California Wet
In the ‘50s, my grandfather had a water cellar. The hand-labeled bottles that lined his basement shelves did not hold “French water,” as somebody would later scornfully call Perrier on an episode of “thirtysomething,” but strictly the California item.
Granddad had belonged to the Sierra Club since the beginning of the century, when it was basically a bunch of hikers who liked to skinny-dip in ice-cold mountain streams. The old-time Sierra Clubbers treasured a vast body of oral lore about the best springs in the mountains. Granddad had personally collected all those quart jar samples for savoring at leisure.
I remember that they didn’t do much for me. Most tasted just like any old water, though some were oddly chalky and one or two had a vile sulfurous taste. Of course, Granddad had a high tolerance for weird water. He had voted the Prohibition Party ticket all his life, and Prohis always made a point of celebrating what they tended to call Water Pure.
There was another element in his water connoisseurship: his love of classical antiquity. The ancient Greeks, he often told me, were serious spring water fanciers. Like most Mediterranean people right down to the present, they usually took their wine mixed with water. In fact, he added with telling emphasis, they often paid more attention to choosing the water than to choosing the wine.
I’m sure there was another reason, although he never mentioned it to me. It was simply that L.A. tap water has always tasted lousy.
That’s mainly why one out of three Southern California households uses bottled water, as against one in 15 nationally; we drink 40% of the nation’s bottled water production. Yes, we’re health-conscious--we’re looking for low-calorie, nonalcoholic beverages, and if they provide minerals, all the better. Yes, we’re trendy. Last year the designer clothing store Maxfield introduced its own brand of high-fashion glacier water (the Sunset Marquis was selling it for $1.50 a glass).
But we also led the nation 10 years ago, when Americans drank only a third as much as they do today, and we’ve led the nation throughout the century. Countless Angelenos have always filled their glasses at coolers rented from a bottled water company, just because our tap water tastes as if hideous space aliens died in it.
So what gives our water that taste?
“The two main things that make water taste bad,” says Arthur von Wiesenberger, author of “H20: The Guide to Quality Bottled Water” (Woodbridge; 1988), “are chlorine and dissolved solids.”
The chlorine is there to rid the water of bacteria, but it adds a taste that von Wiesenberger characterizes as anything from a slightly acid, chemical quality to the smell of a swimming pool. It’s not an insuperable problem. “If you take some tap water and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight,” he says, “the chlorine will evaporate and it will taste better.
“The other main thing is TDS, total dissolved solids. That’s partly the natural minerals in the water, the same sort of minerals you might find in mineral water. Without dissolved solids, water tastes flat, but in excess they give the salty or chalky flavor.”
More solids in water are dissolved from the pipes the water travels in, and still others have been added to comply with the extremely complex laws that govern water safety.
“The astringent, metallic flavor, the feeling that something is coating your mouth,” says von Wiesenberger, “is largely due to settlers, chemicals that the Metropolitan Water District adds to water to precipitate out organic matter. About 15 to 20 chemicals can be added to water.”
“Water flavor varies from place to place and time to time,” he concludes. “In some places, the water has to travel farther or spend more time in the pipes. The pH level can change, the chlorine level will be up or down. And the mix of Colorado River water, Owens River water and local well water changes all the time.
“The result is water that’s just not fresh-tasting. There’s the feeling that this water has been pushed around a lot.”
Our tap water is nothing if not safe to drink--the only commodity more swathed in health regulations is milk--but that doesn’t mean we have to drink it. No matter how broke I’ve been, I’ve always found the money to rent a water cooler the way my parents did, and my grandfather too, when he wasn’t sipping a nameless spring water from somewhere up around Mt. Whitney.
