NYC Watershed

Drink Tap Water

Riverkeeper’s Drink Tap Campaign focuses on:

• NYC's World Class Tap Water

  New York City’s drinking water is world renowned for its purity and taste. It routinely wins taste tests and won first prize at the 2008 New York State Fair, beating out 150 other communities.
  Learn More

• Learn About Your WaterChecking Your Water Quality

  We all have the right to know what’s in our drinking water. The Safe Drinking Water Act, passed in 1976, authorized the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set drinking water standards for all public water systems. Water utilities are required to monitor and treat drinking water to meet these federal standards and notify the public about any detected regulated contaminant or other water quality violation.

  The centerpiece of these right-to-know provisions is the annual water quality report intended to help consumers make informed choices about their drinking water.
  Learn More

• What You Can DoA Clean Watershed Equals Clean Drinking Water

  According to the EPA, the leading source of pollution in surface drinking water supplies is polluted rainwater runoff. Many pollutants are found in legal, commonly used household products – cleaning chemicals for our homes, oil and gasoline for our vehicles, pesticides and fertilizers for our lawns, and pharmaceuticals for ourselves.

  Please review our easy to follow guidelines on what you can do to protect our shared drinking water supplies -Reducing Pollutants in Your Watershed

• Kick the Bottled Water HabitTake Back the Tap New York

  Riverkeeper has joined forces with Food & Water Watch on the Take Back the Tap New York campaign.

  • This joint campaign aims to:

  • Promotes NYC’s premier tap water over bottled water
  • Increases awareness of the NYC Watershed – a critical resource for New York
  • Advocates for increased funding for water infrastructure maintenance
  • Raises awareness of the social, economic, and environmental problems associated with bottled water
  • Increase access to municiple water supplies through water fountains and filling stations in public and private settings
  • Convince NYC’s large institutions to dramatically reduce their bottled water consumption through increased availability of tap water
  • Secure passage and funding of the Clean Water National Trust Fund
  • Regulate disposal of pharmaceuticals to keep them out of our waterways
  • Stop the trend towards water privatization

  Learn More about our campaign with Food and Water Watch.