Celebration of the Reversal the New Croton Aqueduct

On the weekend of July 27-29, 2001 in Brewster, New York, artist Peter Walsh reversed the flow of New York City's drinking water, creating an imaginary public works project that modeled itself on grass roots activism and included a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Brewster's 83 year old Mayor, John Cesar.

Throughout the hot summer weekend, Mr. Walsh thanked the people of the Village of Brewster and the Township of Southeast, and also visitors to the Brewster Project arts festival, by serving glasses of authentic ice-cold Croton Watershed water, imported directly from the heart of New York City. Local officials and community members were on hand to cut the ribbon, taste the returning water and kick off a new Croton Water Celebration that mirrored a similar celebration in Manhattan over 150 years earlier.

The project successfully connected with the Putnam County community's concerns over the political and financial control of area resources and was prominently featured in three different local newspapers. The project was chosen by curator Rachel Gugelberger to be part of the first Brewster Project, an arts festival organized by Regine Basha, Omar Lopez-Chahoud and Christopher Ho with Brewster resident Richard Ruchella. During the festival, Brewster hosted over 30 contemporary artists from NewYork City who were invited by ten curators to create site-specific public projects that reflected on Brewster's history, locale, architecture and specific cultural make-up.

See www.peterwalshprojects.us/CrotonPages/CrotonIndex.html for details.