NEW YORK'S FAUCETS RUN DRY
NETBOY, ANTHONY & Frank, Bernard
NEW YORK'S FAUCETS RUN DRY By BIKNAMD FRANK and ANTHONY NMTBOY THE PERCEIVING MOTORIST who toured the lower Hudson River Basin early last fall noted an unusual phenomenon. The large upland...
...Now# York City is fortunate because a large part of its watershed is in the Catskill State Park, where the state has carefully safeguarded the forest cover that protects the soil and assures the maintenance of its capacity to produce good clean water...
...It was organized to protest the firing of James G. Crowley, Washingon radio commentator sponsored by a Detroit clothier, for endorsing George Erwards in the reCtn mayoral campaign...
...Recommended artist—Ben Shahn...
...Land and People," will be published this year by Knopf...
...New York City's population jumped from 3.5 million in 1898 to 7.5 million in 1945...
...WITHIN FIVE YEARS/ the Engineer's dismal prophecy was fully borne out...
...The new Dean of Columbia College will be Laurence Chamberlin, Professor of Government...
...The steady and abnormal rate of increase in demand on the system is disquieting, in that it already exceeds to a considerable extent the safe dependable supply from existing sources, estimated on the b3sis of dry weather yields...
...Being published at 30 Rockefeller Plaza by D. S. Publishing Co...
...The average American wants water on tap at all times—for washing, cleaning, cooking, laundering, .refrigerating, heating, air conditioning — and habitually wastes a great deal...
...Ira Hirsc/imann was pointedly not invited to the reception given by the Yugoslav government Dec...
...Pandit Nehru, in awe-struck tribute', is reported to have told intimates following his return to India after seeing the wonders of this country, "Never visit the United States for the first time...
...The most immediate and lasting relief for New Yorkers can be found by making«them use the available supply frugally...
...Clem Greenberg wants people to know that, however much he dislikes the Nation's editorial policies, he resigned as its art critic because he wanted to stop reviewing...
...I had noted tha present conflict between tha Yugoslav regime and the Communist Information Bureau, now better known as the Cominform...
...Some physicians then felt that frequent bathing was unnecessary, if not positively harmful...
...Or" COURSE, is the immediate cause of New York's difficulties, but more imnortant and basic is the fact that the city Ijas been growing faster than its water supplies...
...Little immediate relief is in sight until the rains and snow thaws come next spring, as there is usually a light runoff from December to March...
...And even in 1956...
...A correspondent from a daily newspaper would, of course, not hesitate in this matter, or any other delicate matter...
...Autumn came end passed, and still precipitation on the Hudson River watershed was far below normal...
...But the city folk paid little notice to this fact...
...Committee chairman is Charles D. Marston, 3635 Cadillac Towers, Detroit...
...For Seldes is an honorable man...
...I did not know how to introduce this subject diplomatically...
...Residential consumption alone is at a rate of 30 to 50 gallons or more per person per day in urban communities, compared with 6 to 8 gallons fifty years a£o, before the advent of universal indoor conveniences...
...Just as a police reporter would never hesitate to invade the privacy of any one, living or dead...
...Suggestion was made, as part of the evaluation work of VOA, that a program booklet be printed up tor distribution and that a reproduction of a painting be the cover...
...Never has a large metropolis in the humid part of the country been so pinched for water as New York is now...
...e * • Latest committee is the "Detroiters for a Fair Deal for Radio Commentators...
...DROUGHT...
...On one of my five sheets, which I had written as a sort of aide memoirs on separate subjects, but not a questionnaire...
...The one waterless Friday in December has shown that even nominal care will save a great deal of 1 ater...
...That controversial ACLU report on the Peekskill riots quoted from all New York City pipers, except ona...
...exposing for the first time in many years the roads and the stone foundations of buildings that had been flooded when the reservoirs were first filled...
...Their book...
...i Henry Moscow, former managing editor of the N.Y...
...Post, ts editing a new magazine which will be devoted to people...
...T<KMEET the phenomenal growth of its population the city had to extend its reservoirs farther and farther into the mountains, and pile investment upon investment...
...Gloomily he concluded that "the situation in the next five years will be critical in that, even with a normall'increase in demand, it will l|c possible to maintain the supply only if there is adequate rainfall, and trouble will certainly be experienced with a drought of even moderate intensity...
...Water...
...Indoor facilities were the luxuries of the rich...
...The largest city in the countrywas fast approaching a perilous situation—and no immediate relief was in sight...
...Modern hygiene demands frequent ablutions, a habit which alone imposes a heavy drain on municipal water supplies...
...Today, the average American family is a .voracious consumer of water...
...By the second week in December, the entire system was down to 35 per cent of capacity, an all-time low...
...He reprints the Interview, 2,500 banal words long, in which there is this single mention (p...
...New York's crisis is symptomatic of yrowinfi water shortages throughout the county...
...390) about the Soviet Union: "Marshal Tito had mentioned the Soviet Union eevaral times...
...The home that does not contain a large arrav of water-using appurtenances is considered substandard...
...It took big ads weeks ago announcing the deal...
...Sounds just like K. C. Adams, the UMW Journal editor, on a razzmatazz...
...Street & Smith is readying itself for a legal battle with Conde Nast Publications...
...And what is worse, rising standards of living have created demands for water that continually exceed the visions of urban water planners, Forty or fifty years ago the American home, whether in town or country, was a modest consumer of water...
...The watersheds were failing to supply their expected quota that normally fills the municipal reservoirs, and also recharges underground reserves which help^aintain streamflow and provide well-water...
