[Targan]

I recently watched a 2009 documentary film titled GasLand which talked a bit about NYC's water supply. I highly recommend the documentary (more for its main focus on groundwater contamination caused by the natural gas industry's hydraulic fracturing practices than anything else) but if you can get hold of it it does talk a bit about the NYC area's water catchment.

In my opinion rainwater tanks would be the best way of providing fresh water to organised communities in NYC. Water from the rivers and from the reservoirs in Central Park would be too contaminated for long term safe drinking I think (contaminated both by fallout and by chemicals). I guess sewage would be dealt with in a way such as Leg described, or eventually perhaps channelled/pumped into the Hudson or East Rivers.

Kalos, when you say your players have "plans to rebuild the NYC area" do you mean rebuild control and the rule of law, or do you mean actual physical rebuilding of infrastructure? The latter would be waaaaaay beyond the abilities of a PC group I would have thought. You'd be looking at years and huge amounts of manpower just to get existing legacy infrastructure back up and running let alone real rebuilding of physical infrastructure. I know it is only a game but I think what you are suggesting is more like a high fantasy RPG than the gritty realism of the T2K I am more familiar with. In any case why would they bother? You'd be better off getting small to medium sized towns with surrounding farmland up and running again. An urban metropolis like NYC is a product of a highly industrialised, highly specialised society. In the T2K world all NYC is good for, really, is as a huge pile of salvageable materials.