27:52
Speaker 1: all you people that have septic tanks that are falling apart,
27:55
Speaker 1: that matters. So we're gonna reimburse you homeowners. Yeah that's impressive. Yeah,
28:01
Speaker 1: install a new septic tank and we're gonna pay for it. Um.
28:04
Speaker 1: They remove dead trees, they replace those with little sapling
28:08
Speaker 1: trees who apparently have roots that are young and can
28:12
Speaker 1: absorb a lot of harmful nutrients from that rain water.
28:16
Speaker 1: And here's another good fact of the show. Some of
28:19
Speaker 1: the water from those reservoirs or from that that watershed
28:23
Speaker 1: can take up to a full year to make its
28:25
Speaker 1: way down to the tap that you're drinking out of.
28:28
Speaker 1: That's a good one. I like that one. It's almost
28:30
Speaker 1: like the how long it takes sunlight to reach us,
28:32
Speaker 1: and we're going to say that it's the same thing.
28:34
Speaker 1: It's the same thing. They also, did you talk about
28:37
Speaker 1: um farmers? The only difference between those stats is you
28:40
Speaker 1: don't have to explain what a photon is. You can
28:42
Speaker 1: just say water, it's a tiny packet of light. It's
28:45
Speaker 1: the the carrier of electromagnetic right. What did you ask
28:50
Speaker 1: right before that? Did you talk about the farmers how
28:51
Speaker 1: they train farmers up state too? I did not, So
28:55
Speaker 1: they say, hey, you hicks, you're gonna learn these techniques.
28:59
Speaker 1: Man too. I'm just kidding. I love farmers. I would actually,
29:02
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, chuck when I um, when
29:04
Speaker 1: I retire, I really really want like a small working farm,
29:10
Speaker 1: very small, Like what do you want like a tenth
29:12
Speaker 1: of an acre small? What kind of stuff do you
29:15
Speaker 1: want to farm? What do you want on it? Oh?
29:17
Speaker 1: I don't care? And yeah, oh yeah, some animals. But
29:20
Speaker 1: it's just you know, having pigs around not to eat
29:24
Speaker 1: or milk, but to um like basically, but to like
29:29
Speaker 1: um to churn up like a field so that I
29:34
Speaker 1: can plan it the next year and move the pigs
29:36
Speaker 1: to the next part of the land. That kind of
29:38
Speaker 1: stuff for chickens to just walk around and eat their
29:40
Speaker 1: eggs and things like that. Some chickens, some pigs, you
29:43
Speaker 1: want some probably a couple of goats. A couple of goats.
29:45
Speaker 1: You want some planting? You want to farm some plants
29:48
Speaker 1: and vegetables, sure, yeah, but mainly just to have something
29:51
Speaker 1: to do, like with the earth. So I was a
29:54
Speaker 1: hundred million percent teasing when I when I said that
29:58
Speaker 1: New York was calling the farmers hex work. Probably did
30:01
Speaker 1: call the farmer's hicks. But I wasn't condoning that. I
30:04
Speaker 1: was just making a joke. Right, you're the guy who
30:06
Speaker 1: wants a tenth of an acre one day to do
30:07
Speaker 1: something on the ear, those pigs are gonna be like,
30:10
Speaker 1: this is some pretty tight quarters around here. Oh you
30:13
Speaker 1: know what else I would do? And I would need
30:14
Speaker 1: more of a tenth more than a tenth of an
30:16
Speaker 1: acre for this. Raise bees. That is where I will
30:18
Speaker 1: eventually raise bees. It's on Josh's farm. Well, brother, you
30:22
Speaker 1: better get some land soon, because it's it's it's leaving.
30:28
Speaker 1: Land is leaving. Yeah, I mean it's people are buying land.
30:31
Speaker 1: It's there's I remember my parents looking at land when
30:34
Speaker 1: I was like ten years old, and they didn't buy it.
30:38
Speaker 1: They said it's leaving, and it's a different deal. Now.
30:40
Speaker 1: It's a lot harder to find the land that you want.
