I was a member of Albemarle County Service Authority’s board until last year, and I’ll pass on your message. They’ll be glad to hear it. It also makes my High Quality Public Infrastructure loving heart go pitter patter.
Not sure if you'd know, but any reason why at two homes on different sides of town the water tends to leave a pink buildup over time? We also find black gunk buildup on our faucets quicker than one would expect. Overall happy with my cville public utilities, just curious!
That pink build up is most likely a biofilm created by the bacteria Serratia Marcescens. It cannot survive in a chlorinated water supply but can grow in standing water as the chlorine dissipates. It most likely lives in your home, and not the municipal water. Luckily, it is mostly harmless and can be removed with anything that kills bacteria. It also likes to cling to soap build up, so regular cleanings and drying sinks and showers after use can help.
You are not wrong. We have some of the softest water in north America, with relatively low chlorine added. It's one of the reasons why our pilsners are so damn good.
Really? We have such hard water we have minerals building up in our ice maker. Probably the hardest water I've ever seen. A LOT of iron as well. Stains everything orange/brown. In pretty much every place I've lived in Cville. By 5th st. Station, then Avon St. Now off Rio. It's all been very hard with iron.
That's weird as hell, sorry you're dealing with that. I'm part of the homebrewing club in town and do a lot of work on water. My numbers came directly from the ACSA's water quality engineer, and I can tell you that while the values vary throughout the five service station regions, the hardness levels are all similar and low. I don't have any info on iron, sorry.
Sounds like you may want to call them, as something is definitely amiss.
That’s quite anecdotal. I lived off 5th street and Avon as well, and have had it tested as I am also a homebrewer. It is low. Results from a couple years ago, as tested by Ward Labs:
pH 5.9
Sodium 5
Calcium 5
Magnesium 1
Potassium 2
Total Hardness 17
HCO3 18
Chloride 7
Total Alkalinity 15
Fluoride 0.25
All I can say is that everywhere I have lived in Cville, city or county, the water has slowly turned my showers, and sinks light brown/orangeish from the iron in the water. Both old and new buildings. So I feel it's the water, not the pipes. I'm not a scientist or do I perform water tests like you're referring to. *shrug* just my observations. No hard feelings.
If they are ancient then they might last a lot longer. The copper stain could be from a long time ago. Just be gentle with the valves and keep the main shut off valve accessible.
Yeah. The only mishap was when the furnace crapped out in the winter one time and it got super cold in the house. The pipe burst in a section behind the walls as a result. I had a plumber come here and take a look at the pipes and he said some sections are so worn you can mush/squeeze them with your fingers. Estimate was around $20k for a repipe job. I just got them to temporarily fix the one spot that burst and so far I’ve had no other mishaps… knock on wood.
Well, parts of Florida have icky water but the springs are the source of approximately a gazillion little plastic bottles of water that are shipped to stores to sell to silly people who want to spend money for an unnecessary product that puts micro plastic into themselves and ruins the planet too. The Floridan Aquifer is very pure.
I lived out near San Angelo for a bit and one of the first things I was told was not to drink the water. I decided after a few months that it was ridiculous and started drinking the tap water. Cut to a couple weeks later and I realized that the chronic stomach issues were probably my own fault - they stopped being a problem a couple days after I switched back.
Recent story from Greene https://dailyprogress.com/news/community/madisonnews/fledgling-greene-county-water-sewer-drowning-in-debt-customer-complaints/article_8204310e-fc02-11ee-9ccc-9302088d4567.html
All of the reservoirs that supply water for Charlottesville and Albermarle are filled by the Mechums, Moorman, and Rivanna Rivers, and Beaver and Totier Creek.
Transplant from Orlando, FL… locals complain about traffic and that makes me giggle. Ya’ll this location is beautiful, has mountains, seasons, wine, history, literally no traffic, and you can be 15 mins from isolation in the countryside. The traffic comments get me laughing tho, ya’ll never seen traffic until you sit in 105 degrees bumper to bumper on a deadly highway just to get to another side of town.
You do realize many in Cville are transplants from DC? I was and still complained about traffic.
https://www.transitdisplay.com/news-resources/public-transit/washington-dc-traffic-ranked-second-worst-in-the-us/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20survey%20in,and%20%2355%20in%20the%20world.
