Or if you want really clean water buy one of these:

[www.ecoloblue.com]

@hi: or something like it.

@hi: That's not going to work for most of the southwest.

@hi: $1350, 1 year warranty, bunch of parts that need to be regularly replaced, needs at least 35% humidity in the air, and requires ELECTRICITY (so it can't be used 'literally anywhere'). Looks like it could be good for large offices in areas where the tap water is really bad...but I wouldn't consider it with only a 1 year warranty.

damn, I knew something was up with philly water

@hi: Ooh that'd work great in the florida summers!

One critical thing.. if you suspect high nitrates (like too much fertilizer on the fields near your wells) DO NOT BOIL YOUR WATER! Nitrates do not 'boil out' and because the water does evaporate out, what is left behind is even more concentrated. Make a phone call, and get a real test done, (its like $50). and then, if needed, go to a specialist to get a special nitrate filter. (they often look like and can sometimes be installed, right next to the water softener)

I was house shopping in the country last spring, and put in an offer on a house with high nitrates. I did a ton of research (but we ended up getting outbid). Very dangerous around small children, they say to use bottled water for baby formula..

@hi: Damn, that's one expensive solution to a relatively inexpensive problem.

I'll drink NYC water from the tap (though I don't live there) but use filters or bottled water in most other parts of the US.

Clean water isn't too much to ask for. Curses to politicians and polluters who stand in the way of it. We need definitions of clean that protect virtually everyone and stiff penalties to violators.

You can use this information to urge elected officials in your area to hold polluters accountable.

Oh, great. You go to the link and pick your state. Then you get a handful of water systems listed. Then it states that all content and analysis of reports is done by the individual water systems reporting. Gee, I get the feeling they wouldn't report if it was bad. Worthless.

Move to Vancouver. :D

@hi: You may still end up sick from it.
Especially if you don't often empty and clean any and all non-copper reservoir or tubing that comes in contact with the water.
Bacteria LOVE standing water of ANY kind, regardless of how it was originally collected.

water filters, ftw. nuthin better than ice cold filtered H2O, ahhhhhhhhhhh.

@UCLAri: Not only that, it draws 480W of power when running. If it's running 24/7, that's about 12 kWh/day, or about $36.00/month in electricity at $0.10/kWh.

Why not clean water for everyone?

[www.ted.com]

@bayank:
Has Philly water gotten bad? It was great when I was a kid.

@Shoelace:
NYC water FTW. No other city I've come to has water even nearly as good.

BTW the [] in the new york times link got truncated to tp:// so the link does not work.

I installed 2 "whole house" filters under my moms kitchen sink. The first one is for particles (can't remember how many micron, but very small...) and the second one is a charcoal filter for flavor. As they are designed for an entire house but they are connected to only the cold water tap in the kitchen sink they can go easily 6 months or more before needing to be changed. Also, replacement filters cost around $11 each, so it ended up being much cheaper than the type of filter you screw on to the end of the tap. The only thing that was at all tricky was the plumbing. I had to go from a small size pipe up to the huge pipe on the filters and then back down to the small size that the sink was connecting to while also changing types of connection (compression to the other type and back again). On my third or forth trip to the plumbing store I ended up taking ALL of the pieces to the plumbing store and having them help me assemble all of it on their counter with all the right pieces. One of the benefits of these filters is that they are so big that they don't have any noticeable impact on water-flow.

@hi: i can't be the only one to read that as "eco lube"

Some of the filters work reasonably well but are not going to filter out bacteria, chemicals, and other assorted goodies. One suggestion my grandmother taught me was to put tap water into a pitcher, put the pitcher in the fridge uncovered, and give it 24 hours before drinking. That let the chlorine and some of the other chemicals used to treat the water dissipate.

@ecwis:

Moose Piss. If you are lucky.

Please change your filters regularly - especially the ones that don't get refridgerated. They can grow some pretty nasty bacteria.

