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Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City
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About This Book
Without the nineteen upstate reservoirs that supply its water, New York City as we know it would not exist today. From 1907 to 1967, a network of reservoirs and aqueducts was built across more than one million acres in upstate New York, including Greene, Delaware, Sullivan, and Ulster Counties. This feat of engineering served to meet New York City's ever-increasing need for water, sustaining its inhabitants and cementing it as a center of industry. West of the Hudson, it meant that twenty-six villages, with their farms, forest lands, orchards, and quarries, were bought for a fraction of their value, demolished, and submerged, profoundly altering ecosystems in ways we will never fully appreciate. This paradox of victory and loss is at the heart of Nineteen Reservoirs, Lucy Sante's meticulous account of how New York City secured its seemingly limitless fresh water supply, and why it cannot be taken for granted. In inimitable form, Sante plumbs the historical record to surface forgotten archives and images, bringing lost places back to life on the page. Her immaculately calibrated sensitivity honors both perspectives on New York City's reservoir system and helps us understand the full import of its creation. An essential history of the New York City region that will reverberate far beyond it, Nineteen Reservoirs examines universal divisions in our resources and priorities—between urban and rural, rich and poor, human needs and animal habitats. This is an unmissable account of triumph, tragedy, and unintended consequences. With 29 present-day photographs by Tim Davis
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Reviews
"The chronicle is anything but dry."
"In contrast to the more exhaustive accounts of the system, like David Soll's Empire of Water and Diane Galusha's Liquid Assets, Nineteen Reservoirs—begun during the 2020 lockdown as a series of pieces for Places Journal—is a meditation, a forensic accounting of the damage the reservoir system did and how it still resonates ..."
"Sante has always had an underdog's left-of-the-dial feeling for what's been threatened or lost."
"Sante sets the stage for a similar exploration of the wrenching transformations that helped form a great city, but the result is less a gripping narrative than a historical survey that lacks the rich characterization and poetic flair of Ms."
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