NYC: Water Conservation, Cooling Inequity and an Argument for Heat Pumps
/The need for water conservation
If you talk about tap water with any New Yorker, they will likely boast about how New York City’s tap water is some of the best in the world. And it’s true; NYC gets more than 1 billion gallons of water delivered from pristine reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains every single day (1). With such an abundance of clean drinking water, it is not surprising that water conservation is not a priority for many New Yorkers.
Water consumption rates in the U.S. are some of the highest in the world; the average American family consumes more than 300 gallons of water per day at home (2). In NYC, the average person consumes 118 gallons of water per day (as of 2020) — that's almost 447 one-liter bottles of potable water (3)!
Unfortunately, the water cycle in urban areas is not as simple as what you may have learned in grade school. Gray water and stormwater travels through an extensive water system that has many faults exacerbated by pollution, impermeable surfaces and infrastructure that gets overburdened during storms (4). The water we use does not simply return to nature as the clean, potable water it once was. Even though it seems as if we have an unlimited supply of clean water in NYC, this is not the case. At the current rate of consumption, reservoir water levels are getting lower every year, and groundwater tables are dropping (5). As a result, human health, water supplies, and the environment are at high risk. Government agencies and environmental organizations around the U.S. and NYC have been trying hard to raise awareness of the need for water conservation, especially as the effects of climate change continue to worsen, and extreme weather events like droughts are becoming more common across the nation (6).
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Unequal access to cooling in New York City
The hot summer months already present a massive problem to many New Yorkers. Extreme heat, made worse by climate change, is experienced unevenly throughout NYC. A lack of trees and an abundance of heat-retaining surfaces increases the heat island effect– in which urbanized areas experience higher temperatures than outlying areas. Many of these neighborhoods are low-income communities and communities of color, where patterns of racial segregation, concentrated poverty, and disinvestment have created the conditions for increased heat island effect. These vulnerable communities, already disproportionately affected by extreme heat, are also victims of cooling inequity. A WeAct survey of residents of Northern Manhattan neighborhoods found that nearly 40% of respondents face cost barriers to purchasing or repairing an air-conditioning unit. The resulting constant and prolonged exposure to extreme heat leaves community members vulnerable to severe health risks. (Read: WeAct Report, which reveals inequities in the exposure to the urban heat island in NYC).
One result of this cooling inequity is that as the weather gets hotter, we begin to see the long-held New York summer tradition of uncapping: opening fire hydrants to cool off in the scorching heat. Uncapping a fire hydrant by yourself is illegal, but government officials quickly realized that many New Yorkers had no other way of enduring the heat. New Yorkers are now able to request a sprinkler to be installed on the hydrant by their local fire department, which decreases the flow of water, but many people end up opening the hydrants themselves.
Williamsburg, June 2021, PC: Anushka Maqbool
Although uncapping fire hydrants is the only option for some New Yorkers to cool down, it wastes a lot of water. At full power, a fire hydrant pumps out 1,000 gallons of water per minute (7). After 15 minutes, this is equal to an entire lifetime supply of drinking water for two people (8)! While the practice of uncapping is extremely wasteful, it is a necessity in many heat-vulnerable neighborhoods that lack access to cooling. With no immediate solution for neighborhoods facing cooling inequity, authorities seem slow to fix uncapped fire-hydrants that are left spraying thousands of water onto roads.
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Heat Pumps as a potential solution
As climate change worsens, and extreme heat events become more frequent, air conditioning is more necessary than it has ever been. We quickly need to find climate-friendly solutions to make cooling accessible for everyone, instead of leaving people to figure out how to make the heat bearable for themselves. A possible solution? Installing Heat Pumps in multi-family buildings (Read: Why Heat Pumps Are the Answer to Heat Waves).
Heat Pump systems draw thermal energy from the surrounding air, ground or water. In NYC, air-source Heat Pumps are the most practical for multi-family buildings. Heat Pumps function as an air conditioner in the summer and a heater in the winter. Through a refrigerant coil, Heat Pumps pull in heat from the outdoor air to heat the inside in cooler months and remove heat from the indoor air to cool the inside in warm months. They keep indoor temperatures more constant and comfortable than window air conditioning units and other heating options, and they are also much more efficient in both cooling and heating. Heat Pumps run on electricity (as opposed to steam heating and boilers that use fossil fuels), and therefore will become more and more climate-friendly as New York continues to make the electric grid cleaner (9).
There are many incentives for owners to install Heat Pumps in their buildings. In fact, these systems are more efficient than current HVAC systems and can help buildings achieve their carbon reduction goals, as policies get stricter and NYC’s electric grid gets greener. The transition to heat pumps is just beginning and there are still many questions to answer: how do we make energy retrofits affordable for building owners? How do we ensure utility bills do not increase for tenants? How do we train the workforce to install and maintain this new technology? But all in all, Heat Pumps may just be the solution to achieving cooling equity in New York, all while lowering carbon emissions, and making sure that an open fire hydrant isn’t the only option to cool down.
Sources:
DEP, Water Supply: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/water-supply.page
US EPA, How We Use Water: https://www.epa.gov/watersense/how-we-use-water#:~:text=Water%20in%20Daily%20Life,-In%20the%20US&text=The%20average%20American%20family%20uses,in%20more%20water%2Dintensive%20landscapes.
DEP, History of Drought and Water Consumption: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/history-of-drought-water-consumption.page
NYC EP, Wastewater Treatment Process: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dep/water/wastewater-treatment-process.page
Groundwater table is defined as the upper level of an underground surface in which soil or rocks are permanently saturated with water. Water Table, National Geographic: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/water-table
For more information on the recent 2016 drought that affected New York State, read “Anatomy of the 2016 drought in the Northeastern United States: Implications for agriculture and water resources in humid climates”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168192317302800?via%3Dihub
Alex Mindlin, As the Heat Rose, the Hydrants Gushed, (Aug. 6, 2006): https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/nyregion/thecity/06hydr.html?_r=1
Adrienne Cortez, NYC Uncapped, (July 22, 2009): https://urbanomnibus.net/2009/07/nyc-uncapped/
RMI, Why Heat Pumps Are the Answer to Heat Waves: https://rmi.org/why-heat-pumps-are-the-answer-to-heat-waves/
