American Museum of Natural History – Water
WA.me.8.7.FlowAndGo_SCRIPT_NYStory - Script
New York Story
AMNH NYC Water System Interactive
Version 20
September 11, 2007
Rebecca Bray
Interfaces
2
Text and Animations
Start Screen
00. Start Screen (To the Faucet or Down the Drain?)
Part A
A1. To the Faucet
Old-time Water
A2. Watershed
Watershed Conservation
A3. Reservoirs
Building the Reservoirs
A4. Aqueducts & Tunnels
Extraordinary Engineering
A5. Keeping it Clean
Straight from the Source
A6. Your Faucet
Bottoms Up!
A7. What You Can Do to Conserve
More Ways to Conserve
Part B
B1. Down the Drain
The Flow Beneath Your Feet
B2. Wastewater Treatment
How is Sewage Treated?
B3. Stormwater
How is Wildlife Affected?
B4. Combined Sewer Overflows
A Stormy Problem
B5. What You Can Do About Pollution
More Ways to Help
Notes and Sources
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American Museum of Natural History – Water
WA.me.8.7.FlowAndGo_SCRIPT_NYStory - Script
Interfaces
Figure 1
On the bottom, the text is closed-caption style.
Above that, a progress bar indicates where you are in the animation.
On the right, the orange indicates the section you are currently on.
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American Museum of Natural History – Water
WA.me.8.7.FlowAndGo_SCRIPT_NYStory - Script
Interfaces
Figure 2
On the bottom, you can choose to replay the animation, go to the Learn More page or go to the next
section.
On the right, the white buttons indicate that you are in the ‘Down the Drain’ section.
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0.0 Start Screen
When a user selects New York from the world map on the touch screen, they are taken to a screen with an
image of a bathroom sink.
Start screen (To the Faucet or Down the Drain?)
Narration:
New York City has the largest water system in the world—with more than 3.7 billion liters (1 billion
gallons) transported every day. Where does all this water come from, how does it get to us, and where
does it go? To find out, choose: To the Faucet or Down the Drain.
Animation: Bathroom sink with labels: “To the Faucet” and “Down the Drain”. Animation will show
faucet turning on, water running and draining out.
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A1. To the Faucet
To the Faucet
In the city’s early days, New Yorkers got their water from ponds, streams, and
springs in Manhattan. Today, water travels a long way - as far as 200
kilometers (125 miles) - before reaching New York City faucets.
Animation:
Zoom out from sink to bathroom to city to region and then to the whole map of entire NY
region with text labels for Watersheds, Reservoirs, Aqueducts.
Old-time Water
Early residents of New York City got most of their drinking water from Collect Pond, an 18 meter
(60-foot)-deep, spring-fed pond located in what’s now downtown Manhattan. But as the city’s
population grew, Collect Pond became fouled with raw sewage and runoff from local tanneries and
slaughterhouses. A deadly cholera epidemic in 1832 is attributed to the city’s contaminated
drinking water.
Image on touch: Image from DEP requested. Page 30.
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A2. Watershed
Watershed
New York City’s water comes from mountain streams and rivers that cover a
vast area—almost 3,000 square kilometers (2,000 square miles) of land. These
waterways and the surrounding land form New York City’s watershed. Keeping
much of the watershed unpolluted and undeveloped helps keep the water supply
clean.
Animation: Indicate watershed area on map and zoom in to show reservoir and the surrounding
landscape to give indication of protected undeveloped land.
Watershed Conservation
The forested land in New York City’s watershed acts as a natural water-filtration system. However,
runoff from towns, farms, and new developments can pollute its waterways. To keep the water supply
clean, New York City buys land and works with farmers and communities to reduce pollution by
helping pay for sewage treatment upgrades and encouraging sustainable farming practices.
Cooperation among upstream and downstream users has been key to the system’s success.
Images on “More” page: RB will make map of watershed showing towns, farms, and roads to indicate
how much development there is in watershed.
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A3. Reservoirs
Reservoirs
Water from the watershed is collected and stored in 19 large reservoirs, or manmade lakes, north of the city. These reservoirs can hold as much as 2 trillion liters
(548 billion gallons) of water - a year’s supply for New York City.
Animation: Zoom in on the reservoir and then out again to show map of region – pointing out each
reservoir and storage capacity of each.
