00:00 New York City's tap water is highly regarded and considered the reason why their bagels and pizza are so good.

05:18 New York City has the largest water system in the United States, delivering over a billion gallons of water every day, with 90% of the water being unfiltered and drinkable straight from the tap.

10:13 In the 18th century, New York City had public pumps on street corners that delivered water from underground streams and springs, but most of the water was brackish and gross tasting, so they labeled the pumps that delivered good water as "tea water pumps" and people would buy the water for making tea until they built a canal that eventually became Canal Street and Central Park.

14:53 In the middle of the 19th century, the Croton Reservoir was brought online and delivered 90 million gallons of pure water to New York City, but as the city grew, it became clear that they needed more water and in 1917, the engineers completed the 92 mile Catskill aqueduct to bring fresh water from the Catskills to New York City.

19:52 The engineers drilled a tunnel 1100 feet below sea level to hit bedrock and built a tube to pressurize the water, allowing it to flow through the aqueduct via gravity and pressure.

25:02 The Delaware Aqueduct is an 85-mile tunnel that is still the longest continuous tunnel in the world, and while tunnel number one and tunnel number two have been in operation since 1917 and 1936, tunnel number three is still under construction and is expected to be fully operational in 2021.

30:33 New York City invests a lot of money in protecting the Delaware and Catskill watersheds, including buying up 40% of the land, upgrading wastewater treatment facilities, reimbursing homeowners for new septic tanks, and planting sapling trees to absorb harmful nutrients from rainwater.

35:00 New York City takes its water quality seriously, with over 15,000 water samples taken and analyzed at the source each year, robotic buoys monitoring reservoirs, and water sampling stations throughout the city.

41:00 New York City takes 1,300 water samples a month from various testing stations to ensure the quality of the water, which goes through extra steps such as mixing with alum, passing through filters, and being treated with ultraviolet light before reaching the taps.

45:52 New York City's water, which is naturally soft and low in calcium and magnesium, is considered the "Goldilocks" of bagel water, as it provides the perfect balance for making bagels and pizza dough.

50:35 The techniques used by New Yorkers to make bagels, such as poaching the dough and allowing the yeast to ferment, are likely the reasons why they are considered to make better bagels, rather than the water itself.