In 1741 the “Negro Plot”, it was a plot by town’s black population to poison the wells and burn the city. The panic and worried officials brought the trials and executed many innocent people. The result of this event brought forward the “Tea Water Pump”. “Tea Water Pump” became the city’s only source of drinkable water. As population increased, wells and ponds were unable to provide enough water for the residents. Especially without a clean system for disposing garbage and human waste, all these trash polluted waterways, underground water became contaminated. “New York remained an ill-water city in the 1830s. The Manhattan Company frustrated repeated efforts to bring Bronx River water to the city, until the cholera of 1832 shocked farsighted civic leaders into focusing on the distant Croton River.”
Croton (northern Westchester) water was the City’s first successful public water supply system. Croton water flowed through the aqueduct by high bridges. The system provided water to a continued grow population. If it wasn’t for the amazing system of reservoirs, aqueducts, and tunnels in the late 1800s, we New Yorkers will not have our clean and reliable water supply today.
I do agree that clean water supply is a necessity to human survival. After the Croton Water was supplied, diseases such as Yellow fever and Cholera significantly dropped. Though the rich had the advantage of over using this facility, the poor were provided with the public service.