Love ya, BLUE

Love ya, BLUE
City maintains superior drinking water rating

Five-gallon jugs of drinking water roll off an assembly line at the Northeast Treatment plant.

Microscopic bacteria, disease-causing microorganisms and invisible chemicals can contaminate the clearest water.

“You can’t taste cholera,” said Dannelle Belhateche, Public Works & Engineering senior assistant director. “Fresh-tasting water has caused population-decimating outbreaks of cholera, dysentery and typhoid throughout the world.”

“Our drinking water is among the safest in the world,” said Jeff Taylor, PW&E deputy director. “We have no recorded cases of water-borne illnesses in Houston.”

Houston’s drinking water consistently exceeds the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and Environmental Protection Agency requirements and is rated a “superior public water system.”

Bottle it
For about 10 years, the department bottled water from one of its deep-drilled wells safe from surface contamination. Public Works labeled the five-gallon containers Houston Artesian Well Water.

“We began bottling as an easy, economical means to provide clean, safe drinking water to city facilities without (suitable) drinking water,” said Belhateche, leader of the water production branch. The locations varied at different times, which included 611 Walker and several police and fire stations.

On Aug. 1, PW&E began bottling treated surface water from the Northeast Water Purification Plant. It’s labeled Houston BLUE.

“We moved to the modern bottling plant and can now provide water in small, personal containers as well as the large ones,” Belhateche said.

Under the Houston BLUE label, 1,000 16-oz and 200 five-gallon bottles are delivered weekly to 10 city work sites.

“Because of more stringent regulations, our treated surface water is actually superior to artesian well water,” Belhateche said.

She said it wasn’t unusual for municipalities to bottle and distribute their water. “It’s a trend now. Cities like to show how regulations and controls produce wonderful drinking water.”

Five consecutive years of regulatory compliance without violations, high water-quality standards and pipeline cleanliness won the state’s superior rating for a municipal water system.

“Providing clean, safe drinking water to a population as large as ours is a big challenge,” said Taylor, whose public utilities division is responsible for the public water supply. “On a hot summer day, we’ll pump 500 million gallons.”

The key is a system of modern water treatment plants filtering out pollutants, Taylor said.

Go with the flow
Houston’s drinking water flows from the San Jacinto River into Lake Houston, the nine-mile, man-made reservoir that is the city’s primary water supply. The water, treated at the northeast treatment facility, is disinfected with chlorine. Some consumers detect a distinct taste.

“That’s not necessarily bad,” Belhateche said. “Chlorine is the taste of safe water.”

From the treatment plant, the water is supplied to consumers through seven major re-pumping stations.

“We maintain a pressure of at least 55 pounds per square-inch in our lines,” Belhateche said. “It makes for a good shower.”

“By producing drinking water free of water-borne illnesses, we’ve saved more lives than all the physicians in the U.S during a calendar year,” Belhateche said.

“There may be a commercial market for our bottled water,” Taylor said. “But whatever the needs may be, I’m positive we can maintain our high standards well into the future.”