30:43
Speaker 1: You know, people bought it all up. I know you
30:46
Speaker 1: can still get it, but you gotta pay through the
30:48
Speaker 1: nose for it. Yeah, or it's up to them if
30:50
Speaker 1: they want to sell it or not. You know, we're
30:52
Speaker 1: getting second right, we're getting sloppy seconds. O god, oh man,
30:58
Speaker 1: that's gonna be one of those things that, like our
30:59
Speaker 1: younger listeners is going to be in college, smoky pot
31:02
Speaker 1: in a dorm room, and it'll just hit them what
31:04
Speaker 1: you just said, like fifteen years on. Oh goodness. So
31:09
Speaker 1: you mentioned the Croton watershed needs the filtering um and
31:14
Speaker 1: they're trying to avoid that at all costs with the
31:16
Speaker 1: other water sheds. But the Croton water supply when they
31:22
Speaker 1: built this filtering system, it calls three point two billion
31:24
Speaker 1: dollars and it's under a golf course in New Jersey,
31:27
Speaker 1: which is so appropriate. That's where the tainted water is
31:31
Speaker 1: under a golf course in Jersey and Bedminster perhaps sure,
31:35
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is, but it sounds right.
31:37
Speaker 1: I know some people would get that one mm hm.
31:40
Speaker 1: New York's like, hey, you Hicks build a golf course
31:43
Speaker 1: over this. New York just calls everybody else Hicks. And
31:47
Speaker 1: it's right they do. When we can fly in say
31:49
Speaker 1: welcome Hicks. So, um, have we taken our second break yet? No,
31:55
Speaker 1: we probably should though there is a good time. Okay,
31:57
Speaker 1: we're gonna take another break and we're gonna come back
31:59
Speaker 1: and explain what New York does due to its water
32:02
Speaker 1: and whether or not it is a secret ingredient in
32:05
Speaker 1: bagels and pizza stuff. You should know, gosh, and shuck stuff.
32:32
Speaker 1: You should know, alright, Chuck. So one thing that that
32:46
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to say. If you're a New Yorker
32:49
Speaker 1: and you're boasting about your tap water, there are some
32:51
Speaker 1: things you should know. Number one, it's chlorinated. Number two,
32:54
Speaker 1: it's been run through a UV filter. Even if it
32:57
Speaker 1: hasn't been filtered, filtered, there's still things that are done
33:00
Speaker 1: to it. It's not like it's coming straight out of
33:02
Speaker 1: the cat skills into your tap. Yeah, they take it
33:05
Speaker 1: very seriously. Obviously. Here's a good stat In one year,
33:09
Speaker 1: there are more than fifteen thousand water samples taken and
33:12
Speaker 1: analyze at the source. So this is upstream. Um, they
33:17
Speaker 1: have uh Ai well, not AI or is it ai?
33:21
Speaker 1: There's ai involved somehow, there always is. I always ask
33:24
Speaker 1: if it's a I want to always ask you because
33:27
Speaker 1: you know, sure, I know. Thanks to the End of
33:29
Speaker 1: the World with Josh Clark. Oh, thanks for the plug.
33:32
Speaker 1: Still available on iTunes, the I Heart Podcast app or
33:36
Speaker 1: wherever you find your podcasts. Wow, that wasn't just a plug,
33:39
Speaker 1: that was an ad. So they have these robotic buoys
33:43
Speaker 1: that monitored the Kinsico Reservoir, one of the reservoirs that
33:47
Speaker 1: feeds down into New York. And uh, these things take
33:50
Speaker 1: one point nine million measurements a year and wirelessly transmit
33:56
Speaker 1: that back to the Department of Environment Protection in New York. Yeah,
34:02
Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome. And they had a booie before,
34:04
Speaker 1: but they had to remove it in winter because ice
34:07
Speaker 1: would mess with it. And this new one, um apparently
34:10
Speaker 1: is ice yea. They also if you walk down the street, um,
34:17
Speaker 1: there's something like hundred no, nine hundred and sixty five
34:23
Speaker 1: little gray boxes that if you could open up you
34:26
Speaker 1: would find a little sink in a faucet. It's adorable.
34:30
Speaker 1: Maybe a little sample size of locks, often soap, and
34:35
Speaker 1: that's a water sampling station. It says ny d e P.