Building the Reservoirs
Building New York City’s reservoirs was a
massive undertaking—and one that required
huge amounts of manual labor and significant
sacrifices. More than 9,000 people were
forced to re-locate and more than two dozen
villages were flooded to create the reservoirs
in the early part of the 20th century.
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A4. Aqueducts and Tunnels
Aqueducts and Tunnels
Water from the reservoirs flows to the city through three giant aqueducts and
two city tunnels which can reach 5 meters (17 feet) in diameter in some places.
Water Tunnel #3 – scheduled to be completed in 2020 – is under construction
hundreds of meters below city streets.
Animation: Map – highlight aqueducts and tunnels and label them, including a dotted line for Tunnel #3.
Extraordinary Engineering
Amazingly, 95 percent of the water supply
is delivered to New York City by gravity
alone. The downhill flow creates enough
pressure to shoot the water as high as six
stories in most parts of the city without
electricity or pumping.
Images on “More” page: Photo requested
from p. 143. (source: DEP or from WaterWorks book).
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A5. Keeping it Clean
Keeping it Clean
New York City’s water supply has a reputation for being very clean, but it still
must be checked for impurities. The city’s water is continually tested. Chlorine
and other chemicals are added to kill disease-causing organisms and improve
overall quality.
Animation: Pipes under city, stop to show pipe leading up to water testing station.
Label on animation: Drinking water is sampled at hundreds of stations across the city.
Straight from the Source
Most big cities do not have a safe source of drinking water—and must remove contaminants by
sending their water to filtration plants. But in New York City, the vast majority of the water supply is
so clean it does not need to be filtered. However, if the watershed becomes more polluted, New York
City will be required by law to build a multi-billion-dollar filtration system.
Images on touch: Photo of stream and woods from watershed.
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A6. Your Faucet
Your Faucet
Beneath the city, water goes through an intricate system of mains and plumbing
to reach its final destination—your faucet. More than 5 billion liters (1.3 billion
gallons) are delivered to New York City every day.
Animation: Pipes in house to bathroom faucets.
Bottoms Up!
New York City tap water is among the safest and best-tasting of any municipal system. However, if
you’re worried about pipes in your building affecting the quality and taste of your tap water, here’s
what to do:



Have your water tested. (Call 311 for a free kit.)
Use only cold water for drinking and cooking. (Hot water is more likely to pull lead from
old pipes.)
Get a home filtering system. This can be as simple as a pitcher with replaceable charcoal
filters.
Images on touch: Stock photo of someone drinking from a glass of water in a kitchen.
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A7. What You Can Do to Conserve
What You Can Do to Conserve
New Yorkers are lucky to have a ready supply of fresh, great-tasting water. So
help keep it clean at the source—and don’t waste it around the house!
Animation: Bathroom, with water from faucet, shower, toilet. Labels: “Fix leaking faucets.”, “Repair
running toilets.”, “Install low-flow showerheads.”
More Ways To Conserve
-- Fix leaks: A faucet leaking 1 drop per second wastes 1,000 liters (260 gallons) a month!
-- Choose New York City’s tap water – and assist efforts to keep it clean.
-- Encourage programs to improve New York’s water supply system, including replacement of
aging pipes.
-- Support land purchase and watershed protection.
Images: DEP photo of replacing old pipes &/or image from watershed showing undeveloped
land and reservoir??
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B1. Down the Drain
Down the Drain
After you wash your dishes, flush your toilet, or take a shower, where does your
water go? It heads underground—into New York City’s elaborate sewer system.
Animation: Follow water down the drain, through pipes in the house, into pipes under Manhattan.
The Flow Beneath Your Feet
There are more than 6,000 miles of sewer pipes under New York City – if laid straight they could
stretch to California and back! These pipes are 15 cm to 2.3 meters (6 to 89 inches) wide, and they
carry 5 billion liters (1.4 billion gallons) of sewage every day. Sewage flows through them at a rate of
0.6 to 0.9 meters (2 to 3 feet) per second.
Image: DEP photo of pipes under the city?
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B2. Wastewater Treatment
Wastewater Treatment
Wastewater travels through sewer pipes to one of the city’s 14 treatment plants.
There, raw sewage and contaminants are removed, and the cleaned water is
released into surrounding rivers and bays.
Animation: Water in pipes goes to treatment plant. Show part of the treatment process.
How Is Sewage Treated?
