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Q&A

Water quality testing procedures and frequency

2:23:51

·

139 sec

Commissioner Aggarwala details DEP's extensive water quality testing procedures and frequency, emphasizing the robustness of their monitoring system.

Nearly 47,000 discrete water samples taken annually, more than 100 per day
1,000 street side sampling stations throughout the city
Approximately 400,000 analyses performed on water samples
Use of robotic monitoring in reservoirs for continuous sampling

Lincoln Restler

2:23:51

DP reported that a % of in city water samples met our water quality standards for coli form bacteria.

2:24:01

How frequently does DEEP test different areas of the distribution system to ensure compliance?

2:24:06

Are there any neighborhoods that are at higher risk or have higher risk factors for contamination?

2:24:11

And are there any plans to expand monitoring efforts to introduce new technologies that could enhance real time water quality detection?

Rohit Aggarwala

2:24:21

So I don't I'm certainly not aware of any neighborhood that is unusually at risk.

2:24:30

The you know, we do as I as I said in my testimony, we really do a massive job of collecting samples.

2:24:42

The numbers I have here to share, I mentioned in the in the testimony that we had nearly 47,000 discrete water samples that were taken from the network.

2:24:53

So that's more than a hundred per day.

2:24:56

The vast majority of them, 33,000 were collected from the 1,000 street side sampling stations that we have.

2:25:05

You know, all New Yorkers have seen them there.

2:25:08

The silver boxes, they they say DEP.

2:25:10

You open it up, literally it's a faucet that taps directly into the water main and our our folks will go and they'll take a sample and then and then we analyze that.

2:25:19

And so we get a full picture of a thousand data points distributed around the city.

2:25:25

And and so I think that's an amazing level of testing and and we run on each of those tests or each of those samples has roughly 10 discrete tests.

2:25:36

So we have more than nearly 400,000 samples that were, or 400,000 analyses that were done.

2:25:44

And then similarly 13,000 samples taken from various places in the water supply network.

2:25:51

So I, you know, I I we we do as with the robot monitoring that I mentioned.

2:25:57

So we have robots in in our reservoirs that do continuous sampling.

2:26:03

We're always on the lookout for new technologies, but I think this is a this is as robust a system as it gets.

2:26:09

Great.

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