34:39
Speaker 1: Department of Environmental Protection, and scientists walk up to these things,
34:43
Speaker 1: unlock them and take samples and test for all sorts
34:46
Speaker 1: of different things to make sure that the water getting
34:50
Speaker 1: to New York Is is good. Yeah, it says more
34:53
Speaker 1: than that. Um, it says New York City Drinking Water
34:56
Speaker 1: Sampling Station on the front of it. Oh wow, they
34:58
Speaker 1: really really spell out Yeah, I said fisher free and
35:01
Speaker 1: oh three stamped down there. Uh, so that you know
35:06
Speaker 1: they're testing. They take water samples a month. I'm not
35:11
Speaker 1: sure if you said that, but they were from these
35:13
Speaker 1: particular stations, and they do all kinds of tests. Are
35:16
Speaker 1: testing obviously for uh, turbidity which is cloudiness, pH chlorine, bacteria,
35:23
Speaker 1: does it stink like all kinds of tests that they're
35:25
Speaker 1: doing right, Um, And usually the New York City water
35:29
Speaker 1: is going to pass all these tests like it's there's
35:32
Speaker 1: not going to be a problem. This is just a
35:34
Speaker 1: extra little quality assurance that they're doing because by the
35:37
Speaker 1: time it reaches these testing stations, that's where it's going
35:40
Speaker 1: to the taps anyway, it's tapping into the tap water.
35:42
Speaker 1: Basic so um that ten percent of water goes through
35:47
Speaker 1: a couple of extra steps that is um that that
35:51
Speaker 1: the other ninety percent doesn't go through. One of the
35:54
Speaker 1: first things it does in the treatment plan is it's
35:56
Speaker 1: mixed with alum, which is a component of aluminum, right,
36:01
Speaker 1: And alum attracts organic compounds and basically says, rise to
36:05
Speaker 1: the surface with me and creates flock, which is a white,
36:08
Speaker 1: frothy sludge, and all that is just skimmed off the top.
36:12
Speaker 1: That's step one. Yeah, this sounds so gross and it is,
36:16
Speaker 1: but like in the end, you get your good water.
36:18
Speaker 1: The next thing that happens is it flows through these
36:21
Speaker 1: giant water filters um. Dave put it as like these
36:25
Speaker 1: giant britt of filters. It's essentially sort of the same thing.
36:29
Speaker 1: And this is just gonna further purify the water, passing
36:32
Speaker 1: through layers and layers of stuff like sand, uh an, anthracite.
36:37
Speaker 1: And then comes the ultra violet light that you referenced earlier, right, Yes,
36:41
Speaker 1: and a hundred percent of New York's water is sent
36:44
Speaker 1: through a UV filter because UV filters are really good
36:47
Speaker 1: at disrupting reproduction of bacteria um, and so all water
36:53
Speaker 1: is apped. But that n of water that's not filtered
36:56
Speaker 1: that goes through a separate UV filtering plant that's built
37:00
Speaker 1: for those and that that's where like a billion gallons
37:03
Speaker 1: of water a day are z apped with UV lights.
37:06
Speaker 1: But um so all of that gets combined together eventually
37:09
Speaker 1: and and comes out your tap and New Yorkers drink
37:14
Speaker 1: it straight fro the tap. Literally. It is very bizarre
37:18
Speaker 1: because I don't know if it's a placebo effect or what,
37:21
Speaker 1: but I feel like it does taste pretty good for
37:24
Speaker 1: tap water. But at the same time, I typically don't
37:27
Speaker 1: drink just straight tap water, so my frame of reference
37:30
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily right there. Do you want to hear something funny?
37:34
Speaker 1: You know what my brother's favorite water is and what
37:36
Speaker 1: it's probably just a bit, but he claims it's true
37:39
Speaker 1: hose water. Oh, I know what he's talking about. Yeah,
37:43
Speaker 1: like when you're watering the car or watering the car.
37:46
Speaker 1: When you're washing the car, here a right grow car
37:49
Speaker 1: when you're watering your mini, so it grows into an
37:51
Speaker 1: suv right So, um, I think the reason why Scott
37:56
Speaker 1: is onto something is because when you're drinking from a hose,
37:58
Speaker 1: it's summertime and it's hot, yeah, and you're probably working hard.
38:03
Speaker 1: Maybe it's definitely it definitely does taste different, for sure.
