Day 168

These boxes were installed in the mid 1990s to allow for more effective testing of the city's water supply.

In William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, the protagonist envisions a fanciful use for "the mysterious Water Testing Station on her block uptown, which a friend had claimed to contain nothing more than a tap and a cup, for the judging of potability — this having been for Cayce a favorite fantasy of alternative employment, to stroll Manhattan like a itinerant sommelier, addressing one's palate with the various tap waters of the city. Not that she would have wanted to, particularly, but simply to believe that someone could do this for a living had been somehow comforting."