Mike's summary is a pretty good one. I have only a couple of supplementary items.
Big cities tend to have their water delivered via aqueduct. Some of these are open, while others are closed. A few cities survive on ground water. NYC gets its water from up-state.
How wastewater is handled depends a great deal on the municipality. NYC in 1997 had secondary treatment at the very minimum because there are too many people in too small an area to get away with less. Secondary treatment means that after the solids are separated out the wastewater moves to bacterial mats. The stuff that passes through the screens (the excrement) moves through what amounts to huge tanks of excrement-gobbling bacteria. The microbes do most of the work that needs to be done by removing the materials cholera and other infectious microorganisms live on. Some places do tertiary, which is either chemical (chlorine, typically) or radiation (ultraviolet light does the trick). I don't know if NYC had tertiary treatment in 1997.
It's very hard to imagine that PCs could run something like this. Leg is right about the alternatives. Until surprisingly recently, there were night soil collectors in some parts of Tokyo; i.e., dudes collected nasty buckets. There's nothing wrong with outhouses in a place like Manhattan in 2000, provided they are managed corrrectly. The locals probably have figured this one out by 2000.
Webstral
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