38:06
Speaker 1: So when it comes to New York water, um, everyone
38:10
Speaker 1: says it's the best in the country. There are rankings actually,
38:14
Speaker 1: and it is out of one metro areas in the US,
38:19
Speaker 1: So it's not the best literally by definition, not the
38:22
Speaker 1: best water in the guy. You've got to move to Arlington,
38:24
Speaker 1: Texas if you want uh. And this was this was
38:27
Speaker 1: from ten years ago, but I'm not sure what the
38:30
Speaker 1: current status is. Imagine Arlington's still up there though, sure,
38:33
Speaker 1: but you're gonna have to have a lot more reasons
38:34
Speaker 1: than that to move to Arlington, Texas. Ouch that one,
38:39
Speaker 1: I'm not taking that. What are some of the problems
38:41
Speaker 1: though with New York water, Well, there's two big problems. Turbidity,
38:45
Speaker 1: which you mentioned earlier, which is um uh, sediment suspension
38:50
Speaker 1: in the water, which gives it kind of a cloudy
38:52
Speaker 1: or darker, gritty kind of look, which is it's not
38:56
Speaker 1: just that it looks bad, it's pathogens can cling to
38:59
Speaker 1: that sediment, so it's not something you want suspended. Plus
39:03
Speaker 1: it also makes it much more difficult to filter that
39:06
Speaker 1: stuff out. It's like extra work that has to be
39:08
Speaker 1: done to get rid of that sediment. And if you're
39:11
Speaker 1: not filtering your water to begin with, that's kind of
39:14
Speaker 1: a problem. Um. And then secondly, the other one is
39:18
Speaker 1: nutrients over it's over nutrient meaning it's just packed with
39:22
Speaker 1: ribal flavoring. Well, what it actually is is fertilizer runoff.
39:29
Speaker 1: You know, with those farmers are doing their best, but
39:32
Speaker 1: there is fertilizer that goes downstream and runs into the watersheds.
39:37
Speaker 1: And phosphorus is one of the biggest problems because farmers
39:41
Speaker 1: do fertilize with phosphorus and if it runs off. The
39:45
Speaker 1: phosphorus alone is not great because it can cause algae
39:48
Speaker 1: blooms and stuff like that, and it can taste bad
39:51
Speaker 1: and stink. Yeah, because when the algae dies, it decays
39:54
Speaker 1: and it does not smell good. Now it does not
39:56
Speaker 1: smell good. But um. A bigger problem though, is when
40:00
Speaker 1: you combine that with the chlorine. Because, like we said,
40:02
Speaker 1: New York water is chlorinated and fluoridated. We have the
40:06
Speaker 1: T shirts to prove it, right. I don't think we
40:08
Speaker 1: said it was fluoridated, but yeah, everybody knows it's fluoridated.
40:11
Speaker 1: And when you combine that chlorine with a phosphorus, it
40:17
Speaker 1: can create byproducts called disinfection by products and that is
40:21
Speaker 1: no good at all. No, those are nasty. They're called
40:23
Speaker 1: DBPs and they are basically like um chemicals that are
40:30
Speaker 1: accidentally made from from sanitizing water, and not just with chlorine,
40:35
Speaker 1: but chlorine chloramine. There's a bunch of different stuff that
40:38
Speaker 1: they use to to disinfect water, and all of them
40:41
Speaker 1: can can combine with organic call compounds to create really
40:46
Speaker 1: just nasty stuff like um, carcinages or yeah, carcinogens. Um.
40:52
Speaker 1: Some can produce miscarriages, just really really bad stuff that
40:57
Speaker 1: can be produced in the drinking water. Chloroform is one
41:00
Speaker 1: of those byproducts, yeah, which is why New Yorker is
41:03
Speaker 1: frequently faint when they're drinking tap one. But this all
41:07
Speaker 1: sounds super scary New York City. Um, they are they.
