D.C. Water is doing some spring cleaning.
So long, bleachy-smelling drinking water: D.C. Water has announced that the city’s annual switch to a chlorine water disinfectant ends today.
Spring has arrived, and with it comes the time when Washington’s water supply smells slightly like chlorine. It’s time yet again to clean out the city’s pipes — today, D.C. Water switches its disinfectant from chloramine to chlorine. This year’s chlorine treatment, which occurs every spring before the temperatures begin to warm up, will continue through May 2.
It’s that time of year again, D.C.! The magical season of chlorine-scented and flavored tap water is back. The Washington Aqueduct announced yesterday that it will temporarily resume the use of chlorine next week to treat our drinking water, and warned that the special odor and taste we’ve all come to know and love every spring will be back for at least a month. The water is still safe to drink, the Aqueduct was sure…
When Thomas P. Jacobus, general manager of the aqueduct that provides water to the District, Arlington and Falls Church commented to the Post today, “Perhaps sometimes we don’t do the best job we could of communicating,” he summed up in a few words the main problem that has plagued the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority — which delivers water from the Washington Aqueduct to customers — over the last few years. And while it remains…
Happy Friday morning, Washington. After the latest concerns over the quality and safety of the D.C. area’s drinking water, did you think twice about drinking out of the tap yesterday? We mentioned it briefly at the end of the day yesterday, but the Post has a full story on how WASA and Washington Aqueduct officials are trying to calm our concerns about our tap water. Officials said high levels of chlorine toxins found in May…
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Good morning, Washington. We’ve just been catching up on the rather scary looking but thankfully not terror-related explosion in Manhattan yesterday. Naturally, our parent site Gothamist has complete coverage of the steam explosion that occurred on East 41st and Lexington Avenue (41st between Lex and Third) just before 6 p.m. yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the explosion, which killed one person and injured 30, had New Yorkers worried for a while, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said…
Noticed a weird smell or taste in your tap water this week? Water authorities have begun treating raw water from the Potomac River with a carbon process, after customers began complaining on Monday. WTOP’s Neal Augenstein reports the musty odor is the result of warmer temperatures in the river, which has led to an odd-smelling algae bloom. According to an engineer quoted in the story, the carbon process is designed to absorb odors. The carbon…
There are two water-related stories of note: First, the Los Angeles Times reports of an authoritative study released by the National Research Council that has concluded that perchlorate (a chemical most often associated with the military, NASA and related contractors) poses “a health threat because it can interfere with the human thyroid gland, which controls how the brain develops in infancy.” That’s pretty straightforward. But the story gets a bit more complicated, when you consider…