People with experience working in and around municipal water infrastructure: Do you drink tap water? Are there times when you do not?

Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 166 points – 3 months ago

This question is obviously intended for those that live in places where tap water is "safe to drink."

I live in Southern California, where I'm at the end of a long chain of cities. Occasionally, the tap smells of sulfur, hardness changes, or it tastes... odd. I'm curious about the perspective of people that are directly involved and their reasoning.

I trust the city government with my water much much more than companies trying to save every penny bottling water.

And I'm more likely able to get the people responsible for poor quality water or death in result of this in jail over the likelihood of sending billionaire CEOs with their golden parachutes to a minimum security vacation "prison".

whoopsie daisy, we shipped 500 million bottles of tainted water, "we're sorry". Meanwhile if a city did that it'd be national news for years.

While I'm a huge fan of municipal water (I live in the city that invented it), lots of cities have horribly mismanaged their water supply, often from privatization, but not exclusively. See Jackson Mississippi.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/31/1120166328/jackson-mississippi-water-crisis

Oh not saying it doesn't happen at all, but it's blown out of proportion for the most of the US. Main point is exactly that, when a city fucks up it becomes national news, if Pepsi fucked up it's bottling (which comes from city sources anyway), they say "Oh no, we're sorry"

cough cough Flint cough

I manage utility services - among other things - for a group of properties - and have had the mains water analysed for chemical and biological contamination at various times. The results have always been absolutely fine. Not just with EU limits, but far, far, far within them for almost everything and definitely well within them for all measures.

I've got no issues at all with drinking tap water in the UK, even given the state of the rivers etc.

had the mains water analysed for chemical and biological contamination

Can I ask how you go about doing that? I may want to test some water soon.

I am sure G! will find local water testing for you.

But, before you do that, check your municipal water web site. Mine publishes their testing results. Monthly, iirc.

Of course, this is only part of the puzzle. Your exact tap may have very different results.

In my case, I approached our usual plumbing contractor who have a couple of labs that they usually used. I now go directly to those labs.

Could you tell me which labs? Are they local to you?

We have used ALS Testing in the past. More recently Latis Scientific. Both have been good, we swapped just because of some internal admin thing at one point.

Nice one, thanks

The fda tests bottle water. The epa tests tap water. The standards for the fda are lower than the epa. You’re being bambozzled.

How exactly? /s

I never said what I thought in any direction. I simply stated some leading observations without conclusions about their meaning.

Once upon a time I worked for an asphalt company as an operator at the plants and rock quarry. When the test inspector showed up, so did the test and inspection mix running through the plant.

That is why I asked in the way this post was worded. I am looking for someone(s) like myself that are experienced and perhaps smart enough to read between the lines of corruption. It is an unlikely person(s) to find here.

Discovering the various perspectives, along with the spectrum of Lemmy that engages with this post are also interesting from a couple of angles.

The water characteristics you're worried about sound like aesthetic problems, which might be displeasing but pose no real health risks. These vary significantly between public water systems. If the system pulls from surface water, the water might need more treatment in the dry season since contaminants concentrate in surface waters more that time of year. I'm lucky to live somewhere that has no noticeable taste/odor/color issues. For places that do, you should be able to drink it from tap without issue, but it might taste/smell better if you run it through a filter or even just let it sit in a pitcher in the fridge.

If a municipality were to cut corners with their water treatment in a similar way to the asphalt plant you mentioned (which sounds kinda shady btw), people would get sick and potentially die. Most municipalities are very risk averse and take liability seriously to avoid litigation/losing money. So, it's not impossible, but I think it'd be unlikely for a city to skimp on water treatment just to save a few bucks. Water treatment facilities are also required to constantly test for things like pH, turbidity, and chlorine residual and report to the state, so it's not as simple as hiding things from an inspector the day of.