When sewer water arrives at a treatment plant, it’s a toxic stew—and cleaning it up is an involved
process. Prior to the Clean Water Act of 1972, raw sewage was dumped directly into the Hudson
River. Today, the river is cleaner than it has been in 30 years.
[The following lines of text could go with images of or diagram of the treatment process.]
1. Trash from storm drains is removed.
2. In settling tanks, dirt and sludge are scraped away.
3. Bacteria break down pollutants in “bubbling” tanks.
4. Disinfectant, like chlorine, kills remaining germs—and the water is released.
5. Leftover sludge is recycled into fertilizer.
Images on touch: DEP: Diagram of the wastewater treatment process. Or photo of the treatment
plant. Or, if neither is available, a map highlighting each treatment plant’s location in the city (this is
on the DEP Web site).
The above text may be modified, depending on the diagram.
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B3. Stormwater
Stormwater
Plastic bags and bottles tossed on the street. Oil and antifreeze on roads.
Pesticides and chemical runoff. Stormwater washes all that litter and toxic muck
directly into sewers and surrounding waterways. That’s how rivers and beaches
get polluted.
Animation: It starts to rain. Show rain running along the streets and down into the sewers [make sure to
show sewer grates/storm drains] along with trash it picks up.– labels point to sewage, pesticides,
chemicals. [Query: Should labels be something like: “Untreated Sewage,” “Storm Water,” “Litter” and
“Chemicals”?I think we might wait to see the animation before we decide this.]
How Is Wildlife Affected?
Have you ever been to New York or New Jersey beaches and noticed trash littering the sand? Or taken
a ferry into the Harbor and seen an oil slick floating by? It’s more than unsightly—it’s a danger for the
city’s aquatic wildlife.
Images on touch: 5 animal illustrations (Each animal species is represented by an illustration. An animation
runs that highlights one animal at a time and moves others aside to make room for text)
--About 170 species of fish—from sea horses to sand tiger sharks – make their homes here.
[fish image] bluefish or striped bass
Fish mistake small bits of plastic for food and get sick.
--Wading birds, like herons and egrets, nest on small islands in New York Harbor
[wading bird image] Herons: 7 species are known to breed in the Hudson Estuary including Black-crowned Night-Heron,
Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Little Blue Heron, Glossy Ibis, Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, and Cattle Egret)
Motor oil poured down drains and sewers can coat birds’ feathers, causing hypothermia.
--Harbor seals often visit waters around Manhattan
[seal image] Harbor seal
Naturally curious, seals become entangled in floating debris.
--Endangered sea turtles swim off the shores of Long Island
[sea turtle image] olive ridley, loggerhead, or green turtle
Sea turtles eat plastic bags and balloons floating in the water—thinking they are jellyfish. The trash blocks their
digestive tracts.
--Sea stars, blue crabs, clams, horseshoe crabs, and many other spineless creatures
[invertebrate image] Blue crab
Invertebrates are harmed by chemical toxins in runoff.
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B4. Combined Sewer Overflows
Combined Sewer Overflows
New York’s sewers carry both wastewater and stormwater to treatment plants
for cleaning. But during heavy rains, the combined flow can overwhelm
treatment plants, sending raw sewage and street pollution into rivers and bays.
Animation: Show water released into river with some bits of trash, brown water, etc. Polluted water runs
out into river and to the ocean. Show beach area, people.
A Stormy Problem
Combined sewer overflows are a major pollution issue. Raw sewage entering the city’s waterways
introduces harmful bacteria and decreases dissolved oxygen in the water—which many marine creatures
need to survive. To reduce overflows, the city is both increasing the holding capacity of some of the
sewage treatment plants, and using new strategies, like green roofs, to reduce the amount of stormwater
that enters the sewer system in the first place.
Images on More: Diagram by Rebecca illustrating the combined sewage pipe system and what happens
when it rains. [Add label indicating that 27 billion gallons of untreated wastewater are released annually
due to CSOs?]
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B5. What You Can Do About Pollution
What You Can Do About Pollution
You can help keep the city’s waterways clean. Never throw trash on the street, and don’t pour
anything down the drain that you would not be willing to drink. Just one quart of motor oil or
household chemicals down a drain can contaminate a million gallons of water!
Animation: From previous image of beach, separate to 3 sections of screen: beach, bathroom and street.
