NYC drinking water may taste different due to upstate aqueduct repairs, officials say

What’s that taste?

Some New York City residents with sensitive palates might notice a difference in the taste and smell of their beloved tap water soon, as workers enter the final stage of repairs on one of the aqueducts that supplies the water from upstate, officials said on Monday.

The changes will be subtle for most New Yorkers, if they detect them at all, according to Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection said a stretch of the 85-mile-long Delaware Aqueduct near Newburgh will be shut down for several months to fix a leak that has been causing 35 million gallons of water a day to be lost and was first discovered in the 1990s.

Water will instead be rerouted through a 2.5-mile-long bypass tunnel, which was constructed over the last 11 years and will be connected to the main aqueduct, while workers repair the leak and another one in Ulster County, the agency said. It’s the largest repair project in the department’s history, with most of the leaking happening near the Hudson River in Newburgh.

At a press conference on the $2 billion project on Monday, Adams said the city’s drinking water remains safe to drink — and took a swig of it himself.

“They have a little sample here for me,” he said, before drinking from a plastic cup. “I can't taste it, you're not going to be able to detect it. Some New Yorkers will, but it's still perfectly safe, good water.”

The city’s water supply, which provides about 1.1 billion gallons of drinking water daily, comes from a system of 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes, officials said. The city will be tapping into one of them more than usual — the Croton Watershed — as the leaks are fixed.

DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala said any difference people notice in the water’s taste won’t be because of the bypass tunnel but rather a change in the blend of water sources during the repairs.

“Just as different brands of bottled water taste a bit different, so do our different reservoirs,” he said. “And I would urge you, please not to use this project as a reason to drink bottled water.”

“Each of our 19 reservoirs has a slightly different flavor just because the land is slightly different,” added Aggarwala. “And so the minerals, the clay, etc. in the water is going to be different.”

Water coming from the Croton Watershed will be filtered at the Croton Filtration Plant, which has been updated with granular activated carbon similar to household pitcher filters, according to the environmental department. Aggarwala said the water’s quality will continue to be tested and monitored as normal throughout the project.