The Dirty History of NYC's Clean Water

If you want to understand the history of America, particulary its growth and development, you could study the history of one thing -- water. Without access to water, without bringing it to all parts of the country, America would not be what it is today.

The history of American water is the history of American power. Who got it? Who didn't? Who brought the water to what part of the country and controlled the flow? Who used it to make money and gain power over others? All the gold, all the land, all the money, all the oil, all the tech, etc. -- none of that would matter if it wasn't lubricated and supported by a constant supply of fresh clean water to the people. 

"Whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting over," is a quote attributed to Mark Twain -- and man, oh, man, is it true. There have been numerous battles in American history over water including into the present day -- look at Flint, Michigan!

In NYC, we are blessed with some of the best fresh water in the country, and it runs copiously and almost without interruption from our taps. But the history behind our superior and clean water supply is down and dirty.

Prior to the American Revolution, New Yorkers got their fresh water from well springs and reservoirs like the downtown Collect Pond. Attempts were made to create pipes that would channel the water from the reservoirs to buildings but the Revolutionary War delayed these plans. In the late 1790s, those Founding Fathers and musical hip-hop stars Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr -- the most powerful politicians in New York State -- developed a plan to build a massive water system for NYC, sinking more reservoirs in the city and transporting fresh water from upstate down into the city.

But Aaron Burr, lifelong corrupt sneak that he was, had a plan to use it to enrich himself.

The bill passed by the New York State Legislature to create this company and water system included a provision to have the water supplied by a private company -- one that Burr and his cronies owned call the Manhattan Water Company. And the bill included a loophole that allowed the company to use any "surplus capital" i.e. profit for whatever the owners of this company wanted.

So the Manhattan Water Company, under Burr's direction, built a cheap and shoddy system of wooden pipes, keeping the overhead low. While New Yorkers now had easier access to water, it was polluted, and people still got sick from it. The whole purpose of this new system had been to bring clean water to the city and improve public health but greed and corruption kept it dirty and people literally died from it. It wasn't until 1842 that the city took control and built a new aqueduct from upstate, bringing vastly more -- and vastly cleaner -- water to the city, spurring its growth. But that doesn't excuse the fact that, among Aarron Burr's crimes, killing Alexander Hamilton in that duel wasn't the worst thing he did -- he literally comdemned the entire City of New York to drinking and bathing and cooking with dirty water for a generation.

Oh, and what did Burr and his cronies do with the profit they made from the water company? They used it to create a bank, the Bank of Manhattan, that later became Chase and is now called JP Morgan Chase, one of the biggest financial institutions in the world. 

So NYC's water supply and biggest bank are funamentally based on corruption. Nothing changes.

Yet it also proves that access to clean water means economic and population growth, the development of infrastructure and real estate, wealth, political power, and the building of civilization. To paraphrase the movie Chinatown, the history of water in NYC and elsewhere proves that you don't bring water to a city-- you bring the city to the water.

And it's not just money or power the people who build and supply the water gain -- they also control the future.