The asphalt company is basically all of Los Angeles' roads. They came up with a way to use recycled asphalt grindings in a MUCH higher percentage of the mix in a process that involved soaking it with diesel fuel for a specific amount of time and mixing it. The loader operator feeding the plant had just enough down time to do the soak and mixing process. This recycled grindings mix was added to the hot aggregate strait out of the drum burner right at the liquid asphalt mixing point. If I recall correctly (after two decades), the allowed limit for recycle was 15% according to the state, but they were able to run between 30%-45% recycle with their methods and it was undetectable in the company engineering test lab. You be the judge of how that falls into corruption versus innovation.

Interesting, thanks for the context. I don't know anything about asphalt, but if it didn't cause any health or safety issues I'd place it on the innovation end of the spectrum. I'd be interested in things like how the spent diesel fuel was disposed of and if any petro chems would leach into stormwater from asphalt made this way.

Diesel fuel is the primary solvent of the liquid "AC" they called it aka the black stuff. For instance, you get any hot AC on you, you're in big trouble because it is super hot, but on your clothing or a spill, the only way to get it cleaned up is with diesel fuel. There are stages of containment around the storage of the stuff. As far as recycle, it is just enough diesel to wet the old AC in the grindings. There is no excess. It has to be wet for the new and old to mix. The operator is wetting the surface well then feeding the aggregate bins for the plant. Each time they feed a bin, they scoop and drop the recycle grindings. Every 4-5 times, they add a scoop to the conveyer bin, put a fresh scoop on the back of the stall, and soak the mix in diesel. The diesel doesn't penetrate very deep and the point is to keep it consistent. That area is in the second containment zone for AC, so it is not a part of the groundwater environment. Spending a fortune on wasted diesel is also not the point. Feeding the plant is a monotonous routine. Dialing in these kinds of this is all the mental stimulation there is really. The whole job is, service the machine as needed, don't spin the tires, and NEVER let a aggregate bin go empty or put the wrong class in the wrong bin.

Water and Wastewater operator here. In Texas, where I work and live water is sampled, tested, and reported to TCEQ the Texas specific extension of the EPA. If a water system continually fails to meet water quality standards set out by TCEQ, that system will be taken over by TCEQ and brought back into compliance. All this to say, yes, I drink it because I help make it.

w/ww op in canada. ditto

I work in food manufacturing and get the local water test results emailed to me monthly - they are alway well within limits

I used to live in Los Angeles and lived in Charlie Chaplin's house that was on the old lot(the current Broadway shoes).

The water coming into the house was probably clean, but the home's pipes were all lead. I did one of those lead tests and it failed.

So your sulfur taste could be from the home and not from the municipal water.

If you have any reason to suspect the quality of your water, get it tested! It's not that expensive, you just ship a sample to a lab and they email you a report. Because so many people depend on well water there's a bunch of labs all over the country that do water quality testing, it's a relatively cheap and accessible service.

Unless you need a full pathogen panel, you can just buy the tests for pretty much anything at hardware stores. There are kits that include several.

Yep, here's a map of accredited labs to choose from.

Where I am most people are happy to drink the tap water, and we're all oddly proud of it. Which is fair, it's great water. Very soft too, I remember seeing ads on TV for products to remove limescale but that doesn't really happen here much. I find it a little odd that some places' tap water is so full of impurities that it leaves mineral deposits on their appliances.

Come to Scotland, try our tap water!

Those aren't necessarily impurities in the nasty sense, just mineral content.

Scotland and North-West England have excellent tap water. The water in the Midlands and London is perfectly safe to drink, but it certainly has a taste to it.

If you wish to taste some Finnish ones, I'm sure I can bottle and ship some of our tapwater for you guys to taste.

https://mediconnection.fi/en/water-finland-purest-world/

Severn Trent (the midlands) is often voted the best tap water in the UK.

Not a water person, but it might be the fire departments fault. If they use a hydrant upstream of you it flows so much water so fast that it can stir up some older stuff that's been sitting in there a while.

Ah interesting, could def see that happening.

I just wonder about PEX tubing. Occasionally, the water has a strong plasticky taste/smell like hose water and I feel like that just can't be good for you.

Gotta get those excess micro plastics somehow

[people drinking out of lead pipes] 🗿

I was in the industry for a decent amount of years. I know the operators of the water plants around me. I never hesitate to drink the tap water in my area. At home it goes through the filter in my fridge, which manages the runoff taste in the spring, and keeps the water cold.

