Ewww, does your water taste funny?

Discussion in 'Discussion Group' started by bandmom, Jul 25, 2007.

  1. bandmom

    bandmom Well-Known Member

    Toby Coleman, Staff Writer
    CARY - The bitter water pouring from Vinay Jain's tap was a water conservation measure gone foul.

    For nearly five months, the Jain family home in Cary has been connected to the town's reclaimed-water system. That is the treated wastewater the town considers clean enough for suburban lawns but not good enough to drink.
    "I had a suspicion because when we moved, I said, 'The water tastes weird,' " said Jain, a 37-year-old information technology worker. "My wife said, 'You always complain.' "
    Jain lived with the funny-tasting water until Monday. Then, suddenly, the water in the house went off. Somebody had shut off the neighborhood's irrigation pipe.
    Cary water workers discovered the goof after Jain's neighbors, who had water inside, realized that their sprinklers weren't spraying. Cary officials then started scrambling around town to see whether any of the other 500 homes with irrigation systems served by reclaimed water had reversed water connections.
    By Tuesday afternoon, Public Works head Mike Bajorek seemed confident that the Jains were the only ones in Cary with treated wastewater coming out of their taps and drinking water coming out of their sprinklers.
    "We believe that this is a unique situation," he said.
    Just to be sure, though, Cary workers were completing a house-by-house check Tuesday.
    Cary is the only town in the Triangle that pipes reclaimed water into residential neighborhoods to help conserve drinking water. Residents connected to the system do not have to obey outdoor watering restrictions, and they pay less for the water they use to quench their lawns. But they're never, ever supposed to wash with the stuff, much less drink it.
    Cary officials say the risk from reclaimed water is low. By one estimate, you would have to drink 12 gallons of reclaimed water in a single sitting to get an infectious dose of coliform bacteria. But it is serious: State regulations ban water systems from distributing reclaimed water for consumption.
    The Jains have been unnerved by the revelation. Jain and his wife, Priyanka, wonder whether their children's dinnertime claims of bellyaches were legitimate reactions to low-quality water and not the childlike ploys to avoid eating unwanted food, as they originally suspected.
    "In a place like Cary, it never even occurred to me that this might even be a possibility," Vinay Jain said Tuesday as Cary workers walked through his house testing taps. "This gives the impression of a Third World country. At least in India, we knew the water was bad, and we boiled it."
    The town is putting the Jains up in a hotel while the problem is repaired. The Jains said they will be able to move back in Thursday, once the town has completed follow-up testing and inspections.
    It might take longer to figure out how the foul-up occurred. Currently, water workers think somebody switched the Jains' black drinking-water main and their purple reclaimed-water main between their water main installation and their final home inspection.
    But why would somebody do that? And why didn't anybody catch the mistake earlier? "That," Bajorek said, "is what we're trying to determine."
     
  2. froggerplus

    froggerplus Well-Known Member

    EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW !!!
     
  3. KDsGrandma

    KDsGrandma Well-Known Member

    Either that, or it was done wrong in the first place and the inspectors missed it.
     
  4. kdc1970

    kdc1970 Guest

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