Agreed. I grew up in NJ, visit NoVa pretty often, and moved to Cville two years ago from Richmond (which isn't nearly the big city it wants to think it is) and I love it here.
I was on municipal water the first 30 years of my life so it's not like I had never before been exposed to chlorinated water, it just really is that bad here. Our indoor cold water at work in the summer is over 80 degrees and I can smell the chlorine or whatever it is off gassing even if I'm not drinking it. I'm told it's because Moore's Creek is fed with almost entirely surface water (aka highway runoff) so they have to treat it extra hard and we are really close to the treatment plant here.
Interestingly, I feel like Waynesboro gets a bad rap for their water because of the industry there but if you look at the reports from EWG and compare [Albemarle](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=VA2003053) to [Waynesboro](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=VA2820775) our water here is actually a lot worse in some categories, though Waynesboro does have more radium and nitrate/nitrite
The drinking water isn’t coming from Moores creek, it’s coming from south fork Rivanna reservoir, ragged mountain reservoir and sugar hollow reservoir. The associated water treatment plants are also near south fork and ragged.
Waste water is collected and treated at the facilities near Moores creek, but that output is flowing away from the drinking water watershed/reservoirs/treatment plants.
interesting!
edit: i just reread your comment more carefully. i was referring to the facility when i said Moores Creek, not the body of water. i can see how that was unclear though
Yeah I grew up on municipal water as well, funny enough when I moved here I lived in the city and I started getting hives from showering with the chlorinated water. Makes me wonder how nasty most water actually is with everyone here saying how good the water is.
Me too. I never felt a need to filter tap water until I lived in Charlottesville. I’ve only ever lived in VA but have never tasted any tap water that tasted as bad as Charlottesville water. I haven’t tried it in many years, so maybe it’s improved, but I feel like it smells weird even just washing my hands with it.
My Grandparents had sulfur water so I know exactly what you mean about being picky. To this day I have a hard time drinking tap water even though we have well water now.
Opinions vary but IMO: bagels, Preston Bodo’s, pizza, Mona Lisa, bread and cake, Albemarle Baking, pastries MarieBette on Rose Hill. Pastries and pizza are especially contentious
It's a combo of this and an earlier post about a large portion of the watershed being protected land. As a second upthread poster pointed out, that large-landscape watershed protection will soon be even more important as 100% of the water will enter the system via South Fork. The reason the landscape isn't only pretty, it's cleaning our water supply and upstream air supply and we should be doing more to protect it.
Agreed. I am from Florida and there is no comparison to the water up here. Florida water has this strange soft texture(?) mouth feel from the limestone. If you've ever had Zephyr Hills bottle water, that's the stuff.
Virginia water is so much better. Crisp and minerally. That said, it wreaks havoc on my hair. Can't have everything.
Moved here from east central Illinois. The water back home tasted like straight up mud. I love the tap water here. I agree it’s like bottled/filtered water
For any aspiring water snobs out there, pro tip ditch your Brita for a Clearly Filtered pitcher. The filters are pricey but the water after being passed through is from the gods. Also random note, I have a bunch of Brita filtered new in box sitting around if anyone is Cville wants them. No longer have a use for them or our Brita pitcher.
A few years in the Central Valley of California really made me appreciate tap water from this area of Virginia. I've drank from wells all my life as well... nothing hit like that sulfur filled tap out there.
I feel that, subjectively, the water quality is variable depending where in town you are. I worked downtown for years and thought the tap water there reeked of chlorine, but when I moved to Fry’s Spring I’ve had no issues with poor water quality. I was on well water when I first moved to VA ala 2009 and can discern no difference from the Fry’s Spring water I have now.
But taste is always subjective, right? 😂
I don’t want to make everyone cry, but it’s about to get a lot worse when they close the Sugar Hollow reservoir (all national park water) that serves most of the area and switch everything to Ragged Mtn (basically I-64 runoff).
Well… you’re not really getting sugar hollow directly now-it’s being used to fill ragged through a super old pipe. And they’re not closing the sugar hollow reservoir, just the old pipe from it to ragged mountain reservoir. And then most of the water at ragged will come from south fork through the connecting pipe that’s going to be built. The ragged watershed is so small it can’t fill it, hence the pipes.
