1. Is the recommended six to eight glasses of water needed each day to maintain good health required to be tap water, or are other drinks okay?
Juice, milk, and soft drinks are almost all water, so they do count toward the required total daily fluid intake. Nutritionists often recommend tap water, however, because some other beverages contain chemicals like caffeine and alcohol that cause one to lose water. These are called diuretics and thus, they do not help maintain fluid balance as well as other drinks. Tap water does not have these chemicals, so it is a safe recommendation, although other non-alcoholic drinks, including caffeine-free soft drinks, are fine.

NOTE: Decaffeinated coffee and tea have some caffeine in them, so they are not as good as caffeine-free drinks. Older people sometimes do not drink enough liquids because their thirst mechanism is not strong enough. Thirst should not be an indicator of the daily need for liquids. Consumption of salty foods, diseases such as diabetes, and various medications all can affect a person's thirst sensation. Everyone needs fluids, whether they are thirsty or not. Finally, in proportion to body weight, babies need more fluids than adults. Consult with your doctor as to the water needs of your baby.

2. Some drinking water often looks cloudy when first taken from a faucet and then it clears up. Why is that?
The cloudy water is caused by tiny air bubbles in the water similar to the gas bubbles in beer and carbonated soft drinks. After a while, the bubbles rise to the top and are gone. This type of cloudiness occurs more often in the winter, when the drinking water is cold.

3. Should I install home water treatment equipment?
This is a personal decision. The equipment is not needed to make the water meet federal, state, or provincial drinking water safety standards. In fact, if not properly maintained, the equipment may actually cause water quality problems.

Home treatment units, called point-of-use (POU) systems, can be located in several places in the home: counter top, faucet-mounted, under-sink cold tap, under sink in-line pass, or at the point of entry (POE) into the house.

Treatment units fall into six general categories:

1. Particulate filters that remove particles, including black manganese particles, of different sizes.
   
   
2. Adsorption filters (most of which are not really filters) usually containing activated carbon (sometimes incorrectly called activated charcoal or just charcoal) that remove chlorine, taste and odor, and organic compounds. Some units are capable of removing chlorine-reaction products and some solvents such as cleaning fluid and pesticides. Microbes do grow in these units (but these usually are not germs), and this fact may be of concern to some. Use of silver-containing activated carbon to prevent the growth of these microbes has not been shown to be uniformly effective or very long lasting, but units that use ultraviolet (UV) light after the adsorption filter, are effective. Most adsorption filters remove very little copper and lead. Certain special filters will remove dissolved lead, but unfortunately, manufacturers' claims are sometimes not accurate, so be cautious and check their claims with independent organizations, as noted at the end of this answer.
   
   
3. Oxidation/filtration systems that will change iron (clear water turning red) or hydrogen sulfide (the rotten-egg odor) into a form where these nontoxic but troublesome chemicals can be filtered out of the water before it comes into your home. Frequently, these systems are used by people who have a well as their water source.
   
   
4. Water-softening systems that will trade (exchange) the non-toxic chemicals in your water, which cause "hardness," for other nontoxic chemicals that do not cause hardness. These units have a limited ability to make this change however, and must be renewed (regenerated) periodically with salt.
   
   
5. Reverse osmosis units that remove hardness; chemicals such as nitrates, sodium, dissolved metals (such as lead and copper) and other minerals; and some organic chemicals. Reverse osmosis units also remove fluoride. Some units are sensitive to chlorine, so a chlorine-removal step usually is included prior to the reverse osmosis unit. Reverse osmosis units do allow some organic chemicals to pass into the treated water, however. These systems are sometimes followed by adsorption units to remove the organic compounds. Reverse osmosis units usually produce relatively small volumes of water.
   
   
6. Distillation units that boil the water and condense the steam to create distilled water remove some organic and inorganic chemicals (hardness, nitrates, chlorine, sodium, dissolved metals, and so forth). Distillation units also remove fluoride. However, some organic chemicals may pass through the units with the steam and contaminate the distilled water unless the unit is specifically designed to avoid this problem.

All of these units require maintenance, should be bought from a reputable dealer, and should be tested and validated against accepted performance standards like those used by the NSF International and the Water Quality Association (the watchdog group for home treatment devices). You should investigate all claims made for any unit. A 1991 study by the US General Accounting Office reported that some companies selling these units make fraudulent claims, without regard to the public health risk.

