GOODBYE TO ‘19TH CENTURY’ SYSTEM

WATER, WATER, everywhere — and it can ruin your commute.

Keeping water from entering the 420 miles of underground subway tracks is among MTA Chairman Joe Lhota’s key proposals in his emergency transit turnaround plan.

Water, along with fire-sparking garbage in the tunnels, is a root cause of a significant number of track incidents that hold up trains. Water can corrode and rust aging equipment, causing malfunctions that stop trains in their tracks and spread debris that can cause track fires.

“The greatest enemy to having an efficient subway system is water,” Lhota said at MTA headquarters. “Anything we can do to eliminate that water, prevent debris from clogging the drains, is going to go a long way to making sure that we don’t have delays in the system.”

To attack the leaks, the MTA is deploying teams armed with chemical grouting to seal up the system. The teams will also clean trash from 40,000 street grates, so water flows where it’s supposed to go, instead of dripping inside subway stations and tunnels.

Riders on a Q train in Brooklyn on Sunday experienced what a delay from water damage can do to a trip. Third-rail cables started to burn just north of the Prospect Park station about 3:45 p.m. Water seeping into the tunnel from a nearby park had sparked the exposed wires, a source had told the Daily News. It took nearly two hours for trains to return to regular service.

Any rider who’s commuted during a downpour has seen stations turn into waterfalls, but even “on a clear day, a sunny beautiful day, we still take 13 million gallons of water out of the New York City subway system,” Lhota said.