Champagne or Château Diana: All You Need To Know About New York City’s Tap Water

The Croton Reservoir, which has gotten three times as salty over the last 30 years. Credit: Ted Shaffrey, AP News.

“3 or 4 times a month the water from my faucet runs brown. Sometimes I wait for an hour until it runs clean, and I’ll run to the supermarket to buy bottled water [before it sells out],” said Andre, a 17-year resident of NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses in Brooklyn’s southwest neighborhood.

Andre says he now only drinks bottled water because of the dirty tap, and most other Gowanus House residents agreed. In a survey of 60 New York residents, 89% said they were worried about tap water contamination, with 32% saying they think about tap water safety “all the time”.

These sentiments fly in the face of The Big Apple’s tap water reputation. NYC’s water has long been lauded as pristine: it’s the secret to our bagels, and some even say it’s the best tasting tap water in the world. DEP drinking water quality reports seem to support this sentiment, publishing yearly analyses of water samples that always receive A+ report cards—but outdated contaminant regulations, remaining lead pipe service lines, and climate change’s recent effects on New York’s reservoirs tell a different story. 

So what’s the truth: is our water really the champagne we think it is, or have we just been drinking the Kool-Aid?

Where does our water come from?

New Yorkers benefit from the largest unfiltered water source in the country, a combination of three upstate reservoir systems spanning 2,000 miles. These reservoirs are protected from surrounding contamination through the Land Acquisition Program, keeping New York’s systems so clean that 90% of our source water doesn’t need to be filtered at all.

Upstate watershed ground elevation allows 97% of this water to flow through aqueducts and pipes to our buildings’ faucets on gravity alone, supplemented by water tanks that serve building floors six and above.

From Source to Street

Although most of New York’s source water comes unfiltered from the Catskill-Delaware watershed, it doesn’t reach our faucets untouched. In lieu of more expensive water filtration systems, UV and chlorine treatments are used to eliminate harmful microorganisms and bacteria. Phosphoric acid and sodium hydroxide are then added, acting as a film that clings to pipes, helping prevent toxic metals leaching into the water. 

Fluoride is added last, a naturally occurring compound that has been a source of debate in recent months despite its proven effectiveness in reducing cavities at safe levels. Though Department of Health and Human Services Secretary R.F.K. Jr. has made disproven claims about the dangers of fluoride, this designated micronutrient is integral to human health and safe at federal contaminant levels.

Filthy Faucets

A completed lead testing kit awaiting analysis at New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection. Any resident can request a free test kit to check for lead in their apartment.

At the source and the street, our water is clean by federal and state standards. Once water passes into buildings, however, it is only as clean as the pipes that carry it. Despite a longstanding ban on new lead pipe construction in New York City, a 2023 report showed 1 in 5 New Yorkers still live in a building with lead pipes. Lead is a potent and highly toxic metal, causing organ damage and neurological problems even at low levels, and as pipes age, lead flakes off and makes its way into the water supply.

The city has recently expanded programs funding lead pipe replacements for 280 private service lines—which only accounts for 0.002% of confirmed lead pipe service lines citywide, according to DEP data. Repiping is rare and costly, running owners between $8,000 and several million dollars depending on building size.

To see if your building has lead pipes, you can order a test kit from 311 or check out this map. Lead-compliant water filters like this can help you clean your water.

Maximum Contaminant Levels: A Slow and Outdated Process

The NYC DEP makes sure our treatment system is doing its job by testing drinking water at its source and at 1,000 street-side sampling stations. Last year’s annual drinking water quality report showed that all 47,000 water samples passed with flying colors, falling below federal and state Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs). 

Federal MCLs are the legal upper limits for contaminants in drinking water nationwide, which are set and enforced by the EPA. New York enforces even stricter regulations on certain contaminants, like 1,4-Dioxane, based on its own health risk assessments. 

However, many of these federal and state MCLs have not been updated in decades. The process of updating drinking water regulations can take years, and requires extensive toxicological and epidemiological studies to justify costly contaminant treatment. According to Dominique Joseph at the EPA, eight contaminants are currently being reviewed for inclusion in MCLs, including legionella—a bacterium discovered 50 years ago that causes the potentially deadly Legionnaires disease.

“Safe contaminant levels should be set by scientists, not the government. We compromise on public health by including the interests of large corporate polluters in our water safety decisions—it’s all about cost,” said a spokesperson at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization that compiles independent analyses of environmental pollutants.

Experts at the EWG have argued for years that current national standards are not strict enough to protect public health. Recent efforts by The Trump Administration to remove industrial restrictions on PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, have set public health progress even further.

Looking Ahead: Climate Change

In addition to the lead pipes of the past, New York officials must keep an eye on the mercurial weather patterns of the future. Climate change has brought warming winters and heavy rainfall to New York state, putting our reservoirs at risk of contamination from silt and salt. 

More frequent and intense rains cause land erosion, increasing runoff into major drinking water sources like the Ashokan reservoir. Runoff turns water turbid, or cloudy, from sediment, trapping pathogens and making it harder to chlorinate. In a 2024 report, NYC DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala said that the state will mitigate contamination by limiting downstream releases of Ashokan water during highly turbid times. 

Our water is also getting saltier and may exceed maximum allowable chloride limits in the next 30 years, due in part to increased road salt and nearby treatment plant discharge seeping into the Croton System reservoirs. The DEP’s March 2025 salinity assessment showed that chloride, a major component in salt, has tripled in the New Croton Reservoir over the last 30 years. Increasing rainfall events and freeze/thaw cycles result in salty road runoff, while longer dry spells and warmer temperatures leave salt and mineral deposits undiluted. 

Clean water advocacy organizations like Riverkeeper have pointed to water salinity’s snowball effect, increasing the risk of lead and heavy metals in drinking water and the growth of harmful algal blooms that contaminate drinking water with toxins. 

The city says they are using natural buffers and AI-based monitoring to protect and monitor source water in the short term. If turbidity and salinity consistently exceed safe levels, however, the city may be forced to spend billions of dollars on a filtration plant for the Catskill/Delaware reservoir system—and our water will lose its status as naturally pristine.