Remember, if the treatment equipment removes the disinfectant presently in your tap water, the treated water must be handled like any other food to prevent contamination. It should be refrigerated, kept in a close container, and used as quickly as possible.

4. Is distilled water the "perfect" drinking water?
Like most things, distilled water has advantages and disadvantages.

• Distilling removes many potentially harmful chemicals like lead, copper, nitrates, sodium, some organic contaminants, and chlorine.
  
  
• Boiling water to make distilled water will kill any harmful bacteria and viruses, as well as Giardia and Cryptosporidium.
  
  
• Distilling removes beneficial fluoride, and some organic contaminants like chloroform and cleaning fluid (solvents) may leave the water with the steam and end up in the final water when the steam is cooled. However, most companies that provide water distillers incorporate additional treatment into the system to prevent any organics carried with the steam from ending up in the final product.
  
  
• Because most of the minerals are missing, using distilled water in a kettle to make tea or coffee will avoid the buildup of scale (the white stuff).
  
  
• Distilled water is handy around the home for use in steam irons and car batteries and for watering plants.
  
  
• Except in special cases for taking salt out of seawater to make drinking water, distilled water is too expensive to be provided to your house by your public water supplier.
  
  
• Although some think that the low mineral content of distilled water is a disadvantage, most people consume plenty of minerals in a well-balanced diet.
  
  
• Finally, there is some disagreement over the taste of distilled water. Many people like it; others find it flat and tasteless.

5. What is "hard" water?
"Hardness" in drinking water is caused by two nontoxic chemicals (usually called minerals) - calcium and magnesium. If calcium and/or magnesium is present in your water in substantial amounts, the water is said to be hard because making a lather or suds for washing is hard (difficult) to do. Thus, cleaning with hard water is hard/difficult. Water containing little calcium or magnesium is called soft water. (Maybe it should be called easy, the opposite of difficult.)

6. Should I install a water softener in my home?
If you are bothered by a sticky, gummy soap curd deposit in your bathtub or by the buildup of white deposits (called scale) on your cooking pots and coffee maker, a water softener can help with these problems. You can find out the hardness of your drinking water by telephoning your water supplier. The higher the hardness number, the more a water softener will help. If it is more than 120 milligrams per liter, - sometimes called 120 parts per million or 7 grains per gallon - then you might consider a water softener to reduce the formation of scale in your hot water system and to make washing easier.

The water softener replaces the nontoxic "hardness" minerals with sodium or potassium. The amounts of these elements are relatively insignificant in comparison to what you get in food and should not be a problem, unless your doctor has put you on a special restricted diet.

Whether to put the softener on your main water line or just the hot water line is a complicated issue. Softening only the host water has some cost and environmental advantages related to regeneration, which is a process by which the softening materials (called resins) inside the softener can be used over and over again.

Water softeners are regenerated with salt. After the salt is used, it goes down the drain and into the environment-so the less salt used the better. Using less salt also saves you money. If you soften only the hot water, less water goes through the softener, so it needs regeneration less often, meaning less salt is being used. Also, regenerating a softener after a selected amount of water has gone through it rather than on a particular time schedule is better, as this prevents wasting salt by regenerating too soon or using the softener after it has stopped softening.

Finally, some people think bathing in completely soft water (both hot and cold water softened) is unpleasant - it feels like the soap won't rinse off. You may actually be surprised to learn, however, that rinsing is actually more complete in soft water than in hard water. Although you can't see it, when you bathe or wash your hair in hard water, some of the same stuff that causes the bathtub ring gets on your body or in your hair. With soft water this material does not form, so rinsing is more complete.

Softening only the hot water has two disadvantages. First, if you wash your clothes in cold water, you won't get the benefit of soft water; however, you can buy products to add to your wash to help if this is a problem. Second and more important, if your water is very hard - more than twice the numbers mentioned above - when you mix the hot and cold water together, you won't see much benefit from the softener.

Concern has been expressed by some whether the installation of a water softener may raise the lead and copper content of drinking water in homes that are experiencing problems. Probably not, but the US Environmental Protection Agency is conducting research to investigate these matters.

