The Impact of Climate Change on New York's Water Quality and Infrastructure
- Published:
- Updated: January 2, 2025
Summary
Climate change poses significant challenges to New York’s water quality and infrastructure. Increased temperatures can lead to more algal blooms in reservoirs, altered precipitation patterns can increase runoff pollution, and rising sea levels threaten saltwater intrusion into the water supply. These changes can impact public health by increasing waterborne diseases and infrastructure damage. New York is actively implementing measures to mitigate these impacts, including infrastructure upgrades and green initiatives. Citizens can contribute by conserving water, supporting green initiatives, and voting for climate action.
Climate change simply means that over a long period of time the climate around the globe has been changing. This is a process that scientists have researched closely and about which they are pretty much unanimous: our planet is warming from human activity, in particular carbon dioxide emissions. This warming ripple affects our world’s water supplies in multiple fundamental ways. The heat, a shift in precipitation and an ocean that is rising all disrupt these systems deeply.
We’re already seeing these interruptions play out everywhere we look. For example, some places are seeing greater droughts, and some with greater frequency and severity of floods. Freshwater is in short supply due to melting glaciers and sea levels are acidifying coastal water supplies.
Understanding New York's Water Infrastructure
New York’s water supply is an artifice of contemporary engineering. That network of reservoirs, aqueducts, tunnels and miles upon miles of pipes supplies more than a billion gallons of water every day to the citizens of the city. It comes from a network of watersheds, most of them in the Catskill/Delaware region that provide about 90 per cent of the city’s drinking water.
Additionally, New York has an unfiltered water system – one of the largest in the country to have received a filtration avoidance determination because of the pure source water. But this standard and infrastructure may become harder to sustain in the face of climate change.
New York's Water Quality Today
New York is famous now for having good water. The water is naturally purified by a vast, impoundment-protected basin before reaching the pipes of the city. It’s sprayed with food-grade phosphoric acid to prevent lead contamination, ultraviolet light to kill microbes, and chlorine to clean it. So your tap water in New York is on or above every federal and state water quality benchmark.
Yet this supreme quality is never maintained. Risks from watershed development, old infrastructure and now climate change are some of the other issues the city is working through.
What are the predicted effects of climate change on water quality?
Water quality in New York might also be affected by climate change. The warmer it gets, for example, the more severe and frequent the heatwaves — which in turn can mean the algal blooms in the city’s lakes are more likely. And not only do algae taste and smell bad in water – some species even leave behind human poisons.
Furthermore, if the weather patterns change, we will experience intense rainfall. These floods contribute to run-off contamination that funnels pollutants from the land into the reservoirs of the city. And finally, ocean waves threaten saltwater intrusion into the city’s water infrastructure during times of storm surge.
Implications for Infrastructure
New York’s water infrastructure, great as it is, wasn’t designed with climate change in mind. Heat will accelerate pipe wear, and the infrastructure itself will start to leak and break faster.
Not only that, but extreme weather can cause physical injury. Greater storm frequency and strength can clog drainage systems, flooding and even contamination of the water supply. And then there is sea-level rise for low-lying wastewater treatment plants, with the potential for closure and spillage of raw sewage.
How might climate change impact public health?
The public health impacts of climate change on New York’s water supply and infrastructure do not end there. Lack of water quality, whether from more algal blooms, runoff or seawater intrusion, could increase waterborne diseases.
Not only that, but infrastructure damage and water system failures also carry their own health risks. Lack of access to healthy drinking water, even if just for a day or two, can cause problems with sanitation and hygiene, causing higher risk of disease. The result of climate change is that it’s a serious threat to the public health we New Yorkers are used to.
Current and Proposed Measures to Mitigate the Impact
But New York isn’t sitting still. Its city, mindful of its future, has taken steps to protect its water and infrastructure from climate change. That includes infrastructure investment, stormwater management improvements, and building lower-lying wastewater treatment plants.
Ideas for how to further implement it include more green infrastructure installations such as green roofs and rain gardens that can manage stormwater runoff. It would also potentially require replacements of the city’s filtration and treatment infrastructure in order to accommodate the water quality issues. These measures, though expensive, are necessary to the city’s long-term water security.
Engaging as Citizens: How New Yorkers Can Make a Difference
These are big challenges, but as individuals we too can help. If you’re New Yorkers and wondering how you can get involved, here are a few suggestions:
Conserving water: Every drop counts. : By cutting your water usage, you can support a renewable water supply.
Contributing to green projects: Whether it’s a community rain garden or a municipal green plan, contributions can be many different things such as volunteer time, donations or advocacy.
Voting for climate action: Vote in elections and governmental decisions that include climate action and green infrastructure investment.
The effects of climate change on New York’s water supply and infrastructure are real, but we can get up to it with knowledge, action and involvement. Remember, every action matters. If we all do our part, New York’s water will stay clean and safe for the generations to come.
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