I live in Grand Rapids, MI where the tap water is 2.4 ppt PFAS. I buy reverse osmosis purified from the store for $0.50 a gallon for drinking, and will continue to do so until I get my own place where I'll install an under-sink one

Just generally, you can get a report of your municipal water testing. The biggest safety variable that I would be worried about testing at home for is lead in the pipes between me and the treatment plant. That includes my house/building and the municipal pipes.

Now taste, that's a to each their own situation. Sulfury water is my limit for sure. No thanks!

I love in NZ, most places in the country have good tap water, sometimes slightly over chlorinated.

most places in the country have good tap water

Except when it doesn't.

https://www.dia.govt.nz/Government-Inquiry-into-Havelock-North-Drinking-Water

But it's rare. This example comes from 8 years ago.

I used to work in a municipal city water department. Part of its job was to deal with some chemical blooms from bad waste disposal. While I am not a water science person, I trusted the water science people who told me it was safe and got to tour some of the cool filtration things.

I didn’t drink the water because water in that area has a “green” taste that’s hard to describe unless you’ve had it. Totally fine to drink, just personal preference. Most people I know gave me a lot of shit for it.

The water is pretty solid in a lot of developed countries. If it tastes bad then it might have to do with the pipes and tubing.

I live in SE Michigan, so... ... ...yeah, I want to trust my city water, but I can't. Not since Flint, Michigan.

I'm in mid Michigan, and you're fine. The circumstances that lead (ba-dum) to the issues in Flint are unlikely to occur elsewhere, particularly if you're closer to Detroit.

I live in Monroe County.

Yeah, you're fine. The issue with flint was because they moved away from the supply that you're on.

they moved away from the supply that you’re on.

As in, that's what they did before the massive catastrophe that was "everybody gets cancer in the everything", to paraphrase, right?

Correct.

Flint was on the Detroit water supply, and then tried to save money by switching to one that the pipes couldn't handle, which damaged the protective coating on the pipes and let lead leach into the water.
After the coating was damaged there was no real way to fix it that was better than "replace the pipes", which was on the agenda anyway.

Lead pipes are bad, but they're typically safe enough that it's not an emergency due to the coating. It's a worldwide effort to replace lead pipes with other materials that's usually happening roughly inline with the usual service replacement schedule, but some places are going faster because of public concern or just a good opportunity. (My local water supply got the budget to do it while doing a different project, so it took two or three times as long, but happened a few decades early and was much cheaper, then when Flint happened they looked great by being able to respond to questions by saying they started years ago and are almost done)

why trust or not? Just get it tested if you're worried. Mentioned elsewhere in this thread, you can take a sample and send it out to find if everything is in safe levels. (Just remember all water is going to have impurity, the key words are safe levels)

Municipal drinking water is tested multiple times per day in Toronto, as it should be. Testing once and assuming the complex machinery and chemical levels are the same a week later is pure folly.

Note that this is different from testing well water, which shouldn't change much. Testing well water once a year is a good idea though.

Oh for sure, I'm not worried at all, but if other people are I don't see why they don't just get it tested rather than buying hundreds of dollars in bottled water

How much does it generally cost to get it tested? I make very little money.

depending on how much want to do, I have seen kits for ~$30. Pretty sure I've seen some small kits taken for camping, so they can't be too pricy. And if you can't afford it, just start bringing it up around town! Maybe somebody will get excited and do it for you.

Thanks. :)

Probably less than you'd spend on bottled water over two or three months, worthwhile investment if tests show it's drinkable.

I don't buy bottled water. I buy gallon jugs that I then refill at a filling station. Where I'm at, the filling station is typically about 0.40 USD/gallon.

Still, I get your point. It would, of course, still be cheaper by far to use tap water.

Personally, I would trust those filling stations a whole lot less than my tap water. Tap water is constantly purified and being tested, and strictly regulated my multiple agencies, and the press is ready to jump on it the second it's unsafe.

One of those filling stations? Well for one the water I'm 90% sure is the same tap water anyway, and for 2, do they produce reports every month showing how safe they are like our city water does?

