Sally Furniss
Well-known member
Saving nature saves money, too
Preserving existing wild places such as forests or wetlands costs 10 times less than trying to replace them when they are gone, says Geoffrey Lean.
By Geoffrey Lean
Published: 5:52PM BST 04 Jun 2010
Since 1916, the year after Fields began starring in Broadway's Ziegfield Follies, it has come to the city along a 163-mile aqueduct from the Catskill mountains to the north. And despite his insistence that he never touched the stuff because of "the disgusting things fish do in it", it is the natural processes it undergoes as it percolates through mountain forests and soils that ensure its purity and taste.
Yet it's not long since all that was at risk. Fourteen years ago, America's Environmental Protection Agency announced that development and pollution in the Catskills was threatening the water's quality, and warned that it would need to be treated in a massive modern filtration and purification plant. Instead, the city fathers embarked on a programme of protecting the supply at source, by buying vulnerable land in the watershed, persuading local farmers to follow good environmental practice, and helping to provide sewage works and septic tanks.
The plan worked. New York's nine million people continue to enjoy the largest unfiltered water supply in the country, and they have saved a fortune in the process. The treatment plant would have cost some £4 billion to build and another £170 million a year to run. The Catskills conservation programme came in at around £700 million, a fraction of the price.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ea...an/7804263/Saving-nature-saves-money-too.html
Preserving existing wild places such as forests or wetlands costs 10 times less than trying to replace them when they are gone, says Geoffrey Lean.
By Geoffrey Lean
Published: 5:52PM BST 04 Jun 2010
Since 1916, the year after Fields began starring in Broadway's Ziegfield Follies, it has come to the city along a 163-mile aqueduct from the Catskill mountains to the north. And despite his insistence that he never touched the stuff because of "the disgusting things fish do in it", it is the natural processes it undergoes as it percolates through mountain forests and soils that ensure its purity and taste.
Yet it's not long since all that was at risk. Fourteen years ago, America's Environmental Protection Agency announced that development and pollution in the Catskills was threatening the water's quality, and warned that it would need to be treated in a massive modern filtration and purification plant. Instead, the city fathers embarked on a programme of protecting the supply at source, by buying vulnerable land in the watershed, persuading local farmers to follow good environmental practice, and helping to provide sewage works and septic tanks.
The plan worked. New York's nine million people continue to enjoy the largest unfiltered water supply in the country, and they have saved a fortune in the process. The treatment plant would have cost some £4 billion to build and another £170 million a year to run. The Catskills conservation programme came in at around £700 million, a fraction of the price.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ea...an/7804263/Saving-nature-saves-money-too.html