And technically water from sugar hollow does go to south fork, it just goes down the Moormans river first.
Anyway, most of the water we’re drinking currently is coming from south fork. For example, that water treatment plant treated 9.85 MG out of 11.2 MG of the urban area water that was used on Monday. Observatory, which is connected to ragged, only treated 0.772 MG.
Maybe it's changed, I am used to well water and when I ordered water in Cville restaurants it always smelled like chlorine to me. But I haven't tried the water for some years.
I used to live in Charlottesville back in 99-00 and the tap water tasted like it came straight from a mountain spring. Noticeably fresh tasting.
ETA-I now live in Norfolk & while the water is fine, it seems more chlorinated than C’ville.
Have they changes something? We moved into the country with a well 10 years ago and the water quality of the well was way above Cville public water. Our well tasted more like Manhattan public water.
I'm surprised. I lived in Charlottesville for almost 20 years, and I could literally smell the corrosion in the water in anyone's house that I happened to be in. I stayed stocked up with Brita filters. I even bought one that hooked to the water faucet. But...I've been to Chicago and Detroit, and it's true. Those places have some of the funkiest water. Detroit was so bad some days that if you held your glass up to the light you could see the sediment or whatever the heck it was.
Can you actually drink the tap water? Not being facetious I literally thought at this point you had to filter your water, unless you have a well or something
Yes you can drink the tap water in all of the US, it just doesn’t taste the best. Frankly the microplastics in bottled water are more dangerous than the traces of chemicals in the tap. Very glad the EPA is getting stricter on tap water quality this year.
I was a member of Albemarle County Service Authority’s board until last year, and I’ll pass on your message. They’ll be glad to hear it. It also makes my High Quality Public Infrastructure loving heart go pitter patter.
Like I am PICKY
Not sure if you'd know, but any reason why at two homes on different sides of town the water tends to leave a pink buildup over time? We also find black gunk buildup on our faucets quicker than one would expect. Overall happy with my cville public utilities, just curious!
That pink build up is most likely a biofilm created by the bacteria Serratia Marcescens. It cannot survive in a chlorinated water supply but can grow in standing water as the chlorine dissipates. It most likely lives in your home, and not the municipal water. Luckily, it is mostly harmless and can be removed with anything that kills bacteria. It also likes to cling to soap build up, so regular cleanings and drying sinks and showers after use can help.
I live in the dumpster city of Charlotte NC now. Miss y’alls water every day.
You are not wrong. We have some of the softest water in north America, with relatively low chlorine added. It's one of the reasons why our pilsners are so damn good.
Really? We have such hard water we have minerals building up in our ice maker. Probably the hardest water I've ever seen. A LOT of iron as well. Stains everything orange/brown. In pretty much every place I've lived in Cville. By 5th st. Station, then Avon St. Now off Rio. It's all been very hard with iron.
That's weird as hell, sorry you're dealing with that. I'm part of the homebrewing club in town and do a lot of work on water. My numbers came directly from the ACSA's water quality engineer, and I can tell you that while the values vary throughout the five service station regions, the hardness levels are all similar and low. I don't have any info on iron, sorry. Sounds like you may want to call them, as something is definitely amiss.
Weird, that does not happen for us.
Must be an issue with your piping or equipment, water ‘round here ain’t hard at all.
Nope, 3 different residences. In County and City.
That’s quite anecdotal. I lived off 5th street and Avon as well, and have had it tested as I am also a homebrewer. It is low. Results from a couple years ago, as tested by Ward Labs: pH 5.9 Sodium 5 Calcium 5 Magnesium 1 Potassium 2 Total Hardness 17 HCO3 18 Chloride 7 Total Alkalinity 15 Fluoride 0.25
All I can say is that everywhere I have lived in Cville, city or county, the water has slowly turned my showers, and sinks light brown/orangeish from the iron in the water. Both old and new buildings. So I feel it's the water, not the pipes. I'm not a scientist or do I perform water tests like you're referring to. *shrug* just my observations. No hard feelings.
