As the year comes to a close, the people of Wellington, Colorado look back at 2017. What do most people remember? According to the Coloradoan, the nasty tasting water in the summertime.
Apparently, this is a regular issue for the Colorado town. Algae gets into Wellington’s main water source every summer, affecting more than 9,000 people. This issue encourages many of the citizens of Wellington to purchase bottled water by the case or even install highly expensive water filtration systems, so says The Coloradoan. This summer was particularly bad. The levels of geosmin, which is what causes the stinky order and bad taste, was 10 times higher than they had ever been, according to the town administrator, Ed Connon.
The recent winter months have greatly subdued the issue, for now. The algae dies, and many of the townspeople say that the water does taste better. Although this may be the case, many of the citizens are still complaining. Summer will return, and so will the algae.
Ed Connon says that his goal is to have water that no one will talk about. He wants a water that tastes bland, not like chemicals. To achieve this goal, the town is going to invest in a $12 million water treatment plant. According to the Coloradoan, the town of Wellington will have perfect, bland tasting drinking water by 2021.
Why does this matter? It means that it is attainable to get clean water, possibly for the whole country, no matter the local contaminants or infrastructure challenges. Only 3% of the water on Earth is fresh water. This means that we can only drink from a very small portion of the vast amounts of water on Earth, and that’s only after the water treatment process.
Recently, there have been many cases of unclean water in several places all over America. Flint, Michigan had a huge water crisis in recent years. Many other dry, hot states like California, Texas, and Nevada also struggle with clean drinking water.
With examples like Wellington, Colorado having a successful water treatment plan, it gives hope to many of us that one day, the whole country can have clean, chemical free drinking water.