# How does the water taste in your city?



## RandomDude01 (Jan 27, 2016)

So how does the water taste in your city compared to others?


Since I am from Las Vegas the water here is really bad. It can still be drinkable but it is pretty bad tasting. How does it taste in your city?


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

In Cheshire (England) it tastes really good. Pretty much the same as bottled water.


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## alexandru.mircea (May 18, 2011)

In the Paris area the taste is good but the water is extremely calcareous. In Bucharest it depends from area to area, I've hood good quality water but also brackish. My home town is not far from the mountains, from where the water is captured, so the quality is the best I've had. In Thessaloniki I don't remember the water being *particularly* bad in my mouth, but it has a terrible effect on my hair, which looked and felt dead for the whole of my stay there.


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## tomPunk (Nov 3, 2014)

In Oslo the quality is basically like bottled water, more or less. 
And only something with the pipes, like aging, can in some places occasionally change that.

Most of Norway has very few problems with water supply. Pretty excellent water I'd say. Likely some of Europes best 
Though even here, things like bacteria in the supply has happened occasionally. A couple of the latest cases I can remember happened in Bergen. 

Oslos water treatment plant was refurbished only 4-5 years ago and has pretty much state of the art equipment now.


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## Mr_Dru (Dec 15, 2008)

I think the drinkingwater in the Netherlands is quite excellent. The 'water' is a big thing here since the country is -8 meter under the sealevel. 

Since the 13th century there is the 'Waterschappen', so called watercounties. They control the watermanagement and floodcontrol in the country. The watercounties overlapping the provinceborders and every 4 years there are official elections for the 'Waterschappen'. The elections are just importants as the elections for municipal en provinces. However not many voters care about it, but there are even candidates active promoting themself for the Waterschappen. The Waterschappen has the same level of power as the provinces. 

Because the Wantercounties overlap the provinceborders, municipal Amsterdam is situated in three watercounties/districts. Amstel, Gooi and Vecht. 

The different Waterschappen maintargets are watermanagement and to provide quality tapwater.


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## Svartmetall (Aug 5, 2007)

Stockholm - pretty good if you ask me.


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## Adde (May 8, 2011)

I think Stockholm has got quite excellent water. I lived in Uppsala for a long time and the water was very calcareous until they built a new treatment plant a few years ago. Now it's pretty great. Sweden in general has good water. Lots of groundwater that's filtered through ice age eskers.


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## Slovenec (Feb 7, 2016)

i live in the countryside, but whwn i go to Ljubljana water tastes almost the same


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## pdxor (May 30, 2010)

Portland's water really doesn't have a taste (but then I'm used to it). It comes from the snowpack in the Bull Run Watershed near Mt Hood. I regularly visit Las Vegas and the water there is terrible. Everyone has bottled water for drinking and cooking.


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## SurfRail (Oct 16, 2012)

Brisbane's is feral but the Gold Coast's (just down the road) is fine - even though the supplies are mixed to a reasonable extent.


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## Thomasco (Jan 20, 2011)

In Zagreb, Croatia, almost perfect. We have lots of fresh water in the country and the tap water is excellent, uncomparable to what I have tried in London, Amsterdam or Paris.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

In Vienna, well, tab water tastes like water, alpine water that is. I really don't get it why anyone would buy soda water here, other than for the carbonization. I've also heard the story that in some shops you can buy some obscure bottled water, which is in fact the very same as the tab water, just that it is bottled at the well. I don't know if it is true but the bottled water is supposedly more than 100 times more expensive than the tab water. :cheers:

Btw, how many bigger cities are there which rely to the largest extend on classical gravity driven aqueducts or pressurized water tubes for water supply, other than Vienna? 



Adde said:


> I think Stockholm has got quite excellent water. I lived in Uppsala for a long time and the water was very calcareous until they built a new treatment plant a few years ago. Now it's pretty great. Sweden in general has good water. Lots of groundwater that's filtered through ice age eskers.


Stockohlm yes, but I could not help myself in some parts of Malmö at least, the water had a very strange taste. Interestingly some people seemed not to even realize it but to me it was a terrible side taste. I don't know if it had to do with plumbing but it was the same in different buildings.


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## Nullpointer (Jan 30, 2016)

water is hard a lot of chalk


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## Adde (May 8, 2011)

Slartibartfas said:


> Stockohlm yes, but I could not help myself in some parts of Malmö at least, the water had a very strange taste. Interestingly some people seemed not to even realize it but to me it was a terrible side taste. I don't know if it had to do with plumbing but it was the same in different buildings.


I'm not that familiar with the water in Malmö, but in general, the taste of water varies depending on its mineral content. Water from treatment plants tend to be "tasteless" because the mineral content is controlled, while water straight from wells can taste quite strongly despite the quality being perfectly good. You get used to the taste of "your" regular water quite quickly. 

I grew up drinking water from our own well. I think it tastes great; fresh with a mineral edge. But a lot of people who taste it for the first time need some time getting used to it.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

^^

But that off taste wasn't tasting mineralic, it was more a smell than a taste, a fusty smell. I don't know I can not describe it any better. I never figured out what it could be. When you let the water run for a while it also got better a bit, but did not go away and it was like that at various differen places. Maybe it had to do with the tubing nonetheless.


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## FREKI (Sep 27, 2005)

Copenhagen uses ground water ( pretty hard ) and the taste is quite good and fresh ( pretty much like typical bottled water, except cleaner )


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## zaphod (Dec 8, 2005)

It tastes fantastic. The bottled stuff is a waste of money here.

Water quality can be affected by the pipes it runs through, not just the source. This is what caused the incident in Flint. Water was slightly corrosive and didn't have a chemical preventing lead from being dissolved into it. And I've read that places like Mexico City and Beijing they do in fact have modern water treatment plants. But when the pipes under city streets in most neighborhoods are not well maintained, and some people still have traditional septic pits that leak into the ground water that permeate into the occasionally dried up water lines, then not much you can do. The water will be foul. 

In the US our water systems are maintained and newer so they don't have this problem. But its why infrastructure spending is important. If nothing changes and water systems fall apart in cities like St. Louis then in a couple decades all hell is going to break loose.


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## The Polwoman (Feb 21, 2016)

Tilburg, The Netherlands: water tastes just normal, no taste at all which is good. The water is clean, though to the southeast of here water seems to contain more calcium (clearly visible in the dishwasher). The water from most sandy grounds in Noord-Brabant, Limburg and other regions in the Campina comes from the Ardennes. In fact, the water that they sell in bottles here comes from exactly the same source as tap water. That is just one of the many reasons why it is insanely ridiculous to buy bottles of water, despite that restaurants, cinemas and other venues still don't give any good signal at all. Maybe it's time for them to go and learn a lesson in Stockholm.


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## Greyfurt (Feb 27, 2016)

ı had a chance for some cities, for example, rome,florence,venezia,algeria,prague,budapest and istanbul. İstanbul is my city so except istanbul, best one is rome street fountains are good then the others. Fresh ,cold and free


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Water here has no smells and looks crystal clear, which is great! They pump it from some sandy areas nearby. 

It does have calcarium, though. Pipes, taps, shower heads (especially the ones carrying heated water to mix with cold) all have residual accumulations of the otherwise inert material. This also accumulates on washing machines, water pressure hoses etc. It is bad for the hair, but at least not sticky like places where dissolved limestone is found.


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