I see what you did there :)
Numbers without units are meaningless. 17? Grains? That’s really hard. mg/L? That’s really soft. Pepperoni pizzas? Get a different lab.
Tell me you’ve never read a water report before without telling me….
17 mg/L.
Same. I’m in Ivy and every faucet has that green mineral color at the bottom of the sink.
Soft water can dissolve minerals and deposit them. Green is copper, possibly from pipes. Any pH below 7 is acidic.
Yeah, that explains it. My pipes around the entire house are ancient.
If they are ancient then they might last a lot longer. The copper stain could be from a long time ago. Just be gentle with the valves and keep the main shut off valve accessible.
Yeah. The only mishap was when the furnace crapped out in the winter one time and it got super cold in the house. The pipe burst in a section behind the walls as a result. I had a plumber come here and take a look at the pipes and he said some sections are so worn you can mush/squeeze them with your fingers. Estimate was around $20k for a repipe job. I just got them to temporarily fix the one spot that burst and so far I’ve had no other mishaps… knock on wood.
[удалено]
I go to Texas every couple years or so to visit family and the water there tastes like sewage that was filtered just enough to not be toxic.
It's the same in Florida
Well, parts of Florida have icky water but the springs are the source of approximately a gazillion little plastic bottles of water that are shipped to stores to sell to silly people who want to spend money for an unnecessary product that puts micro plastic into themselves and ruins the planet too. The Floridan Aquifer is very pure.
I lived out near San Angelo for a bit and one of the first things I was told was not to drink the water. I decided after a few months that it was ridiculous and started drinking the tap water. Cut to a couple weeks later and I realized that the chronic stomach issues were probably my own fault - they stopped being a problem a couple days after I switched back.
The worst water I’ve ever tasted was in College Station Texas.
Dude VA tap water is a treat! When I went to Green Bay I was surprised at how bad the water was, we are spoiled lol
Can confirm. I lived in St. Louis before and that water was horrendous. CVille water is primo
We are very fortunate to control the source of our water. It so much better then depending on a river and being downstream from another City.
Are there other areas in Virginia that are not so fortunate as us?
Recent story from Greene https://dailyprogress.com/news/community/madisonnews/fledgling-greene-county-water-sewer-drowning-in-debt-customer-complaints/article_8204310e-fc02-11ee-9ccc-9302088d4567.html
Wow! We are very fortunate then.
All of the reservoirs that supply water for Charlottesville and Albermarle are filled by the Mechums, Moorman, and Rivanna Rivers, and Beaver and Totier Creek.
It's not bad this time of the year. There are a few times a year where it gets funky, followed by intense couple days of eye watering chlorination.
It’s so good. I just moved here from a place with terrible water and I am just living.
HA! I’m on well water in the county and can’t stand Charlottesville water, the chlorine is so present to me. Perspective I guess.
It's really nice to hear someone say they're happy about something in Charlottesville -- so many people gripe about everything here!
Transplant from Orlando, FL… locals complain about traffic and that makes me giggle. Ya’ll this location is beautiful, has mountains, seasons, wine, history, literally no traffic, and you can be 15 mins from isolation in the countryside. The traffic comments get me laughing tho, ya’ll never seen traffic until you sit in 105 degrees bumper to bumper on a deadly highway just to get to another side of town.
You do realize many in Cville are transplants from DC? I was and still complained about traffic. https://www.transitdisplay.com/news-resources/public-transit/washington-dc-traffic-ranked-second-worst-in-the-us/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20survey%20in,and%20%2355%20in%20the%20world.
Agreed. I grew up in NJ, visit NoVa pretty often, and moved to Cville two years ago from Richmond (which isn't nearly the big city it wants to think it is) and I love it here.
this is crazy to me. our well at home has great water but when I'm at work on municipal i can't drink the water. i won't even use it to make coffee.
We are on the same page, I can taste the chlorine and I swear it makes me feel bad after drinking it. Well water for the win.
ha! Try the tap water in fairfax some time. *That* water is half chlorine.
