Empire of Water

An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply

David Soll

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9780801468063
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Supplying water to millions is not simply an engineering and logistical challenge. As David Soll shows in his finely observed history of the nation's largest municipal water system, the task of providing water to New Yorkers transformed the natural and built environment of the city, its suburbs, and distant rural watersheds. Almost as soon as New York City completed its first municipal water system in 1842, it began to expand the network, eventually reaching far into the Catskill Mountains, more than one hundred miles from the city. Empire of Water explores the history of New York City's water system from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, focusing on the geographical, environmental, and political repercussions of the city's search for more water.

Soll vividly recounts the profound environmental implications for both city and countryside. Some of the region's most prominent landmarks, such as the High Bridge across the Harlem River, Central Park's Great Lawn, and the Ashokan Reservoir in Ulster County, have their origins in the city's water system. By tracing the evolution of the city's water conservation efforts and watershed management regime, Soll reveals the tremendous shifts in environmental practices and consciousness that occurred during the twentieth century. Few episodes better capture the long-standing upstate-downstate divide in New York than the story of how mountain water came to flow from spigots in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Soll concludes by focusing on the landmark watershed protection agreement signed in 1997 between the city, watershed residents, environmental organizations, and the state and federal governments. After decades of rancor between the city and Catskill residents, the two sides set aside their differences to forge a new model of environmental stewardship. His account of this unlikely environmental success story offers a behind the scenes perspective on the nation's most ambitious and wide-ranging watershed protection program.

CHAPTER ONE

From Croton to Catskill

On the afternoon of July 15, 1890, Mayor Hugh Grant boarded his horse-drawn carriage en route to a ceremony marking the introduction of water from the New Croton Aqueduct into New York City’s distribution system. Plans called for Grant “to appear as a fresh water Neptune” and turn a regulator, which would send a torrent of water into gatehouses at the main Central Park reservoir. City employees at an uptown gatehouse—not the mayor, whose planned whirl of the regulator was pure political symbolism—would initiate the flow of water into the reservoir. Faithfully obeying the instructions of Alphonse Fteley, chief engineer of the Aqueduct Commission, workers opened the gates of the new aqueduct just before two o’clock, ensuring that a gush of water would arrive at Central Park on the hour. When the mayor arrived a few minutes after two, he was disappointed to discover that a new era had begun without him.1

Grant’s frustrating afternoon symbolized the difficulty of providing a pure and abundant supply of water to New Yorkers around the turn of the century. The root of the problem was the rapid growth and transformation of the city. The arrival of hundreds of thousands of eastern and southern European immigrants sharply increased demand for water. Lifestyle changes, particularly the growing popularity of apartment houses among middle- and upper-class residents, also strained the water system. Apartment houses provided residents access to more water-consuming devices, fueling higher per capita consumption. Each unit in the Stuyvesant Apartments, considered New York’s first apartment building when it opened in 1870, included two water closets and a separate bathroom. Just a few blocks away, tenement dwellers shared hallway taps with several other families and relied on privies.2

The dynamism and energy of the city spilled over into the larger metropolitan area. As late as the 1830s, Brooklyn was a minor city, home to fewer than forty thousand residents. Six decades later, owing to an influx of residents from New York and aggressive annexation of nearby communities, it had become one of the nation’s largest cities.3 Just as New York gradually expanded the Croton system, Brooklyn made piecemeal additions to its network of wells and infiltration galleries on western Long Island. These improvements fell far short of what was required to ensure adequate service. In 1895 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle charged that the city “has been so near a water famine within the last three years that men in power were afraid to let the public know the exact condition.”4 The lure of improved water supplies motivated many residents of Brooklyn and Staten Island to vote in favor of annexation by New York.5 The 1898 union of Brooklyn, New York, Staten Island, and surrounding communities created Greater New York, a sprawling metropolis that greatly increased the physical dimensions of the city. The city’s population nearly doubled to 3.5 million. Filling the tanks and tubs of its newest residents required New York to undertake a massive expansion of its water network.

