Credit: Aqua.
If you’ve been tasting a little bit of salt in your tap water, you’re not alone.
According to Aqua and Abington Commissioner Jonn Spiegelman, the salty tap water taste is due to an increase in road salting and a recent drought.
“Aqua Pennsylvania customers might notice that their drinking water has a slightly salty taste,” the utility company said in a statement. “This change is largely attributed to the runoff of road salts used on roadways, parking lots, and other treated surfaces in response to winter storms and icing conditions.”
Road salts are typically made up of a combination of sodium, chloride and calcium, all of which are naturally occurring and can be found in drinking water on any given day, according to Aqua.
“The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) do not have drinking water standards for either sodium or calcium. EPA and DEP have a secondary standard for chloride, however secondary standards are not considered to have any public health risks.”
Aqua said the issue has been further exacerbated from low stream flow from the persistent drought, which has the effect of limiting dilution of the chloride concentrations.
“Barring additional salting of roads, the salty taste in the water should pass within a few days. We thank our customers for their patience and understanding.”
Abington Township commissioner Spiegelman pointed to the recent storms for the issue in comparison to previous years in which the area did not experience any snow.
“Because this the first substantive winter weather we've had in years (including two years ago, where not a single flake of snow made its way to the ground), there is definitely more road salt being used—by PennDOT, by individual municipalities, and by both residential and commercial private property owners—than there has been in quite some time,” Spiegelman said in post. “This certainly results in more sodium, and its associated taste, ending up in all of our region's waterways and watersheds, which are, like all aspects of our environment, interconnected and interdependent.
“Although the recent snows and rains have been bolstering the regional water table, it's still much lower than it was, say, this time last year,” Spiegelman added. “The combination of a lower water table than we've had in years + the introduction of more salt than we've used in years has led to some folks' tap water tasting—and, in fact, being—saltier than usual. Because pretty much all Aqua water is blended—with Abington's blend coming from the Neshaminy Treatment Plant, the Abington Well, and (to a much smaller extent) the North Hills Well—the level of salty taste is going to vary from neighborhood to neighborhood and even block to block, and also throughout the course of any given day.”
Aqua, the Public Works Department, and the Abington Township have said they expect the issue will be remediated “within a day or so.”
