New York Metropolis is outlined in some ways by its iconic infrastructure, from our parks to the hovering towers of the Brooklyn and Verrazzano-Narrows Bridges, and even the controversial roadways of Robert Moses, which displaced many communities of shade, leaving a legacy we nonetheless really feel at this time. However for one of many metropolis’s most awe-inspiring items of infrastructure, there’s a stunning lack of public information or mythology: our water system. The names of the folks concerned will not be tossed round at dinner events. The bodily buildings, which sit largely out of view, are maybe greatest recognized to these dwelling or climbing close to the reservoirs removed from Manhattan’s grid. And but, we New Yorkers are the beneficiaries of a few of the cleanest and best-tasting faucet water on the earth, which hydrates not solely tens of millions of individuals dwelling and dealing within the 5 boroughs, but additionally greater than 1,000,000 folks dwelling in Westchester, Putnam, Orange, and Ulster counties.
Photographer Stanley Greenberg has spent a long time endeavoring to each reply the query of how water arrives in our faucets and bathrooms and construct curiosity on this huge and spectacular system. His black and white photographs usually really feel epic in scope, at the same time as some depict quiet road scenes and out of the way in which corners that solely trace in any respect that’s occurring under the floor. Now his guide Waterworks: The Hidden Water System of New York, initially revealed in 2003, has been re-issued and expanded.
A local New Yorker, Greenberg grew up in Flatlands, a Brooklyn neighborhood southeast of Flatbush. After attending highschool in Manhattan, he went on to pursue levels in artwork historical past and public administration, ultimately touchdown jobs in metropolis authorities. It was throughout his time on the Division of Cultural Affairs within the Nineteen Eighties that he discovered the Division of Environmental Safety (DEP), the company that manages town’s water, had an archive, elements of which have been uncared for or being thrown away. Together with one other artist and a bunch of Cooper Union college students, Greenberg helped to catalog that important document. The expertise of going via these drawings and images is what impressed him to develop his present image-making observe to incorporate town’s huge water system. A photographer from a younger age, Greenberg has exhibited extensively, and revealed plenty of books, together with one other that touches particularly on water sources in New York Metropolis: Springs and Wells, Manhattan and the Bronx (2021).
On a cool, grey morning in late Might, I biked to fulfill him on the nook of State Road and Nevins in downtown Brooklyn to see a few of what fascinates him. After biking to some different spots close by, we decamped to his studio in Gowanus to speak additional in regards to the undertaking. This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Hyperallergic: It’s just a little exhausting to fathom simply how a lot is occurring beneath our toes in New York Metropolis: The water system, steam and gasoline pipes, subway tunnels, electrical and fiber optic cables, sewers and storm drains, tree roots, rat tunnels, cemeteries and graves.
Stanley Greenberg: And comes!
H: How do all these programs work together with one another? For example, one of many additions to this new model of the guide is the digester eggs up in Greenpoint [part of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant]. How does including that assist inform folks’s understanding of our water system?
SG: The primary water therapy vegetation have been inbuilt Coney Island as a result of that’s the place folks swam and the air pollution can be on the market. The rationale the oysters disappeared is due to water air pollution, as a result of we simply dumped the whole lot. New York Metropolis had a bunch of water air pollution controls, however the [1972] Clear Water Act required much more and rather a lot higher. That’s when North River was constructed, and Newtown Creek and Owl’s Head have been upgraded, and the Crimson Hook Wastewater Useful resource Restoration Facility was constructed, which is within the Navy Yard.
H: That touches on one thing that feels painfully related at this time. With the federal authorities and workforce being dismantled, and protecting laws and monitoring packages being undermined, a guide like yours is a reminder of why we want a functioning and accountable authorities. Your entry to {photograph} the water system has been restricted since September 11, 2001, with safety threats being the explanation given. The DEP additionally limits public entry, not readily revealing what many of those websites are. You expressed some issues about that method. Should you had an opportunity to take a seat down with town’s subsequent DEP commissioner, what would you say?
SG: I’d attempt to persuade them to permit extra public entry to the system in order that individuals are extra related to the water provide and wastewater therapy programs. I believe it’s simpler to ask for the general public’s assist in caring for the system after they perceive higher that it’s a public useful resource that they collectively personal.
I’d additionally ask for entry to {photograph} Tunnel No. 1 when it’s shut down [for the first time ever] for upkeep when Tunnel No. 3 is totally operational [the largest construction project in NYC history, which began in 1970 and is still underway], together with a few of the different websites I wasn’t allowed to {photograph}.
H: You lately began taking a DIY method to sharing information with the general public?
SG: I began to place up the images and texts from the Springs and Wells guide within the areas the place they have been initially photographed, and realized that I ought to do the identical factor for the water system. Together with the guide and the map included, there’s additionally a Google map to make use of as a area information. One among my objectives is to make folks extra conscious of water infrastructure and the city panorama round them.
H: After studying via the guide, I began taking note of the upkeep, or manhole, covers I used to be strolling over. So I stay up for encountering a few of these indicators.
SG: Good. Should you begin to see town in a different way then I’ve accomplished my job.
Waterworks: The Hidden Water System of New York by Stanley Greenberg (2025) is revealed in a restricted version by Kris Graves Tasks and is obtainable on-line.