Nature graced New York with several options for increasing its supplies. Municipal officials considered tapping aquifers on Long Island; the Hudson River; Connecticut’s Housatonic River and its tributaries; streams in Dutchess County, north of the Croton region; and the rivers and creeks of the Catskill Mountains. Engineers weighed several criteria, including water quality, expected yield, and cost of delivery. But the differences among the sources were less significant than what they had in common, namely that local communities had no intention of ceding their current or future water sources to New York City.

Gaining access to new sources emerged as the most challenging task facing New York’s water overseers. Both the private and public sectors stymied the city’s bid to secure a new supply. The Ramapo Water Company purchased water rights from property owners across wide swaths of the Catskills, effectively preventing New York from tapping productive mountain streams for a public supply. State lawmakers supported new restrictions on New York’s right to develop streams and aquifers lying closer to the city. The future of the water supply and the viability of New York City itself hinged on overcoming the reflexively antiurban bias of the state legislature.

Despite the delay in tapping new watersheds, the turn of the century was an unusually active period for the existing water system. The Aqueduct Commission oversaw construction of several new reservoirs in the Croton region. These reservoirs remade the northern portion of Westchester County and much of Putnam County, wiping out hundreds of acres of fertile farmland, displacing residents, and sundering communities. The effects of extending the water system were not limited to the Croton region. They also reverberated within the city, where officials had constructed a network of reservoirs and pumping stations to enhance water delivery. Upgrading the Croton system obviated the need for some of this infrastructure, allowing the city to redeploy it for other uses. The decision to dismantle an urban reservoir marked the beginning of the recycling of water infrastructure, a land-use practice that transformed New York and its suburbs throughout the twentieth century.

The extension of the Croton system and the drive to secure additional watersheds reconfigured the physical and political landscape of southeastern New York State. By 1905, when the city’s campaign for a new water supply shifted into high gear, the Aqueduct Commission was nearing completion of the sprawling New Croton Reservoir, the centerpiece of the expanded Croton network. New York added two more reservoirs over the next several years, finally completing the water system it had begun constructing in 1837. The build-out of the Croton system marked the end of an era. A new set of political arrangements emerged in which the interests of the budding suburbs began to overlap with those of New York City. This urban-suburban alliance spurred the development of an entirely new water system in the Catskill Mountains. The construction of this new water network transformed distant rural watersheds, catalyzed suburban growth, and remade the built environment of the city.

Croton, Ramapo, and the Politics of Water Supply

The completion of the New Croton Aqueduct allowed more water to be conveyed under higher pressure, raising hopes that the Aqueduct Commission had delivered on its promise of a reliable water supply. These hopes proved short-lived. New Yorkers took full advantage of the bounty, leading to unprecedented increases in overall and per capita consumption. The increased delivery capacity of the new aqueduct proved a boon when water was abundant, but as the New York Times trenchantly observed, “A large aqueduct and a liberal flow only increase the danger of periodical exhaustions of the supply so long as there is inadequate provision for the storage of the surplus of wet periods.”6 Construction of new reservoirs that could store large amounts of water lagged behind completion of the aqueduct. The commission had, in effect, provided New Yorkers with a much more powerful straw but only marginally increased the volume of water in the city’s glass. Ironically, the city experienced a severe water shortage in the fall of 1891, only a year after the new aqueduct started delivering water. The commission spent the next two decades playing catch-up, damming the Croton and its tributaries to build nine additional reservoirs.7

The development of the Croton system submerged large sections of Westchester and Putnam Counties. The scale of system expansion far surpassed any construction project that the city had ever undertaken. Nevertheless, by the mid-1890s, both the public and private sectors had turned their attention to the next water source. Increases in water consumption continued to outpace the construction of new reservoirs. To sustain its breakneck growth, New York needed to look beyond the Croton for more water.

Even before it began to seriously investigate new sources, the city found itself outflanked by rural communities wary of becoming New York’s next watershed. In 1896, the state legislature passed the Burr Act, which barred Brooklyn from tapping the waters of Suffolk County, in eastern Long Island. The bill compounded Brooklyn’s acute water difficulties. Brooklyn residents hoped that political union with New York would finally resolve their long-standing water problems.