Tap water is constantly purified

But unlike a lot of the filling station water, tap water is often not purified with UV or reverse osmosis. (I looked it up and mine isn't anyway.) So some dangerous byproducts from mining and the like get through.

and the press is ready to jump on it the second it’s unsafe.

Honestly, this is an excellent point I hadn't thought of.

One of those filling stations? Well for one the water I’m 90% sure is the same tap water anyway ...

It is, I believe, but with UV & reverse-osmosis so it's more strongly filtered than tap water in the end.

... and for 2, do they produce reports every month showing how safe they are like our city water does?

Fair point.

(Also, please be aware that I fully admit I am not knowledgeable on this stuff; I'm just trying my best. So, if I am spouting any misconceptions, I welcome correction as long as it is kindly done.)

Sounds like UV and reverse osmosis are better, but if your city is already purifying it's probably overkill. From my very quick research it sounds like it's a good option only if your local tapwater is currently failing, which honestly some american towns and cities are. In that case - go for it, but if you're city is passing, then it sounds like you're purifying already perfectly safe to drink water.

https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/home/reverse-osmosis-water-pros-cons/

I guess what I'm concerned about is if the current purification methods used by my city is not good enough. By that I mean they do all the stuff they should be doing, but by not doing reverse osmosis or UV they let some things through that can hurt you.

I'm worried that by doing everything BUT those latter two, the city could be putting me and people I care about at risk.

Are you saying this is an unreasonable worry? Am I understanding you correctly?

Not expensive but it depends on what you want to test. Most of the available tests can be gotten from aquarium supply stores. Got to keep fish healthy after all. Others can be gotten from pool supply companies.

Thank you. :)

If you're living in the US, I feel like it's almost cheating to complain. A certain political party had worked for decades to lower safety, standards and oversight to the point that I would really feel nervous living in the States.

Get an undersink reverse osmosis and uv filter kit. Some come with a remineralizer so it doesn't taste flat. Don't go for a cheap one or it will leak. SoCal isn't known for its water purity or consistancy.

As mentioned already you can get it tested for safety. Plenty of water that has the features you described is indeed safe for consumption. But do you really want to? Most of us don't drink enough water, and if it's unpleasant you'll end up drinking a bare minimum. I can't say enough good things about installing an RO system. It makes water really enjoyable and you'll know it's also being cleaned as well. There are plenty of naysayers about these filters, but they are pretty affordable and work incredibly well. Gamechanger for coffee too.

RO = reverse osmosis? I'm planning to figure out what system I should get soon. Look for a whole house option. Would be interested in any info or review you have. Thanks

I've had two 3m systems and have had no problems. I installed sensors in both for monitoring particles in input and output lines. You don't need to do this, but I think it's reassuring to see that your tap input is relatively stable and nothing has gone haywire with system contamination or a bad filter etc. My 3m systems were both quite small and maintance has been simple (once a year). I imagine the different systems are all relatively similar. My first home came with the 3m system and I liked it so installed I next home. Afraid I'm not a good comparative source.

I use RO too but low key bit concerned about amide nanoplastics released by the RO membrane

I work as a disaster/contingency planning consultant in Central Europe,not only in terms of water but for everything,but of course water is always an issue. Good friend of mine is the head of the regional government agency controlling the municipal water works around here. While we could do much much more in terms of disaster preparedness there is literally nothing wrong with the water itself - we don't even have any Chlorine in it, it's simply not necessary around here. Only when something goes wrong (e.g. main-line breaks) Chlorine will be added for a few weeks.

Yes. At one point I "designed" chlorination buildings/ rooms. At least where I live, probably due to the historical happenings with the water, everything is very heavily monitored and systems are redundant. Everyone in the city got this big notice about a failure in the water system. I actually read through it and it was because one station didn't get one of their scheduled samples. My parents have well water which I grew up on, and think it tastes easy better. But they need a water softener and filters. There's also a guaranteed amount of heavy metals, even if it's in a "safe" range.