41:12
Speaker 1: I think there are eight known contaminants um. But they
41:16
Speaker 1: are still apparently well under the legal limit, depending on
41:21
Speaker 1: what you think about how the legal limits are set
41:23
Speaker 1: up for us, right exactly, it's a good caveat But
41:25
Speaker 1: New York City drinking water is thirty point nine parts
41:27
Speaker 1: pervilion chloroform and the national averages eleven, so they are
41:31
Speaker 1: way higher on chloroform. But as far as all of
41:34
Speaker 1: those uh DBPs, total, they're far below the legal limit
41:38
Speaker 1: and just a little bit above average nationally. Right, and
41:41
Speaker 1: then the total number of DBPs that they have is
41:44
Speaker 1: actually less than those in Arlington's So interesting. Chew on
41:48
Speaker 1: that Arlington's right, chew on that bad pizza. Speaking of
41:52
Speaker 1: chewing chuck and pizza, let's just answer this question. Is
41:57
Speaker 1: New York City's water the key ingredient to New York
42:00
Speaker 1: City bagels and pizza? H? I think, I mean, you
42:03
Speaker 1: can't definitively say, but I think it does have something
42:06
Speaker 1: to do with it. For sure. It's got to because
42:09
Speaker 1: science is involved. So here's the thing. The water from
42:12
Speaker 1: the cat Skills and from the Delaware is naturally soft,
42:16
Speaker 1: meaning that it's lower in calcium and magnesium. Where do
42:20
Speaker 1: you fall on loving softer hard water? I'm a hard
42:23
Speaker 1: water guy, same here man. When I lived in Arizona,
42:26
Speaker 1: they had soft water where I lived in, uh my
42:30
Speaker 1: sister's house that I lived in, and most of the
42:32
Speaker 1: house has had water softened error, I guess hardening units
42:37
Speaker 1: or whatever in the house. Yeah, because you can't feel clean,
42:41
Speaker 1: like you never feel like you've got the shampoo or
42:43
Speaker 1: the soap off. It's it's just awful. Does anyone like
42:47
Speaker 1: soft water? I don't know, weirdos probably I mean hard water. Sorry, no,
42:53
Speaker 1: I had it all backwards. Okay, So so you like
42:56
Speaker 1: soft water, Yeah, that's why. That's why I actually that
43:00
Speaker 1: so why I misspoke. They had water softeners in Arizona
43:03
Speaker 1: because the water was hard. New York water is soft.
43:06
Speaker 1: I like soft Okay. I like hard water typically because
43:10
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm clean afterward. But soft water, like
43:14
Speaker 1: just the New York water is fine with me. But
43:16
Speaker 1: a softened like a chemically softened water, I can't stand. Yes, interesting,
43:23
Speaker 1: But New York's is naturally soft, so it doesn't have calcium, magnesium,
43:27
Speaker 1: or it is very low in those things comparatively, and
43:30
Speaker 1: that actually has an effect on taste, like calcium and
43:33
Speaker 1: magnesium can provide like a bitter taste to water. So
43:36
Speaker 1: there's one thing that they're saying, like, Okay, the dough
43:39
Speaker 1: isn't going to taste naturally bitter because of the calcium magnesium.
43:43
Speaker 1: That's something that is something, and it also interacts with
43:46
Speaker 1: the flower. If you're gonna make a bagel or a
43:49
Speaker 1: bali or pizza crust, you're gonna be or you know
43:52
Speaker 1: a lot of things when you're baking. But those are
43:54
Speaker 1: the big three in New York. You're gonna be using
43:57
Speaker 1: flour and water as your base for your dough and
44:01
Speaker 1: hard water. The minerals uh in those tap water are
44:04
Speaker 1: going to fortify the gluten and they're gonna make it
44:06
Speaker 1: tough and less flexible. You don't want it too soft, though,
44:10
Speaker 1: because it'll have the opposite effect and it will be
44:12
Speaker 1: gooey and you won't be able to work it as well.
44:14
Speaker 1: And apparently the American Chemical Society says New York City
44:17
Speaker 1: tap water is the Goldilocks of bagel water. It is
44:21
Speaker 1: just right yep, not too hard, not too soft, just
44:24
Speaker 1: perfect for a bagel and for a pizza. And that
44:27
Speaker 1: that American Chemical Society quote came from a Smithsonian article
44:31
Speaker 1: and they went on to say probably though, it's actually
44:34
Speaker 1: the techniques that New Yorkers used to make bagels, Like
44:37
Speaker 1: they poach the bagel dough first, like they boil it.
