Quench: The Cleaner, Greener, More Affordable Water Cooler for New York City

New York City Water Quality: Yesterday

Almost since it’s inception, New York City has used a complex system of aqueducts to transport water from outside the city to its residents. Prior to the 1830s, water was distributed through hollow logs laid in the streets, leaving the water exposed to the dirt, grime, and contaminants of city life. In the 1830s, the city switched to cast iron pipes to bring in water from the Croton River. The Old Croton Aqueduct was built in the 1830s to provide water to over 60,000 residents of New York City. Check out the video below to learn more about the Old Croton Aqueduct.

By the early 1900s, New York City residents needed more water and city officials turned to the waters of the Catskill Mountain region. Almost as soon as the Catskill Aqueduct was finished in 1927, city officials started development of the Delaware Aqueduct, which pulls water from the headwaters and tributaries of the Delaware River in New York State.

New York City Water Quality; Today

New York City’s water system originates at 19 protected reservoirs and lakes in upstate New York and provides 1.2 billion gallons of drinking water to roughly 9 million residents. New York City water is through to be the finest tap water in the world when it leaves the water treatment plants. However, like many older cities, the tap water travels through hundreds of miles of older cast iron pipes, which are prone to corrosion and biofilm contamination that develop through chemical reactions. The chemical reactions create clusters of deterioration and bacteria along the inside of the pipe, diminishing the space that the drinking water travels through. Sometimes these clusters break off and travel with your water to your faucet, resulting in water cloudiness, red water, and off-taste and odor.

New York City also has the unique practice of storing water in rooftop tanks. As New York City grew in the late 1800s, the city’s water mains could not keep up with the requirements of the ever-taller buildings, so rooftop water towers were added to new construction. While New York City’s water infrastructure is regulated by the city, water towers are under the supervision of the building owner and are often not cleaned, inspected, or tested per building and health codes. Water in these towers have been found to harbor E.coli, coliform, viruses, bacteria, and parasites.

Quench Water Coolers – A Better Drinking Water System for New York City

No need to worry about what your office’s drinking water might have picked up on its journey to your glass. Quench offers a full complement of filtration and purification technologies to remove sediment, reduce chemical contaminants, including lead, and get rid of off-tastes and odors. That’s how we can guarantee that Quench office water coolers produce crisp, clean, great-tasting water – and at a fraction of the price of bottled water delivery services.