Tag Archive for: New York City

Start Spreadin’ the News: Codepods

Who can blame New York Citians if they prefer their shrimp on salads and skewers instead of in their drinking water? This is why a loud and collective “Ewwww!” is rising over some recently posted photos of “tiny shrimp” codepods in New York City’s much-praised drinking water. (The issue of codepods has come up before in this blog in the 2009 post “The Codepod Army, Defending your Water). The teeny crustaceans are 1-2 mm in length and feed on mosquito larvae.

The Consumerist helpfully explains that “New York’s water is of such high quality that it isn’t required by the EPA to mechanically filter its H2O, which means you get to gulp down these cute little guys with every glassful.”

Codepods are completely harmless so keep repeating that to yourself as you feast on the fascinating photos. One possible glitch, pointed out by Gizmodo, is that this means NYC’s water might not be kosher. Oy vey!

The Iconic New York City… Water Tower?

In that most sophisticated of cities, New York, New York, the wooden water tower still reigns supreme. www.amny.com has a fascinating story on the many wooden water towers that dot the skyline. You might  mistake these for relics of days gone by, but even the newer towers look old, as the material of choice is still wood.

In the city, buildings taller than six stories need some sort of independent water tower and pump system to deliver adequate water pressure.

On East 57th Street, New York City, three architectural approaches for rooftop water towers. (From Wikipedia Commons)

An excerpt from amny.com: (Read the full story here.)

Water towers: NYC’s misunderstood icons

New York City’s skyline is dotted with wooden water towers that are easy to mistake for vanishing relics of the bygone eras of seltzer bottles and street gas lamps.

But what many New Yorkers don’t realize is the towers are hardly antiques — in fact, most drink and bathe from the water stored in them every day.

“When I tell people what I do for a living, they can’t believe it is still done,” said Kenny Lewis, foreman of the Rosenwach Tank Co.’s wood shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the only one like it in the city. “After people notice the tanks, they can’t believe how many there are.”

Dam That Nuisance Hudson River!

The Bronx is up and the Battery’s… um, where? From the March 1934 issue of Modern Mechanix, a billion-dollar proposal (in 1934 dollars!) that should have even modern-day developers and speculators indulging in insane profiteering daydreams.

If this plan seems a bit over the top, the article notes, “Engineers uniformly agree that there are very few problems which can successfully defy the determination of civilization to conquer.” Dam right! (At the www.blog.modernmechanix.com, you can read the original 5-page article here.)

PLUG up the Hudson river at both ends of Manhattan . . . divert that body of water into the Harlem river so that it might flow out into the East river and down to the Atlantic ocean . . . pump out the water from the area of the Hudson which has been dammed off … fill in that space . . . ultimately connecting the Island of Manhattan with the mainland of New Jersey . . . and you have the world’s eighth wonder ”the reconstruction of Manhattan!

That is the essence of the plan proposed by Norman Sper, noted publicist and engineering scholar. It is calculated to solve New York City’s traffic and housing problems, which are threatening to devour the city’s civilization like a Frankenstein monster.