Lay of the Land

Air Wars | WWatch | Drinking Water | Bold Strokes

If the world’s drinking water is protected at the source by keeping forested watersheds healthy, what comes out of the tap will be clean, safe, and a lot more affordable. A recent report highlights the case of the Catskills and Delaware River watersheds, which provide the New York metro area with 90 percent of its water. City officials have run the numbers and decided to spend up to $1.5 billion over ten years to protect these watersheds rather than spend $6 billion to $8 billion on a new water-filtration plant and up to $500 million annually for its upkeep. —Marilyn Berlin Snell

The report Running Pure: The Importance of Forest Protected Areas to Drinking Water, produced by the World Bank in collaboration with the WWF, is available at www.panda.org/downloads/freshwater/runningpurereport.pdf.