North East, US here. probably fine but I don't trust it. we use a water filter for drinking

Same. I can take tap water fine but my wife hates it. But even so, we both can tell by taste when the filter is toast. We can also tell from the way our bathroom counters get white buildup just by incidental water droplets during handwashing that we have excessively hard water. Not dangerous but not pleasant.

I live in San Francisco, give me hetch hetchy

(that's where our tap comes from)

I live in Minnesota. Close to Minneapolis. My brother does testing for swimming pools. He tested the city water for contaminates. He says do not drink it. If the level of chlorine in the city water was in pool water the pool would be shut down. It would not be safe to even swim in it. Yet the city claims it's safe to drink.

Not that I don't trust your brother who... works for the pools, but is there any data to back up this claim? The claim that, if I read right, that there's more chlorine in tap water than in the pools? Sounds like something we could easily have tested.

I'm going to message my brother to get a better answer of what I just replied with. My answer still needs more clarification

Good, because as for my anecdotal evidence, I have family and friends who have lived in MSP for decades without any health issues and they all drink tap water.

I'm going to do my best to explain this.

When a pool is tested to see if chlorine needs to be added (if there are impurities) they will typically add free chlorine. The free chlorine will combine with the impurities. The odor that you smell when you go to a pool is the free chlorine evaporating out. but some of the chlorine will stay in the pool as combined chlorine. it combined with the impurities.

After a while there isn't enough chlorine in the pool and the impurities build back up.

Repeat the process.

The real problem is when you get to much combined chlorine in a pool. The health authorities will tell you to either fix it or close it.

How do you get rid of combined chlorine? You add free chlorine with will break the combined chlorine.

The combined chlorine can cause health issues. (that is why the health authorities will tell you to fix it). usually a good pool maintainer will detect the issue and just fix it before a notice is handed over.

Now our city puts chlorine into the drinking water to get rid of impurities (in laymans terms : the bad things in the water you don't want to drink). We used to put free chlorine into the drinking water.

The nice thing was they would add the free chlorine it would get rid of the impurities and most of the free chlorine would just go away. (evaporate) .

the down side? we kept having to add more and more (that was expensive.

some genius decided to switch from free chlorine to combined chlorine for the drinking water. combined DOESN'T go away by itself. you have to break combined chlorine.

the benefit was it cost a LOT less doing it this way.

the downside is you shouldn't be drinking combined chlorine. Think about it. if there is to much combined chlorine in the pool and it's listed as unsafe to swim in , then why would be it safe to drink it? to fix food in it? to bath in it ? to take a shower in it? it's illogical.

yet that is exactly what the city did.

i hope that i got that explained correctly.

prolonged exposure to combined chlorine can lead to asthma, allergies and other health issues

Sure, that all makes sense, but it's still anecdotal.

I'm not a chemist, but "combined chlorine" from what I read is also known as "Chloramine". Going from there, I went to both Minneapolis and St Paul's water supply. I couldn't fine chloramine levels for St Paul but Minneapolis does have it, and it's listed at 3.9ppm.

Minneapolis Jan 2024 Report

Now, knowing that, I went to the EPA to figure out what a safe level was, and turns out they have an entire page about this mostly due to fear mongering and misinformation. In fact they have a blurb describing exactly what you're talking about:

Many public water systems (PWSs) use chlorine as their primary disinfectant. However, some PWSs changed their secondary disinfectant to chloramines to meet disinfection byproduct requirements. Since then, consumers have raised questions about this switch in disinfection.

From the EPA's basic information site, The drinking water standard for chloramines is 4 parts per million (ppm) measured as an annual average.

Full EPA Link.

They also included a full scientific study on how it affects us, if you're good with it I'd suggest reading up.

It also looks like the EPA and most cities started doing this back in the 1930s, so this is not a new thing Minneapolis just started doing, it's actually been standard practice for a while.

By pure luck you got someone who's SO worked for years making pool testing kits, and I asked them about this. They said:

Sure, it can be an issue, and what they're saying is true, but the combined chlorine isn't really the issue. The bigger worry is that it easily binds to create carcinogens, so they check regularly to make sure both levels are low. We had machines that had automated sensors monitoring both to make sure they stayed in safe levels, it's very regulated at the municipal level.

If this is what you meant by "impurities", then yes, they track carcinogens extremely closely. They also have automated testers constantly running verifying that the water that passes through is safe.

Both St Paul and Minneapolis post their carcinogen numbers, and they are both well within safety parameters.

So, again, I am not a chemist, but this is one of those things that I have extreme skepticism on when someone says we don't have safe tap water. Our tap water is one of the only things I trust about governments because I know what happens when it doesn't work, and when it doesn't work we really know it doesn't work.

And hey, even if it is flying under the radar, you can buy kits to test them, my SO confirmed it's a pretty standard test and would show as failed immediately. If it did fail, from what I've read and what my SO tells me, you wouldn't be here, you wouldn't just be drinking bottled water, you'd be going to the press about it.

So, this stuff sounds really scary when you first read it. Hell, when I read what you said my stomach dropped, but then I thought "wait a minute, let's find out for sure". And by reading into it, I found out a lot of neat information and learned more about water treatment. So my main take away is that we need to stop believing what our friend told us and listen to the actual scientists. Things like water treatment sound really scary when we don't understand that science behind it, but that's the cool thing, we can let them. Passing on information we haven't vetted ourselves is a dangerous thing as we've learned over the last few years. It's on us to go personally validate if what we hear is true.

thank you for posting your information. and i will take some time to read through it.

also the guy i got this info from is one of the smartest individuals that i know (my brother). he has the ability to understand information in a way that many will miss.

does that mean that he is perfect? nope. he has made mistakes. and i will bring this up to him to see what he says.

but with the fact that he has tested the water, while i'm not going to blindly trust him. it does still make me concerned.

again i will bring this info to him. it should be an interesting conversation.

unrelated note here, but it will help you to understand his ability to look at things : when he messed up his heal of his foot. several doctors said there is nothing that you can do. it's permanent. he didn't like their answers, there was something in how they answered that just said "keep digging" . so he kept digging. he found out that if nothing is done (and time was running out) then it would be a life long issue .. he would (if I remember right) he would lose permanent feeling in the heal.

he kept doing research and calling people. he found a doctor in the cities. the doctor works on Minnesota Vikings players who had the same injury. the doctor said if he operates soon. it could be fixed. it got fixed. no issues at this point.

again i'm not saying my brother is perfect, please don't think that i am saying that he is.

he's definitely been wrong before. but with his ability to look at things in a different way and to not give up. he's found answers where others said there were none. he's found problems where others have missed the issue.

again thank you for the information.

edit: there are very few people i trust at the level that i trust my brother. it's the only reason i'm going to keep digging after you gave me the info.

Just remember to keep facts and figures as the most important thing when discerning the truth. Family may be trustworthy, they may be smart, but that doesn't mean they're experts in fields. You don't need to feel bad for trusting your brother, but know their limitations too.

Absolutely correct.

I think hey are talking about the chloramine that Minneapolis uses to disinfect. It is more stable and isn't just chlorine, so it would be in a "combined" result. The levels are page three of this report https://www2.minneapolismn.gov/media/content-assets/www2-documents/residents/2022-Consumer-Confidence-Report-FINAL.pdf It looks like 2023 isn't posted yet, but I doubt it changes much year to year.

I just learned about this, was kind of a fun dive! I just wrote up a big comment below with my findings, and you're exactly right, it's at perfectly safe numbers.

Either way, important to call out misinformation. I don't think this person did it on purpose, but their facts are definitely only partial, it took some research to get the whole picture.

Nice work on the write up! It is hard sorting things out when they're half true. For me, drinking water is especially important to get the fact straight on because of how bad it can go if the system fails. It would be silly to disregard anyone saying water wasn't up to a safe standard, but separating things I would care about out from the fluoride and chlorine background noise is tricky. Thanks for the deeper dive!

Thanks, yeah it can be a lot, and I think for a lot of people hearing that there's anything in the water sounds scary. It's great they publish reports monthly to verify everything

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Chlorine levels so easy to test for, I’d be curious to see such a measurement… This sounds like a class action waiting to happen.