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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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