Private interests also anticipated the increased demand for water in the metropolitan area. Whereas Suffolk County blocked Brooklyn’s water expansion to protect the oyster beds and tourism that were the mainstays of its own economy, the Ramapo Water Company sought to cash in on the city’s thirst. Ramapo’s attempt to monopolize water sources vital to New York’s future featured all the classic elements of Progressive Era melodrama: avaricious private interests; an aggressive press corps; a maverick public figure in City Comptroller Bird Coler; and a valiant civic organization, the Merchants’ Association of New York. The battle over Ramapo’s plan to tap mountain water sources launched the movement to secure a new water supply for the city.

In 1895, the state legislature granted the company extraordinary powers to acquire water rights throughout New York and to contract with municipalities to sell the water it collected. Ramapo purchased water rights from landholders throughout southeastern New York State, particularly in the Catskill Mountain region, which had been identified as early as 1886 as a potential water supply for the city.8 By the late 1890s, the company had secured the rights to enough water to contemplate the construction of a delivery system capable of providing New York City with two hundred million gallons of water a day (MGD), nearly half the total consumption of the five boroughs.9 With insurers and hoteliers urging Mayor Robert Van Wyck to significantly expand the water supply to reduce the likelihood of fire, in 1899 Ramapo asked the Board of Public Improvements, comprising the leaders of municipal departments responsible for public works, to sign a contract with the company to supply New York with water from the Catskills.10 The company had the ear of Tammany Hall, the notoriously corrupt Democratic Party machine that had regained control of municipal government with Mayor Van Wyck’s victory in 1898. With the explicit backing of state law and the support of Water Commissioner William Dalton, the company appeared poised to transform New York’s water system from a publicly run utility to a public-private operation in which the city conveyed water from the Croton watershed while Ramapo delivered it from the Catskill Mountains.

The company greatly underestimated the extent and intensity of the opposition that its plan would arouse. In August 1899, Comptroller Coler, a member of the Board of Public Improvements who harbored deep suspicions about Ramapo’s intentions, succeeded in postponing a vote on the proposed contract. After a two-week delay, Coler presented the conclusions of a series of engineers’ reports that he had hastily commissioned. Coler sought to debunk the claim that New York was on the verge of outstripping its water supply. One report concluded that New York could take its time in choosing its next water source: “There is, therefore, no question of sufficiency of supply in 1904, or 1909…and, consequently, there is no need of excessive haste in this important matter.”11 Other engineers questioned Ramapo’s most basic claims, arguing that the project would yield substantially less than the 200 MGD promised, and that the city could build the project itself for approximately one-fifth the expense.12

Considering the circumstances under which the reports were produced—at the behest of an opponent of the Ramapo plan and under an absurdly compressed two-week deadline—their conclusions were more educated guesswork than well-supported assertions. Nonetheless, they set the terms of the debate on what the New York World dubbed “the Great Chartered Ramapo Robbery.”13 The newspaper took the unusual step of formally entering the political arena by securing an injunction prohibiting the city from signing a contract with Ramapo.14 Then, with the injunction deadline looming, the Merchants’ Association, a membership organization composed of influential businessmen with an interest in public policy, persuaded the Board of Public Improvements to table consideration of the contract for several months, pending completion of a comprehensive analysis of New York’s water supply.

The Merchants’ Association report, whose great length—627 pages—seemed to attest to its comprehensiveness and veracity, proved the death knell for the Ramapo plan. Newspapers trumpeted the report’s claim that the proposal would cost the city $195 million more than a publicly built system. One headline, “Ramapo Raid Would Rob New York City of $195,460,070,” suggested that the report told the press what it wanted to hear, and that its conclusions were accurate to the dollar.15 A more skeptical observer might have noted the similarity between the estimate and the figure cited in a Merchants’ Association fund-raising solicitation issued immediately before it undertook its investigation. In its appeal, the association requested funds “for effective protection of the public interests against a possible needless burden of $200,000,000.”16

