A glass of water

It's now a little past midnight, and I'm standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of water.

I don't know if it was the long drive, the endless speed traps, the winding roads or the potholes that could swallow a car, but that glass of water tasted good.

Did someone say the water is just better in New York?

Tomorrow starts early, on a project with Dell Collective at their boho-rustic converted grain silo here in Perry.

Perry

Perry is a village of about 3,500 people in Wyoming County, in the western part of New York State. It sits at the northeast end of Silver Lake, just west of Letchworth State Park.

It's farm country. In 2017 Wyoming County had about 47,500 milk cows, more than any other county in New York.

Is the water better in New York?

When people say the water is better in New York, they usually mean New York City's tap water, and they usually say it about bagels.

The city's water comes from 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes in the Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains, as far as 125 miles north of the city. In 2022, 97.5 per cent of it came from the Catskill/Delaware system. That water isn't filtered at all, which makes New York one of only five large American cities with an unfiltered surface supply. It's disinfected with chlorine and ultraviolet light.

The bagel theory is that the city's water is low in calcium and magnesium, which makes it soft. In 2015 NPR reported on an American Chemical Society video that found the water's effect on bagels real but minor. The boil before baking matters far more. Good bagel makers also leave the shaped dough in the fridge for a couple of days, which gives it time to build flavour.

Perry isn't on the city's system. The village draws its water from Silver Lake, which is about two miles long and forty feet deep at its deepest point, and filters it at its own treatment plant.