44:40
Speaker 1: That that's the only way to do a bagel. Sure,
44:43
Speaker 1: it's not a bagel, No it's not. That's like a
44:45
Speaker 1: baked donut and it's not a doughnut basically, And then
44:49
Speaker 1: they also, um will uh, they'll let the yeast sit
44:53
Speaker 1: for a little while to make it for men, which
44:55
Speaker 1: creates volatile flavor compounds. So um, it just taste better.
45:00
Speaker 1: They're saying, probably those are the reasons why New Yorkers
45:03
Speaker 1: make better bagels or pizza. And it's not really the water.
45:07
Speaker 1: The waters just contributes a very small amount. I think
45:11
Speaker 1: it's all those things. Why not? No one can say
45:14
Speaker 1: for certain, so let's just say yes, it is all
45:16
Speaker 1: those things. Well, if you want to know more about
45:19
Speaker 1: New York City's tap water, go on to New York
45:21
Speaker 1: City and try their tap water. And since I said
45:25
Speaker 1: that it's time for listener mail everybody, I'm gonna call
45:30
Speaker 1: this uh house rolling And we talked about t being houses. Yep,
45:36
Speaker 1: I let the podcast guys just finish up trick or treating.
45:38
Speaker 1: And you were talking about rolling houses. I grew up
45:41
Speaker 1: in Franklin, Tennessee, where we used to roll houses all
45:44
Speaker 1: the time. In Franklin, Tennessee for people who don't know,
45:47
Speaker 1: because where a lot of big shot Nashville big wigs live.
45:52
Speaker 1: Because you can buy a huge house with lots of land.
45:55
Speaker 1: That was Chuck speaking right. Funny thing though, guys, I'm
45:59
Speaker 1: back to being brand and Okay, funny thing though, Guys,
46:01
Speaker 1: my neighbor was Brad Paisley. There was a couple of
46:04
Speaker 1: years before his first Grammy award, and once we found
46:07
Speaker 1: this out, we knew that we had to get him.
46:09
Speaker 1: So my sister and I gathered all of our friends
46:11
Speaker 1: dressed in black and snuck out to roll this country
46:14
Speaker 1: music stars house. We were halfway through the job when
46:18
Speaker 1: his freaking tour bus rolled up on us. At first,
46:21
Speaker 1: we all ran away frightened, but we were pretty much
46:23
Speaker 1: called in the act. Nowhere to go. He got off
46:25
Speaker 1: the bus and was super nice about the whole thing. Actually,
46:28
Speaker 1: he gave us a quick tour of the tour bus,
46:30
Speaker 1: chatted us up for a little while. We even cleaned
46:33
Speaker 1: up the little bit of mess we had made and
46:34
Speaker 1: left star struck. Highly doubt he remembers that night at all,
46:38
Speaker 1: but my friends and I will certainly never forget anyway,
46:41
Speaker 1: That's all I got, guys, have a spooky Halloween. That
46:44
Speaker 1: is from Brandon Saunders. That is very nice. Brandon, thanks
46:48
Speaker 1: a lot for that email, and hats off to Brad
46:51
Speaker 1: Paisley for being so cool that he doesn't take his
46:53
Speaker 1: hat off. But all right, exactly, but also, how about
46:56
Speaker 1: just a hat tipp fin. Yeah, actually I was thinking
46:58
Speaker 1: Kdney Chesney because he's ball none. None of those guys
47:01
Speaker 1: take their hats off, dude. So but also he hangs
47:04
Speaker 1: out with Peyton Manning, which means that he must be
47:06
Speaker 1: a good guy. Right, isn't Peyton a good dude? Sure?
47:09
Speaker 1: I'm just started of seeing him on my TV. Oh,
47:12
Speaker 1: that's not gonna happen anytime soon. Pretty soon you'll see
47:15
Speaker 1: him in augmented reality and you're gonna everywhere you go,
47:18
Speaker 1: like it or not, Charles. Okay, Well, if you want
47:21
Speaker 1: to get in touch of this, like Brad Paisley did,
47:24
Speaker 1: you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot
47:26
Speaker 1: com and check out our social links, and you can
47:29
Speaker 1: also send us a good old fashioned email, wrap it up,
47:32
Speaker 1: spank it on the bottom, with it some good old
47:34
Speaker 1: country goodness, and send it off to stuff podcast at
47:37
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
47:43
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts
47:46
Speaker 1: for my Heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app,
47:48
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows