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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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] 🗿
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 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.
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 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
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)
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 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.
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.
