Water filter installation in Westchester and Rockland

What the water is like across Westchester and Rockland

Most of Westchester is downstream of Kensico Reservoir, where the Catskill and Delaware aqueducts blend and the water settles for twenty to thirty days before heading south. White Plains takes all of its raw water from there through Westchester County Water District Number 1, which adds ultraviolet light as a second disinfection barrier. Mount Vernon and Greenburgh both hold filtration avoidance. Yonkers contains Hillview Reservoir, the final balancing reservoir for the whole New York City supply. Veolia's Westchester operation splits into two rate districts that do not share a supply, one on New York City water and one taking 65 per cent of its water from Aquarion's Putnam Reservoir in Connecticut. Rockland is different again: roughly 70 per cent groundwater from wells across the county and 30 per cent surface water from the Lake DeForest and Letchworth reservoirs, a ratio that moves.

What this means locally

The filtration avoidance determination covering most of Westchester is worth understanding properly, because the phrase sounds like a loophole and is not. It means the water is not filtered at any plant anywhere before it reaches the county, and it is granted only because the watershed is protected well enough to make filtration unnecessary. New York City attributes it to 1.5 billion dollars spent on watershed protection. Two things follow at the house. Any particulate arriving at a fixture entered through the distribution mains or the building's own pipework, since there is no plant filter upstream that could have failed, which makes a sediment cartridge a sensible cheap precaution after mains work and a poor investment otherwise. And the usual reason to fit whole-house filtration, correcting something the utility left in, largely does not apply. Rockland is the opposite case and needs opposite reasoning: a blend that moves between wells and reservoirs through the year, where the utility ran under a state deferral on the PFOA and PFOS limits until August 2023 and now publishes quarterly results.

Utilities we have researched here

6 separate utilities supply the researched towns in this region, and they do not all treat water the same way.

• City of Mount Vernon Board of Water Supply
• City of White Plains Department of Public Works
• Greenburgh Consolidated Water District No. 1
• Veolia Water New York, Rockland system
• Veolia Water New York, Westchester Rate District 1
• Yonkers Water Bureau

What that means for equipment

• Reported hardness across the towns measured here runs from 1.8 to 1.8 grains per gallon. That is a narrow spread, so the softening decision is reasonably consistent across the region.
• 2 towns use chloramine rather than free chlorine as the residual disinfectant. Chloramine needs catalytic carbon or a much longer contact time than a standard cartridge gives it, and a softener on it should be specified with chloramine resistant resin.
• 2 draw at least part of the supply from groundwater. Groundwater is steadier through the year than surface water and usually harder, and it tends to bring iron and manganese rather than the seasonal taste changes a reservoir produces.
• 6 have a documented lead service line position. In every one of them the lead comes from the service line or the plumbing inside the building rather than from the supply, so the measurement that answers it is a first draw sample taken after water has stood overnight.
• 1 have a published PFAS position. Where treatment is warranted it is granular activated carbon or reverse osmosis certified to NSF/ANSI 58. Where the utility already treats for it at the plant, a household system adds nothing.

Towns we cover in Westchester and Rockland

Each has its own page carrying the utility, the source water, the treatment and the lead position, with every figure attributed to a publisher and the year it refers to.

We serve 7 areas in Westchester and Rockland in total. The 1 not linked above are covered through the nearest listed town, usually because they share its water system and a separate page would repeat the same facts under a different name.

The researched towns side by side

Every figure below is taken from the town page it links to, where it carries its publisher and the year it refers to. A blank means we hold no sourced figure for that town rather than that the value is zero.

Systems we install here

Installation and service across Westchester and Rockland

Other regions in New York

Or read the New York hub for the state regulators, the PFAS and lead rules that apply across New York, and every area we cover there.