Photographer Stanley Greenberg Reveals the Bronx’s Secret Waterworks, DEP Finally Lets Him In

New York’s labyrinthine water system remains both an engineering marvel and a fragile lifeline—reminding the city of infrastructure’s hidden power, and peril.

New York’s drinking water, often lauded as the best-tasting tap in America, flows to nine million people through a vast, nearly invisible network longer than the distance from the Bronx to Budapest. In all, three great tunnels—spanning almost a century of excavation—meander beneath the city, funnelling liquid lifeblood from upstate reservoirs to crowded kitchens, bakeries, and bodegas. For most New Yorkers, the system is as unnoticed as the air they breathe, save for a cold panic when a water main bursts and blocks their commute.

A new book by Stanley Greenberg, Waterworks: The Hidden Water System of New York, peels back the layers to reveal the secret subterranean world it took to make such nonchalance possible. Mr Greenberg, once a functionary at the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), spent decades seeking rare glimpses behind locked hatches and steam-shrouded doors—eventually convincing wary bureaucrats to let his camera document the city’s “key to everything.” His work arrives as anxiety simmers over the aging arteries beneath America’s metropolises.

For New York, the narrative of water is tinged with hubris and unease. The system, managed by the DEP and constructed in fits since 1842, is routinely called “the city’s single greatest asset.” Yet this vital apparatus mostly occupies the outer periphery of municipal consciousness until calamity strikes. In the past five years, water main failures snarled Midtown, opened sinkholes in Queens, and cost the city millions; in 2023 alone, emergency repairs siphoned roughly $75 million from public coffers, according to Comptroller Brad Lander.

Daily life depends on an infrastructure many city-dwellers would struggle to sketch even in broad strokes. Water from the Catskill and Delaware watersheds—some 125 miles north—makes its way by gravity through tunnels up to 700 feet underground. Distribution involves a warren of aqueducts, pumping stations, and more than 7,000 miles of pipes, snaking under every street. When parts of the system fail, as they did during the Bronx’s 2022 deluge, the results can be both biblical and banal: flooded cellars, damaged subway signals, and the odd geyser erupting through a manhole.

Yet the age and opacity of this hydrological web now pose risks that are difficult to ignore. Two of the three main water tunnels were completed in 1917 and 1936; the long-gestating third tunnel, dug in fits since 1970, remains unfinished in sections. As the city’s appetite and population have grown, so too has the wear. Planners quietly fret about a “cascade failure”—a string of breakages too swift or sprawling for patchwork fixes—especially as bouts of extreme weather and spiking demand put new strain on old bones.

The economic stakes are brisk. Without water, Wall Street does not open and hospital generators sputter. Restaurant sinks run dry; tenants go without showers (and lawsuits swiftly follow). Twice in the last decade, shutdowns of single mains cost Manhattan businesses over $10 million in lost trade per incident, by city estimates. Meanwhile, public investment in “invisible” infrastructure often draws less political oxygen than projects with gleaming ribbon-cuttings or mayoral photo-ops. DEP budgets must compete against costs for schools, policing, and the ever-rising bill for social services.

Political leaders, nudged by headline-grabbing failures elsewhere—think Flint, Michigan’s poisoned pipes or Jackson, Mississippi’s days-long outages—have professed new zeal for infrastructure. But in New York, urgency and execution often part ways. Deferred maintenance already accounts for an annual backlog nudging $1.3 billion, according to the Independent Budget Office. The city’s “State of Good Repair” report, released in early 2024, warned that decades of neglect leave even the newest tunnels vulnerable if a major break were to strike.

Hidden marvels, daunting choices

Other world cities manage their water with varying degrees of transparency, ingenuity, and distress. Berlin’s system, for example, underwent wholesale overhauls after reunification, backed by well-publicised municipal campaigns; Tokyo’s waterworks survive both earthquakes and swelling urbanisation with canny investment in seismic upgrades. New York’s decentralized sprawl and storied political stalemates have made grandiose (and expensive) repairs less sprightly. Even so, the city fares buoyantly compared to many American peers—its water not only reaches every tap, but offers rare drinkability without costly filtration, thanks to strict watershed protections.

Yet that fortune may not last. Prolonged climate shifts threaten both supply and safety—ravaging upstate reservoirs with drought or sudden deluge, flushing pollutants and straining outdated dams. Water security, once a parochial engineering task, now demands every bit of the surveillance, data, and foresight that planners can muster. For all its quirks, the Greenberg book is a quiet reminder: infrastructure is unromantic until it rebels.

The tension bodes ill for complacency but well for thoughtful adaptation. The recent focus on “hidden New York”—whether by artists, city officials, or journalists—has jolted the body politic into a slightly more serious conversation about what lies beneath. Local candidates who once waxed about crime or congestion now pepper speeches with somber allusions to “resilience” and “sustainability.” For municipal managers, the path to renewal remains unflashy but necessary: more sensors, better emergency drills, and—crucially—steadier, less politically fungible funds.

A city’s greatness rests less on its skyscrapers than its sewers. New York, accustomed to regarding its plumbing as a background concern, faces a decade in which subterranean ambition may matter more than supertall towers. Here, as elsewhere, the lesson is both simple and bracing: a metropolis thrives only as long as its vital networks do.

Mr Greenberg’s photographic odyssey may strike some as mere curiosity, but it serves an instructive civic purpose. In capturing the mix of ingenuity, grit, and aging steel that keeps water running, he spotlights both a triumph and a warning. We reckon New Yorkers would do well to ask not just where their next glass comes from, but how much longer the pipes will bear the strain. ■