These arguments proved especially effective because they confirmed the prevailing Progressive Era presumption that what benefited private interests often conflicted with the public good.17 Ramapo opponents convinced the public that nefarious private interests sought to “procure a vast and profligate contract with the City of New York through the connivance of city officials and the abuse by them of their official power.”18 Riding a wave of public outrage, anti-Ramapo interests sought to revoke the company’s charter. In a letter to Republican gubernatorial candidate Benjamin Odell, Merchants’ Association president William King highlighted both the 1895 legislation that conferred extraordinary powers on Ramapo, and language in the city charter that effectively deprived New York of the right to acquire additional water sources by eminent domain to expand its supply network. Without these powers of condemnation, King warned, New York “may be compelled to resort to a contract as the only means of procuring an increased water supply.”19

The Ramapo Water Company fought vigorously to maintain its charter, but after the release of the Merchants’ Association report in August 1900 and its enthusiastic reception by the New York press, most legislators regarded the company as politically toxic. In a brief distributed to lawmakers, the company refuted the claim that it enjoyed special powers not available to other corporations, arguing that “the proposed repealing measure is entirely without argument or reason for its support.”20 The company misread the prevailing political winds: the handful of legislators who may have read its plea likely viewed the highly technical comparison of the company’s charter with existing state law on corporations as entirely irrelevant. At its core, the Ramapo controversy stemmed from the widespread perception that the company sought to exploit its exclusive control of potential water sources to egregiously overcharge New York City for access to these waters. Ramapo’s focus on legal details amounted to an exercise in irrelevance. In the spring of 1901 the New York State Senate voted to repeal the company’s charter by an overwhelming vote of forty-two to four.21

Despite arousing what might be described as justifiable hysteria in regard to New York’s future water supply, the Ramapo episode left the most essential questions unanswered. Where would New York obtain its new water sources, and under what restrictions? These questions were not likely to be answered while Mayor Van Wyck remained in office. In 1902, New Yorkers elected Seth Low, former mayor of Brooklyn and a noted reformer. Shortly after taking office, Low commissioned John Freeman and two other prominent engineers, William Burr and Rudolph Hering, to prepare a report on New York’s water system.

As the engineers embarked on their study of New York’s long-term water prospects, the city worked to shore up its existing supply and delivery system. The New Croton Reservoir, a massive project begun in 1892, was finally nearing completion. Directly upstream, work on the Muscoot Reservoir was under way. And on Long Island, laborers retooled Brooklyn’s aging water system. In 1899, the city began repair work on the leaky Millburn Reservoir, the most glaring symbol of Brooklyn’s flawed water network.22 New York built a mechanical filter plant to purify supplies from two Long Island ponds that had become contaminated, resulting in the delivery of “seven millions of gallons of water filtered from localities which were previously a serious menace to the community.”23 Nature also cooperated, gracing the metropolitan area with several consecutive years of above-average rainfall. But these were only stopgap solutions. Within a few years, the Croton system would be fully developed, and the generous rains would inevitably fade. New York needed more water, and it needed it soon.

Reports, Responses, and Results

Voluminous and highly technical in parts, the engineers’ report nevertheless reflected political realities. In a report he drafted for Comptroller Coler during the Ramapo controversy in 1900, John Freeman had identified the Ten Mile–Housatonic watershed, much of which lay in Connecticut, as the most promising water source for the city, insisting that New York could overcome the legal obstacles associated with diverting water sources that originated outside state borders.24 By 1903, legal precedent had established the practical impossibility of tapping interstate waters. The water commissioner therefore instructed Freeman and his fellow engineers (known as the Burr Commission) not to consider them as potential sources.25 Politics, as much as hydrology, would determine the shape of New Yor...

Table of contents

• Preface
• INTRODUCTION The Evolution of a Water System
• CHAPTER ONE From Croton to Catskill
• CHAPTER TWO Up Country
• CHAPTER THREE Drought, Delays, and the Delaware
• CHAPTER FOUR Back to the Supreme Court
• CHAPTER FIVE The Water System and the Urban Crisis
• CHAPTER SIX The Rise of Watershed Management
• CHAPTER SEVEN Implementing the Watershed Agreement
• EPILOGUE Putting Politics in Its Place
• Notes
• Bibliography