For east metro residents one sure sign of spring used to be the annual return of musty tap water.
The problem was blamed on algae blooms that first show up when the ice starts to melt on a series of lakes that make up the St. Paul Regional Water Services watershed. But something funny happened last year — the taste and odor complaints never showed up.
After getting 187 complaints about the taste and odor of tap water in 2006, St. Paul Regional Water Services reports that number dropped to 15 last year, a 92 percent decline. Similarly low numbers are expected this year.
It appears that a novel experiment to improve the quality of local water is working.
Two years ago, the water system began installing large carbon filters — think of a giant Brita water filtration system — in the tanks at its Maplewood headquarters. The $9.6 million project was aimed at cutting down on the fishy or musty smell that's dogged local tap water for years, and it appears to have worked.
"We're very pleased with the initial results," said Steve Schneider, general manager of St. Paul Regional Water Services, which provides water for St. Paul and surrounding suburbs.
In Minneapolis, taste and odor complaints are still coming at a rate of several a day, city spokesman Matt Laible said. The water is perfectly safe, however. "It's the runoff putting a lot of organic matter into the water supply," Laible said.
St. Paul started working on the problem years ago, asking its 417,000 customers if they would be willing to pay for improved water. The response was overwhelmingly in favor, and water services began looking for a solution.
Working with students from the University of Minnesota, the agency settled on granular-activated carbon, which filters out bacteria — one in particular is called geosmin — blamed for the taste and odor problems. Twenty-four large filters were eventually installed over a period of about 18 months.
Taste and odor issues are nothing new in the tap water of some of America's biggest cities. And scares like the 1993 contamination of Milwaukee's municipal water supply have turned more and more Americans on to bottled water.
But increasingly, environmentalists are sounding the alarm about the dangers of bottled water.
Not only are just 14 percent of plastic water bottles recycled, according to the Container Recycling Institute, but bottled water also is a drag on the oil supply. According to the Washington, D.C.-based Earth Policy Institute, annual production of water bottles requires about 17 million barrels of oil, enough to power more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year.
Bottled water also costs more than twice as much as gasoline, and much of it — more than a quarter, by some estimates — comes from municipal tap water anyway.
Last week, the activist group Corporate Accountability International held a tap water taste test at Corner Table, a Minneapolis restaurant. The restaurant is one of several, including the Lexington and Cafe Amore in St. Paul, that have signed a pledge to not serve bottled water.
The well-regarded Corner Table restaurant supports the environment and the local economy by serving locally sourced food, and chef Scott Pampuch said using municipal water is part of the equation.
"Signing this pledge is really not an issue for us," Pampuch said.
St. Paul Regional Water Services' new filters will have to be swapped every few years. Schneider estimates the cost to consumers at 2 to 2.5 cents per 100 gallons.
"It allows us to do the job that we want to do without the customer complaints," Schneider said. "For every customer that complains, we know there are people who don't call."