An Unexpected Success Story Links Our Health to Wild Lands
Environmental disasters caused by human folly are all too familiar. But what about the environmental serendipity? The unexpected stories where nature and humans co-exist harmoniously. They do happen, and some may be found close at hand by looking at your faucet and following the water back to its source.
Before New York and Boston were fierce baseball competitors, they shared a certain wisdom about their drinking water supplies. Boston draws its water from theQuabbin and Wachusetts reservoirs west of the city. North of New York City stretches the metropolis’ water sources — the Croton and Catskill-Delaware watersheds. Gravity is a good friend to these port cities. Both receive their water, largely unfiltered and un-pumped, from protected watersheds in the hills.
Both of these success stories go back to the days when foul water and a spate of dysentery could lose you an election. This pushed politicians to direct engineers and urban planners to find safe water sources. With populations booming in the 1800s, Boston and New York looked to their hinterlands to quench their growing
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