For The Last 14 Days, I Have Turned My Cock Repeatedly, But Nothing Comes From It

So complained an angry customer of the Manhattan Company in 1803 when he found that none of the piped water he was paying them for was reaching his house. What did you think I was talking about?

I suppose not too many of us stop and wonder about the water we use every day. Where is it from, how does it get here, how is it so clean, etc.? Who knows? We mostly just know it's there in massive quantities when we need it. For us New Yorkers, this wasn't always the case. In fact, for a long time Manhattan was well known for having incredibly putrid water, and not even plenty of that. One writer described New York's water situation in The New York Evening Journal:

I have no doubt that one cause of the numerous stomach affections so common in
this city is the impure, I may say poisonous nature of the pernicious Manhattan
water which thousands of us daily and constantly use. It is true the
unpalatableness of this abominable fluid prevents almost every person from using
it as a beverage at the table . . .

. . .Our linen happily escapes the contamination of its touch, for "no two things
hold more antipathy", than soap and this vile water

The genuinely fantastic tale of the history of bringing clean water to New York is told in Water For Gotham: A History, by Gerard Koeppel. Put the iPod and the remote down and get the book. Read the book.