@Oranges w/ Cheese is surfin the info superhighway: Or after a Florida hurricane. But that's ok, there's PLENTY of drinking water in Florida after a hurricane.

@QuantumRiff:

If you have such terrible water, yes, don't boil it. Distill it instead.

If you just need to do it temporarily, this can be as simple as holding a plate above a container while your kettle steams.

@CyGuy:

Not sure if that is SODIS, but if it isn't, SODIS is designed for people with, quite literally, nothing.

That's it no more water for me. I'll take my chances with diet coke. at least you can see the pollution that it has. (frog guts)

@DreamTheEndless:

Whole house, yet it connects to the kitchen sink? Plumbing code actually allows this?

@gStein: You weren't.

So much of the scare about what's in the water is due to the EPA(s) arbitrarily lowering the PPM (part per million) of what is allowable in water.

The limit is changed for no strong scientific evidence, and all of the sudden the water seems worse. My BF volunteers on a municipal water board and rants about this. He's also been anti-bottled water for years before it was popular.

@tbax929: +1 I miss dragging a few bottles of it in my carryon bag for the weeks I wasn't in town.

In a building with old pipes, before filling your glass, run your tap for a few seconds, until it feels cold. This will ensure you're getting fresh water, rather than water that's been sitting around in your (lead) pipes. Also, hot water dissolves lead more quickly than cold water, so don't drink hot water from the tap, or use it in your kettle or whatever.

@hi: It looks like a MLM scam site, to be honest.
Err, you're not getting a cut, are you?

@nsv: There's plenty of drinking water then, sure.
But it's murder finding enough lemon slices to disguise the floating-corpse flavor.

@Shoelace: Sigh. Just... Sigh.

@ecwis: Have you tried sending a nicely written postcard?

@savdavid: There are actually pretty heavy Federal penalties (the Clean Water Act, etc) if the locals try falsifying a report. It's also regularly tested independently (at least in my state), and locally and by the Feds.
None of which is the case for bottled water, so taking your chances there isn't warranted.

@CapitalC: But what if the herd of moose won't move out of the way of the faucet?

@BB_User: Frog guts can be considered a garnish if instead of Coke, you take your chances with vodka instead.

@H3ion: If they only still used chlorine in water treatment. For better and worse, they've switched to chloramines which don't dissipate easily. I'm curious as to what the long-term health effects of chloramines are. I guess we'll all find out in 20-30 years.

How to get clean tap water:

1. Walk to the sink
2. Lift up on the tap
3. Enjoy.

@ecwis: It's pretty nasty here in Minneapolis, and I can only imagine what gets added in St. Louis...

Everyday I drive down the Mississippi on my way home and for at least half of my 15 minute journey it smells like poop. Rotting fish and poop.

@Trai_Dep: not in florida...we use oranges to hide the floating corpse smell/flavor.

@shepd: I've done the same thing myself. It's just a very large robust filter unit but mine is hooked only to the kitchen sink. Removes sediment, the chlorine, and most importantly plasmodium cysts. It's bonehead plumbing for the most part.

Eh. I don't even care anymore. Something is going to kill me eventually anyway. I'll just drink my water.

@shepd: the filters are designed to be able to handle the water supply for the entire house. To do that, you would connect it to where the main pipe comes into your house. Instead of doing that, I connected them to the cold water supply line for the kitchen sink so that instead of filtering all the water in the house, they're only filtering the water that comes out of the kitchen sink. Salem Oregon has very good tap water, but while my mom was going through chemo therapy it made municipal water taste funny to her. All should could drink was a few brands of bottled water, but she hated doing that for economic and environmental reasons. I installed the two filters under the sink and now my parents house has the best tasting water in the city.
(I also added an inline water filter to the supply line to the icemaker, but that's not part of what I was talking about.)

@SportsCentre: What if you live in the South and your water never gets cold!? When will I know when I'm getting fresh water?