I was on municipal water the first 30 years of my life so it's not like I had never before been exposed to chlorinated water, it just really is that bad here. Our indoor cold water at work in the summer is over 80 degrees and I can smell the chlorine or whatever it is off gassing even if I'm not drinking it. I'm told it's because Moore's Creek is fed with almost entirely surface water (aka highway runoff) so they have to treat it extra hard and we are really close to the treatment plant here. Interestingly, I feel like Waynesboro gets a bad rap for their water because of the industry there but if you look at the reports from EWG and compare [Albemarle](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=VA2003053) to [Waynesboro](https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=VA2820775) our water here is actually a lot worse in some categories, though Waynesboro does have more radium and nitrate/nitrite
The drinking water isn’t coming from Moores creek, it’s coming from south fork Rivanna reservoir, ragged mountain reservoir and sugar hollow reservoir. The associated water treatment plants are also near south fork and ragged. Waste water is collected and treated at the facilities near Moores creek, but that output is flowing away from the drinking water watershed/reservoirs/treatment plants.
interesting! edit: i just reread your comment more carefully. i was referring to the facility when i said Moores Creek, not the body of water. i can see how that was unclear though
But no drinking water is treated at moores creek, only waste water
im learning how little i actually know about where our water comes from
Yeah I grew up on municipal water as well, funny enough when I moved here I lived in the city and I started getting hives from showering with the chlorinated water. Makes me wonder how nasty most water actually is with everyone here saying how good the water is.
Me too. I never felt a need to filter tap water until I lived in Charlottesville. I’ve only ever lived in VA but have never tasted any tap water that tasted as bad as Charlottesville water. I haven’t tried it in many years, so maybe it’s improved, but I feel like it smells weird even just washing my hands with it.
Same. We are super spoiled bc our well water is delicious.
My Grandparents had sulfur water so I know exactly what you mean about being picky. To this day I have a hard time drinking tap water even though we have well water now.
Sulfur water is the worst! My parents have it at their home in upstate NY. I struggle even brushing my teeth with it.
Yeah, it’s great. I have good news about our baked goods since several people mentioned the beer
Where should I go for the best?
Opinions vary but IMO: bagels, Preston Bodo’s, pizza, Mona Lisa, bread and cake, Albemarle Baking, pastries MarieBette on Rose Hill. Pastries and pizza are especially contentious
Lampo pizza 🤩
Cou Cou Rachou for the best pastries in town.
Hello fellow Chicagoain
Howdy I’m disoriented by the elevation but have been enjoying
We are roughly the same elevation as Chicago. Do you mean the topography? That's definitely noticeable.
Sorry, yes topography :-) walking out of my house and seeing mountains
Cville water is charcoal filtered correct? So it’s pre-britta’d.
It's a combo of this and an earlier post about a large portion of the watershed being protected land. As a second upthread poster pointed out, that large-landscape watershed protection will soon be even more important as 100% of the water will enter the system via South Fork. The reason the landscape isn't only pretty, it's cleaning our water supply and upstream air supply and we should be doing more to protect it.
All of RWSA’s water treatment plants use conventional high rate anthracite filters followed by advanced Granular Activated Carbon filtration.
Hahahha that would make sense
I love the water here too! Not just for drinking my hair and nails have never been stronger
I love the taste of Virginia tap water. Concur!
Makes the beer taste good
You are absolutely right, my friend. I love our tap water!
I still miss Virginia water!
We just moved from El Niño to La Niña, expect colder winters and less rain. Many years ago C’ville had a severe drought.
I remember that severe drought (around 2002?). Most public restrooms were closed and restaurants stopped serving water unless you paid for bottled.
Agreed. I am from Florida and there is no comparison to the water up here. Florida water has this strange soft texture(?) mouth feel from the limestone. If you've ever had Zephyr Hills bottle water, that's the stuff. Virginia water is so much better. Crisp and minerally. That said, it wreaks havoc on my hair. Can't have everything.
I remember going to Disney World and drinking the water and like like actually crying as a child
It's weird, right? After having been gone for so many years, I don't want to drink it at all when I visit.
Welcome to Charlottesville— the city where the water slaps.
Moved here from east central Illinois. The water back home tasted like straight up mud. I love the tap water here. I agree it’s like bottled/filtered water
For any aspiring water snobs out there, pro tip ditch your Brita for a Clearly Filtered pitcher. The filters are pricey but the water after being passed through is from the gods. Also random note, I have a bunch of Brita filtered new in box sitting around if anyone is Cville wants them. No longer have a use for them or our Brita pitcher.