...There had been no real rain since midsummer, and the water levels were falling everywhere...
...The People Don't Know, wails about bow the U. S. press refused to buy his "exclusive" Tito Interview...
...residents of many western cities where nature is miserly and nearly every gallon of wnter obtainable from surface or underground sources (often originating a hundred of more miles away) must be metered out to consumers...
...A wooden box stock'ed with ice served to keep food fresh in summer...
...At length, in the middle of November, New York Cijy authorities were impelled to' tell the people that the reservoirs had fallen much below the danger line...
...At Croton Reservoir on the east side of the Hudson and at Ashokan and Schoharie Reservoirs in the verSant Catskills, shore lines had receded far...
...Lawyers on both sides have already met...
...The city had grown faster than the water planners envisioned...
...Glmbel's has quietly dropped its tie-In with the Book Find Club...
...It is estimated that about one-fourth of all the water consumed is wasted— by leaky faucets and water mains and by careless use in homes, businesses and industries...
...Tlx: search f*n additional sources ui' usable, jjood quality water must on...
...10 at the Waldorf to members o/ the LaGuardia Mission of the One World Award Committee, of which Hirschmann was a member...
...Despite this huge outlay, and the construction then under way of a major addition to the water supply from the upper Delaware River at an additional cost of some $375 million, the city engineers saw trouble ahead...
...UMW's District 50 News got off a blast at Mrs...
...No Shahn...
...The large upland reservoirs that supply the thickly settled metropolitan areas along or near the seaboard were running dry...
...The Report of the Chief Engineer for 1945 noted that "This year again established a new high record for demand on the municipal system, the average consumption having been 1.103 millions of gallons per day in 1944 pnd 902 million gallons per d»y in 1943...
...George Seldes In his book...
...In those days frequent bathing or washing was not regarded as essential to personal hygiene...
...the Gubitchev trial lawyer, is lawpartnering with Lee Pressman...
...By 1945 New York had expended about $750 million for reservoirs, aqueducts and distribution lines—nearly as much as the cost of the dams, reservoirs and power facilities built by TVA in the Tennessee Valley...
...The more affluent families consider at least two bathrooms essential...
...Story is that Nast advertising salesmen have been rumoring that certain S. & S. publications were ready to fold...
...Anthony Nelboy is a free-lance writer...
...Bernard Frank it assistant chief of the division of forest influences ifL the United States Forest Service...
...Abraham L. Pomerantz...
...Indeed, when the bathtub was introduced into the United States in the middle of the '9th century, it was generally considered an extravagant fad...
...George Allen, the White House Intimate, Is going to have his autobiography published by Simon 8c Schuttar, which handed him a $10,000 advance...
...First issue should be out this month...
...Onlv the waterworks engineers were alarmed...
...Roosevelt in its last issue which must have been blessed by John L. Lewis himself judging by such quasi-literary gems as "Dame Eleanor Roosevelt, who . . . appears to have mastered the alchemist's art of transmuting dross into gold, recently dedicated another of her mephitic 'columns'," etc., etc...
...More knowledgeable people, however, heard, about it...
...National Concerts & Artists Corporation {Marks Levinc).is suing Collier's ($1,000,000) for the Stanley Frank article a few months ago...
...The outhouse or cesspool, the handpump, the washtub, comprised the entire array of conveniences...
...It will be modestly entitled Preaidentn Who Have Known Me...
...with all of the upper Delaware River project wnter ilowinq into its aqueducts, the rity will have a margin of safety for only some four years...
...barely enough for two months at current consumption rates...
...He replaces the retired Harry J. Carman...
...tha N. Y. Post, which devoted special coverage to the riots and causae...
...The expert knew that, if the drought lasted into late autumn, the cities that depended for their supplies upon the runoff of numerous mountain rivulets, creeks, and streams, would be in trouble...
...In that period, thanks to rising standards of living and the influx of industries, stores, and hospitals using heavy volumes of water, per capita consumption increased from 106 to 141 gallons par day, and by 1948 to over 148 gallons...
...The Whip...
...The Chief Engineer then warned: "We cannot assume that we will always be so fortunate as to have abnormal, or oven normal rainfalls, pnd the adequacy of a • ^Rer^HSupply system cannot be gauged by the amount it can deliver during such periods, but rather during periods of drought, since the supply must be maintained ft »11 limes...
...Since for the present the authorities have decided to follow a policy uf voluntary conservation - unless the reservoirs get so low that pressure must be reduced it is up to the nenple to realize that they can no longer have all the water they want (even if they are willing to oa v for it...
...There are relatively few homes in New York City that do not have some kind of indoor plumbing...
...He pointed out that several years must elapse before any new supply would be available...
...The Delaware River project will not start delivering until 1952, and its yield of 540 million gallons per day —present consumption/has reached a new peak of about 1.2 billion gallons per day—will not be available until 1956...
...f Voice of America almost pulled a dilly recently because of political naivete of one of its experts...
...Water became the ubiquitous topic »of conversation, and blase New Yorkers for the first time in their lives realized that domestic water is not illimitable and free, like ah*, but a manufactured commodity whose supply was definitely limited...
...Heard on the Left UN ECONOMIC and Social Committee will shortly issue an important report on full employment in which each member nation will be asked to adopt as a basic principle the target of full employment...
...The plan of tapping the Hudson River above Beacon, New York, cannot bring any water to hard-up residents until next summer at least...
...The city authorities organized an emergency campaign of voluntary conservation...
...They are, for the time being, in the same fix as...
Vol. 33 • January 1950 • No. 1
