New York City tap water contains microscopic crustaceans.
New York City’s drinking water is often called “the Champagne of tap water,” and while it doesn’t sparkle, it does have another unique property: It contains microscopic crustaceans. The tiny creatures are nearly invisible to the naked eye, and when they are spotted in a freshly poured cup, they resemble small specks of white dust. Despite their size, the crustaceans — aka copepods — play a major role in keeping the city’s water supply safe. That’s because copepods eat mosquito larvae often found floating in water, naturally improving its quality and taste — a particularly important job considering New York City has the largest unfiltered water system in the U.S.
Residents of the Big Apple get most of their water from the Catskill and Delaware Watersheds, which supply about 1.2 billion gallons of drinking water per day to more than 9 million city dwellers and those in nearby suburbs. While the water isn’t filtered, it is treated with ultraviolet light and chemicals such as chlorine, and it undergoes around 600,000 health and water quality tests per year. Copepods can survive these cleansers, flowing through the system to often wind up in a glass of New York’s finest tap water. Despite the benefits of copepods, their existence has created concerns for religious Jewish communities that prohibit shellfish consumption. However, water quality engineers and biologists — who report that copepods exist around the globe in nearly all types of water and are entirely safe to consume — note that the creatures can easily be removed with at-home water filters.
Not every community has instant, unlimited access to safe drinking water, which is why some have turned to unorthodox methods of water collection — like fog harvesting. The process has been successful in arid regions with heavy fog, like coastal countries such as Eritrea, Israel, and Chile. Fog harvesters use mesh nets or screens to collect tiny water droplets from low-lying fog clouds, which then flow into pipes that lead to storage reservoirs. In Peru, a single fog net is capable of capturing between 200 and 400 liters of fresh water per day (about 52 to 105 gallons). While this simple technology is a water-producing game changer, scientists say it’s a recycled idea; evidence of ancient fog harvesters has been unearthed in Egypt, Israel, and the Atacama Desert in South America.
