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

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.
- 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.

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.

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

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.
- Severn Trent (the midlands) is often voted the best tap water in the UK.
- 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/
https://youtu.be/GceNsojnMf0
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://piped.video/GceNsojnMf0
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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.

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.

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 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 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 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] 🗿

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!

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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
- 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.
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.
- 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.
  and yes i can forsee a class action lawsuit.
  prolonged exposure to combined chlorine can lead to asthma, allergies and other health issues