Next page > ‘more’ page for this section
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More Ways to Help
Even when wastewater is properly treated, some chemicals can’t be removed. These chemicals get
released into waterways where they can hurt wildlife and humans too. So be careful about what you
drop on the streets, put down the drain, or apply to your lawn or garden.
Images on touch: The following are five small illustrations on screen with a title next to each. On
touch, the text comes up in a bubble for each. There must be a ‘close’ button on each to close the
bubble and open another.]
Image: cooking pan
Title: Fats and Oils
Text: Fats and oils cause pipe and sewer blockages. Pour cooking oils and fat into sealed
containers and put them in the garbage.
Image: Bottles, some with skull and crossbones
Title: Household cleaners and poisons
Text: Pesticides, cleaning fluids, and even fingernail polish are poisons. Replace poisonous
products with safer alternatives.
Image: soap with antibacterial on label
Title: Antibacterial soaps and lotions
Text: Don’t use antibacterial soaps and lotions. The key ingredient, Triclosan, disrupts the
thyroid system of frogs—and may affect human health as well.
Image: Prescription drug bottle
Title: Prescription drugs
Text: Chemicals in prescription and over-the-counter drugs can hurt aquatic wildlife. Return
unused medicines to your pharmacy for disposal.
Image: Bus or train, or car with circle slash.
Title: Mass transportation
Text: Use mass transit to reduce polluted runoff.
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Notes and Sources
Watershed
Liz’s comment on the narration: (Just to clarify, NYC gets its water from a few watersheds, right? Some
from the Delaware that’s pumped into the reservoirs and the rest from the Hudson watershed? I think
the way the term ‘watershed’ is used here is a bit looser than in the more technical definition…..all the
land that “catches” the rainwater that drains into a river system.
Reservoirs
548 billion gallons – source: http://nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/maplevels_wide.shtml ; same
fig used in PlaNYC 2030
Down the Drain
6000 miles of sewer pipe: http://nyc.gov/html/dep/html/harbor_water/wwsystem-plants.shtml
Wastewater
See Liz’s comments and concerns in NYStory_16_Section B 8-21.doc.
Note: There is a map of treatment plants on the DEP site. If they can’t get us a diagram of the treatment
process we may want to ask permission to use this:
http://nyc.gov/html/dep/html/harbor_water/wwsystem-plantlocations_wide.shtml
Sources (from WildCity):
1. Before the city and surrounding communities were required to build modern treatment plants—in
response to the Clean Water Act in 1972—some raw sewage was dumped straight into the Hudson River.
[Note and Documentation: Until the 1980s, sewage from Manhattan’s Upper West Side went into the
Hudson. See page 10 of “Our Secret Epidemic: Raw Sewage Threatens Human Health and the
Environment” in RiverKeeper Spring 2006? Newsletter…
http://riverkeeper.org/document.php/358/Spring_Newslett.pdf]
2. [Add label indicating that 27 billion gallons of untreated wastewater is released annually due to CSOs?]
[Documentation: See page 9 of “Our Secret Epidemic: Raw Sewage Threatens Human Health and the
Environment” in RiverKeeper Spring 2006? Newsletter…
http://riverkeeper.org/document.php/358/Spring_Newslett.pdf]
3. Don’t pour used motor oil down storm drains. Just one quart can contaminate 1 million gallons of
water!
[Documenation: Page 2 of “Oil and Water Don’t Mix” brochure:
http://epa.gov/nps/toolbox/other/KSMO_oil.pdf ]
4. Per person, New Yorkers use twice as much water as residents of European cities. And that means
twice as much water must go through the treatment plants. The less water you use, the less overflows
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there will be at treatment plants.
[Note: 100 gallons per day fact and comparison to Europeans is from pg. 18 of DEP’s “New York City’s
Wastewater Treatment System” : http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/wwsystem.pdf ]
5. Chemicals in prescription and over-the-counter drugs can hurt aquatic wildlife. For example, the key
ingredient in the antidepressant Prozac interferes with the ability of fish to reproduce.
[Documentation: http://www.uga.edu/columns/040120/news7.html]
6. Nitrogen is an organic compound that cannot be completely eliminated from wastewater. When it gets
into waterways, it increases algae growth and decreases oxygen for aquatic wildlife. The city is working to
reduce nitrogen levels in outflow by introducing new technologies at some of its treatment plants.
[Documentation: pg. 14 and 18 of DEP’s “New York City’s Wastewater Treatment System” :
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/wwsystem.pdf ]
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