Discoloured water northside

I didnt even notice. I just assumed the bath had been dirty before I filled it up.

May say something about my habits.

Water is normal again in O’Connor. Bath time!

A bit of dirt gets in the water supply from time to time. It’s not sewage. If it’s a small amount you can usually just run the cold water tap for a while until it flushes out but in this case looks like a fair bit of it. Remember that your water comes from a dam, with dirt walls and base, not from a gigantic Mount Franklin bottle somewhere. If a bit of dirt was going to give you harmful effects the human story would have ended pretty soon.

Despite panic stations all around my workplace I’ve continued to guzzle this slightly discoloured water with no ill-effects at all. There’s no small associated with the slight discolouration, and slight it is. Sure, a tub full of it might look quite discoloured but the actual dilution looks like it’s no more than a bit of colour introduced from a disturbance a long way from the pipes here.

Just for a bit of balance in the debate, over the years I’ve lived in many cities including some in highly civilised UK and Europe where it’s normal to have similar discolouration after rain, it’s just accepted. The smell and taste test is used, no smell, almost no change in taste, unlikely to contain anything. if it does have a few unusual microbes chances are they’ll be doing you more good than harm.

When I think of the contents of our bub’s nappies and how he likes to marinade in it, and the nonplussed yet adventurous nature of his mouth that would make most hard-core adrenaline junkies baulk, and how the ten-second food-on-the-floor rule went into the dustbin long ago, when it comes to brown water..meh. If it’s not brown before his bath, it’s brown when we pull him out.

This yukky brown water seems to happen fairly regularly northside. I have been told by ACTEW employees in the past that the brown stuff is sediment which sits at the bottom of the pipes and occassionally gets stirred up due to work on pipes elsewhere. It supposedly settles down after several hours.

This time, however, the ACTEW employee I spoke to was a bit more circumspect about the cause of the brown water.

We drink and cook with bottled water when it happens, just in case.

I wonder if THIS guy was from ACTew Water?

Babies love messy mud and discoloured water.

from a colleague who works in a civic building:

ACTEW Water also recommended not drinking any water (hot or cold) that you consider to look, smell, or taste objectionable. It is anticipated that the discolouration will clear with normal use, and is expected to return to normal by Friday 28 September 2012.

don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, though!

yellowsnow said :

We had this brown water at our work at Civic. Our facilities people advised all staff that it was due to a failure in an Actew-managed water storage tank or pond or dam.

When asked about its drinkability, apparently Actew told them ‘We can neither confirm or deny that the water is safe to drink’

Our work people translated this into ‘You’re probably better off to drink bottled water’

That’s disturbing as our work people told us that it was brown but ACTEW had said it was not contaminated and safe to drink but it was our choice to make. I switched to bottled water for the rest of the day while others drank the dirty water.