7. When I put ice cubes that I've made in my freezer into a glass of water, white stuff appears in the glass as the ice cubes melt. What is the white stuff and where does it come from?
Ice cubes freeze from the outside, so the center of the cube is the last to freeze. Ice is pure water, only H2O, so as the ice cube freezes, all of the dissolved minerals, like the hardness minerals, get pushed to the center. Near the end of the freezing, there isn't much water left in the center of the cube, so these minerals become very concentrated, and they form the "white stuff" - the technical name is precipitate. The hardness minerals that cause the "white stuff" are not toxic.

Some commercial ice cubes are "cored" after they freeze to remove this material. Having posts in your ice cube tray doesn't help, however, as the precipitate must actually be removed by coring.

8. Should I buy bottled water?
Remember that US bottled water is less regulated than municipal drinking water. You don't need to buy bottled water for health reasons if your drinking water meets all of the federal, state, or provincial drinking water standards. If you want a drink with a different taste, you can buy bottled water, but it costs up to 1,000 times more than municipal drinking water. Of course, in emergencies bottled water can be a vital source of drinking water for people without water.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now requires bottled water quality standards to be equal to those of the US Environmental Protection Agency for tap water, but the quality of the finished product is not government-monitored. Bottlers must test their source water and finished product once a year. Currently, any bottled water that contains contaminants in excess of the allowable level is considered mislabeled unless it had a statement of substandard quality. According to the latest amendment of the Safe Drinking Water Act (1996), by February 1999, FDA must complete a study to find the best way to inform consumers of "bottled water" contents. Although recent tests have not found any lead in dozens of brands of bottled water, studies have shown that microbes may grow in the bottles while on grocers' shelves. Some states impose expiration dates on bottled water, two years from the date of bottling in New York, for example. Canada does have restrictions on labeling bottled water and has minimal quality requirements covered by the Canadian Food and Drug Act.

Certain bottlers simply fill their bottles with city drinking water, thus producing "bottled water" that is no different than municipal water, although many states require the source of the water to be on the label if the water is sold in the state where it is bottled.

Bottled water is popular; Americans spend $2 to $3 billion annually to buy this product-half the amount the country spends to protect tap water. Overall about 10 to 15 percent of US households drink bottled water, consider it a food and refrigerate it after opening.

NOTE: Individuals placed on a highly restricted sodium diet should choose a brand of bottled water that contains zero (0) milligrams (mg) of sodium in an 8-ounce glass.

CAUTION: Some bottles labeled sodium-free contain some sodium, maybe too much for those on a highly restricted sodium diet. Check the label carefully on any bottle of water you buy to find out the sodium content of that particular brand, regardless of the general labeling.

9. Why does Jamestown flush their water mains twice a year?
Almost all water pipes have a thin film of rust on the inside. Experience has shown that the thin film causes no problems but may make the water look bad. Minerals and sediment also settle out of the water to the bottom of the water mains. Buildup of this sediment can cause clogging of equipment or use up the disinfectant in the water as it passes through the pipes.

Jamestown has a spring and fall flushing plan in place to clean its water mains. Water Division crews work at night from 9 PM to 5 AM and systematically open hydrants, allowing the water to run full force, flushing out sediments and minerals that have accumulated in the mains. When they remove all of this material from the walls of several hundred feet of a pipe and it comes out a fire hydrant all at once, it looks worse than it really is. If you watch the workers do this, you will notice that the water clears up rather quickly.

In addition to cleansing the mains, flushing also allows the utility to achieve greater flows through its mains and provides a good opportunity for operators to perform valve and hydrant inspections for optimal fire protection.

The alternative to flushing would be the addition of rust-inhibiting chemicals to the water. The BPU has made a conscious effort NOT to add these chemicals as they would affect other water qualities such as taste, smell and mouth feel and, it would increase water distribution costs.

10. Where does my drinking water come from?
There are two major sources of drinking water: surface water and groundwater. Surface water comes from lakes, reservoirs, and rivers. Groundwater comes from wells that the water supplier drills into aquifers. An aquifer is an underground geologic formation through which water flows slowly.

Jamestown's water comes from artesian wells which means that the wells are drilled into a confined aquifer from which water will rise higher than the level of its overlying confining material if given the opportunity to do so.

Click to learn more about our water source.