How is the tap water in San Francisco - is it safe to drink from the sink?
Asked by
SamIAm (
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November 12th, 2009
Where I’m from, you really shouldn’t drink the tap water because it’s not healthy – and it also doesn’t taste too great. I’m in San Francisco now and the water tastes fine. Is it OK to drink from the tap?
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14 Answers
Buy a Brita water filter at the grocery store.
yes but might taste sort of chlorine-y – far as I know all the water in the us is safe from the tap- at least in a good hotel
84% of the SF municipal water supply comes from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, high in the Sierra Nevada. Here’s the quality control analysis of the tap water for 2008.
San Francisco water is some of the best in the Bay Area. The only reason to buy bottled water is for convenience and portability. EBMUD water is often cloudy and chemically-safe but not as palatable. In the NE part of the Bay Area they get river water that has a high salt content-not so good in the long term for people with high bp.
It’s safe when it comes INTO your house, but it’s possible that contaminants in your local pipes could be getting into it. =)
(I work for the Public Utilities Commission) The water here is some of the cleanest tap water available anywhere. As long as the water pipes in your house are good, your tap water is safe to drink. (Water department employees are not allowed to buy bottled water).
Yep, the water’s fine. I drink it straight from the tap all the time. We have a filter in the kitchen sink (and the fridge—get a lot of water from the fridge dispenser because it’s nice and cold), but other than that, none of it’s filtered in our house and we’ve all been fine for the many years we’ve been living here. Apparently Hetch Hetchy water is very good quality.
We always drank from the tap when we lived in the Bay Area. East Bay MUD supplied water to our house, and we never had a problem with it (although the name was quite a joke that you would understand if you went down and looked at the East Bay). Then when we went across to the big city, we drank tap water there, too.
Back in 2000–2003 San Francisco’s tap water was rated Poor because it had such high levels of chlorine, leading to high levels of breakdown products, some of which are carcinogens.
However, in 2008 it was rated Superior. In 2006, San Francisco received a perfect score for its tap water quality in a Reader’s Digest poll.
The water taste and healthiness in San Francisco is wonderful. Same with Oakland, though they have different sources.
Install chlorine filters on your taps to be safe
Thanks @Mo: been here for a year and have a filter on my sink :)
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