A little over two days ago our group went to visit Hilary Meltzer. Hilary works at the DEP, and she mainly focuses on New York’s water system. She told us about where our water comes from and some of the arising problems in that area. One of these problems is fracking. Fracking is a form of natural gas drilling where large drill machines pipe water and other chemicals down 7,000ft into the ground to force out the gas. This creates problems because some of the toxic chemicals pumped into the ground don’t come out, and radioactive materials that have been buried for thousands of years are brought back up as well. If fracking was done near our watershed, the place where all of our water comes from, then it could contaminate all of our water with toxic and radioactive chemicals. Luckily, by New York State law, no fracking can be done within a 2,000ft perimeter of our watershed.

She also told us about what happens after we use water. After we produce water waste it gets combined with flood water and then sent to various sewage treatment plants around the city. These plants are very future proof capacity wise but there is a problem — water levels are rising. Because our sewage treatment plants are close to the shore, and at a very low altitude, they will be flooded if the water levels rise this much. If this happened then all of our sewage would go directly into the ocean. We also learned about a few other non-profit originations we might be able to volunteer with in the future.