Preppers/survival

Our rural pipeline system was put in to replace all the bad wells. The village used to run on well water, but even after treatment, water heaters typically lasted only 3-5 years and people typically bought their drinking water in jugs. Now the water comes from Lake Diefenbaker and requires only filtering and disinfection. When I was operating the plant, I worked with the Water Security Agency to put in an activated carbon injector to deal with occasional colour problems. We typically only had to run it a few months every few years. Nobody ever figured out what was introducing the colour, that I know of.

Every few years someone at the WSA tries to shut down the pipeline because it doesn't meet modern spec. In the absence of funding for a replacement, that would put everyone back onto those nasty wells that are usually untreatable by residential systems. I've participated in keeping that pipeline in service as the much lesser of two evils.

Not all the wells are bad. There is one near my home (I don't live in town) that is of such a quality that there are people in their 90s who've been drinking it raw their whole lives. I'm not that brave! I haul it to our cistern, then run it through a "base camp filter" (10 liter gravity filter with 3 ceramic filters rated for wild waters). The turbidity is so low that the filters last several years.

You're the first water treatment person I've ever met online!