Stuyvesant Park Residents experienced unusual colored water coming out of their dorm bathroom and kitchen sinks due to construction work in nearby Kips Bay. According to New School Facilities Director, Thomas Wallen, the problem was looked into right away. However, it took two whole days for the problem to be completely solved. The issue first appeared on Saturday, October 29th in the afternoon. By Monday around the same time the water was still coming out in dark colors, according to an email sent out on Halloween.
“I was washing my dishes and suddenly all this really dark brown water started flowing out of the sink. I looked in the bathroom. The toilet water and the bath water was dark brown also,” said Cecilia Vergos, Stuy Park resident who lives on the seventh floor.
An hour later, students received an email from Stuy Park staff, stating that they were looking into the problem, and warning residents not to drink the water, or shower in it.
Two days later, on Halloween, residents received a second email notifying them the water had been fixed and was safe to drink.
After receiving multiple work orders of “discolored or rusty tasting water,” Thomas Wallen, Facilities Director, contacted 311 and spoke to the Department of Environmental Protection to find out what the cause was. The DEP explained there was some unplanned maintenance on a domestic water line in the area being done. The department warned all buildings on First Avenue, from 15th Street to 23rd Street, that they could experience discolored water. All of this was also made public through their twitter account @NYCwater.
Wallen explained that the discoloration is normal and that the first people to turn the water back on will experience the most sediment coming out of their faucets.
“We see this very often,” Wallen said. “Every time the water is shut down. All the water pipes in the city have a certain amount of sediment in there. But it lays dormant when its continuously flowing. When you set the water, restored it tends to pick up a little bit of that sediment. That’s what you see when the water starts up again.”
Although the water posed no real risk, students were still advised not to drink, shower or cook with the water.
“They told us not to shower and not to drink it [was] kind of inconvenient” said a ninth floor resident who said her name was Sheila, but did not provide a last name.
Some students found their way around the water problem by using a Brita to filter the water for drinking, or simply boiling it for cooking.
Vergos explained that for cooking, she just boiled the water, “and figured that would do.”
According to Summer Wojtas, who lives on the eighth floor, the showers seemed fine and were in use over the weekend.
“I didn’t even notice [the discoloration] in my shower water. Maybe I thought I was extra dirty that day” said Christina Colon, seventh floor resident.
“I feel like it didn’t really affect us that much, it was just gross. And I feel like that shouldn’t happen—We pay a lot of money to live here so it was just kind of gross” Wojtas said. Rates for living in Stuyvesant Park Residences for a full academic year ranges from $15,020 the least, to $22,960 the most expensive single room. A similar comment was made by another student on the Stuyvesant Park Resident Students for The New School facebook group. “We’re paying too much money for the water to be brown” Elle Mnop posted.
“If you’ve never experienced this before it’s pretty gross.” Wallen said. “Unfortunately its one of those things that happens more in the city because piping is so old and the streets have so many issues. But even in your home, wherever you’re from, if you were too shut the water off for a while and turn it back on, you’d get some of that”
Wallen spoke to a couple of parents over the weekend, and assured them The New School is looking very closely into it. “If we thought for even a moment, that there were any type of health concerns with the water, we would have taken aggressive water immediately” he said.
“As it turned out it was just NYC water doing what NYC water does,” Wallen said.
The director of facilities said he went back on all work orders dating back to the middle of the summer. No reports of discolored water had been filed before Sunday afternoon, the day the water turned.
However, Ayun Kuom said that two weeks after moving into her dorm on the lobby floor, she had the same problem. “Last weekend, it was just more constant” she said.
Her roommate, Jade Fernandez, who filled out work orders for the problem in early September, said they simply told her to let the water run until it cleared up. They made no further report.