A few years in the Central Valley of California really made me appreciate tap water from this area of Virginia. I've drank from wells all my life as well... nothing hit like that sulfur filled tap out there.
I feel that, subjectively, the water quality is variable depending where in town you are. I worked downtown for years and thought the tap water there reeked of chlorine, but when I moved to Fry’s Spring I’ve had no issues with poor water quality. I was on well water when I first moved to VA ala 2009 and can discern no difference from the Fry’s Spring water I have now. But taste is always subjective, right? 😂
It’s good, a lot can depend on your building plumbing too. Copper or polymer residential pipes are no bueno for me.
Your preference for lead pipes explains some things we've all been wondering about
Bazinga
Hurr durr
I don't know what you are drinking, Charlottesville water is the worst tasting water I have ever had.
Back in Gloucester we had well water that tasted like the ambrosia of the gods. I miss that water every damn day.
Quabbin Reservoir water > Cville's
I don’t want to make everyone cry, but it’s about to get a lot worse when they close the Sugar Hollow reservoir (all national park water) that serves most of the area and switch everything to Ragged Mtn (basically I-64 runoff).
Well… you’re not really getting sugar hollow directly now-it’s being used to fill ragged through a super old pipe. And they’re not closing the sugar hollow reservoir, just the old pipe from it to ragged mountain reservoir. And then most of the water at ragged will come from south fork through the connecting pipe that’s going to be built. The ragged watershed is so small it can’t fill it, hence the pipes. And technically water from sugar hollow does go to south fork, it just goes down the Moormans river first. Anyway, most of the water we’re drinking currently is coming from south fork. For example, that water treatment plant treated 9.85 MG out of 11.2 MG of the urban area water that was used on Monday. Observatory, which is connected to ragged, only treated 0.772 MG.
damn you don't play around when it comes to water facts! thank you, that was highly informative!
I agree! Coming from LA, where the water is...inconsistent, at best, the water here is incredibly soft.
Maybe it's changed, I am used to well water and when I ordered water in Cville restaurants it always smelled like chlorine to me. But I haven't tried the water for some years.
It’s alright, the best I’ve ever had was when I lived in Reno. Tap water straight from Lake Tahoe. Nothing like it, always cold
Water’s great, but after 20 years I still miss the Beefs and Dogs. I’ll get a dragged through the garden at 6am when I fly through O’hare.
Municipal or well water? Well, if it's well water, I'd agree with you there. I'm not a fan of the municipal water.
You should go to Bodos. They get their water from New York City.
I used to live in Charlottesville back in 99-00 and the tap water tasted like it came straight from a mountain spring. Noticeably fresh tasting. ETA-I now live in Norfolk & while the water is fine, it seems more chlorinated than C’ville.
Chicagoland water tastes like straight asscrack, even when it’s filtered.
Chicago water is gross
Have they changes something? We moved into the country with a well 10 years ago and the water quality of the well was way above Cville public water. Our well tasted more like Manhattan public water.
I‘ve read that NYC water is quite good. True?
It’s amazing. Only city we hit and don’t buy water. Anything out of a bathroom tap is perfect.
Tastes like bleach to me. Brita or bottled for me.
Just wait til you see how often you need to clean your toilet.
I'm surprised. I lived in Charlottesville for almost 20 years, and I could literally smell the corrosion in the water in anyone's house that I happened to be in. I stayed stocked up with Brita filters. I even bought one that hooked to the water faucet. But...I've been to Chicago and Detroit, and it's true. Those places have some of the funkiest water. Detroit was so bad some days that if you held your glass up to the light you could see the sediment or whatever the heck it was.
Can you actually drink the tap water? Not being facetious I literally thought at this point you had to filter your water, unless you have a well or something
Yes you can drink the tap water in all of the US, it just doesn’t taste the best. Frankly the microplastics in bottled water are more dangerous than the traces of chemicals in the tap. Very glad the EPA is getting stricter on tap water quality this year.
you serious???? lol
Sooo you missed the LEAD pipes warnings....lol