(21 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++PART MUTE++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cortlandt, New York – 20 March 2025
1. New Croton Reservoir and New Croton Dam ++MUTE++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cortlandt, New York – 21 March 2025
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Rohit Aggarwala, NYC Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner:
“Today we are releasing some pretty scary news and we have to recognize how serious the threat to our water supply is. Behind me is the New Croton Reservoir. Originally dating back to 1842, and this dam itself, which we call the New Croton, which dates back to 1906. So it’s been with us a long time. If the new one is 120 years old. And for most of New York’s history, we have relied on water from this Croton system to drink to use in our daily lives. And as Paul said, not just to serve the 8.5 million people in New York City, but also the majority of residents of Westchester County rely on this water, and a large chunk of the residents of Putnam County rely on this water.”
3. Various of light and water creating a rainbow in the New Croton Dam spillway
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Rohit Aggarwala, NYC Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner:
“On a given day, we average across the year, about 10% of our water comes from here, but at certain times during the year, it could be 40% of the city’s water comes from this reservoir system.”
5. Spillway at New Croton Dam
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Rohit Aggarwala, NYC Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner:
“There are a variety of sources of chloride contamination, but our work found that the main contributor to the pollution here is the application of road salt, which has been used in increasing rates nationwide. Salt does not easily come out of water. We treat this water to ensure that there’s no bacteria that’s harmful. We filter it, but none of our current systems can get salt out of water.”
7. Wide of New Croton Reservoir
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Rohit Aggarwala, NYC Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner:
“It’s imperative to preserve this nearly 200-year-old system that we rely on day in and day out, that we change our ways. We’ve protected the environment by reducing and stopping the use of harmful chemicals, whether it was DDT or PCBs or as we look forward, things like PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances) and the forever chemicals. We now need to focus on road salt as something that is harming our environment, and it’s going to undermine the infrastructure that our cities and our towns depend on every day.”
9. New Croton Reservoir
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Rohit Aggarwala, NYC Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner:
“The work that the Salinity Task Force did is truly sobering. Looking at 33 years of data on the Croton system, we have found that the salinity in the Croton system, the salt we are putting in the Croton system is going to mean the end of a more than 200 year history of serving New York City. We will no longer be able to drink water from the Croton system if current trends do not change by the end of this century. It will be too salty to drink. We’re far below that now. Nobody should be worried about the quality of the water in their taps today, but the trend is problematic. In the reservoir here behind us salinity levels tripled over the last 30 years. Some of the individual reservoirs have salinity levels that are growing even faster. We may have to start shutting down individual components of the Croton system within 25 years.”
11. Close-up of New Croton Dam
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Rohit Aggarwala, NYC Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner:
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