There’s a level of disagreement at Mt. Hood Community College as to whether the water – what one may get from faucets and drinking fountains – on campus is good or downright bad.

Marcy Lee, a reading instructor, wrote to Beth Sammons, an instructor of literature & composition, “The water on this campus is scary. It will be unfortunate to be stuck with brown H20, if the water cooler is removed.”

Dana Spielman, an instructor with integrated media, said even though the pipes were recently realigned, she still sees particulates in the water – even with a filter.

One student, Tim Louthan, said, “I don’t think the water here is the best thing.”
Russell Johnson, the supervisor of custodial & warehouse services, said, “I guess it’s okay, I mean I drink it everyday.”

Don Wallace, director of facilities management, contends, “Our water is clean, clear, and tastes good; I drink it.” It would seem that the water is at least safe for drinking.

Many people here and afar work hard on MHCC’s water quality. Custodians clean the fountains. Maintenance deals with plumbing issues. All of MHCC’s pipes are galvanized steel, so there is no lead solder that can mix in with the water.

The temperature is regulated and kept at a cool 50 degrees Fahrenheit. As a precaution, and for safety’s sake, the fountains are replaced regularly, the last time was about two or three years ago. And MHCC’s pipes are cleaned with an epoxy coating and then flushed out with high-pressured water, leaving a thin seal lining the pipes.

Keely Thompson, the drinking water services coordinator of the City of Gresham Department of Environmental Services said, “This water should be fine.” The water MHCC gets is from the Portland Water Bureau, which comes from the Bull Run watershed system, which is also sometimes supplemented with ground water from the Columbia South Shore well field.

About contaminants: over 90 contaminants are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Two big additives to water can be chlorine and fluoride.

Chloramines, chlorine or chlorine dioxide are added to water to control microbes. Microbes can make a person sick; therefore controlling them is necessary. Fluoride is added sometimes to promote strong teeth. The water from Bull Run contains chloramines, but doesn’t contain fluoride. There is a natural trace amount of fluoride in groundwater.

According to the U.S. Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Portland’s fluoride level is too low. But some people respond badly to fluoride, especially if ingested along with some amounts of fluoride from brushing teeth three times a day with fluoride toothpaste.

Students and faculty alike are drawn to bottled water. Across the world the industry of bottled water is worth around $22 billion annually. People might prefer it because most of those bottles contain less chlorine and fluoride ­­— which is relatively the same as well water.

Penn & Teller, comedians/magicians, expose topics on their show on Showtime. One episode, in 2003, was to expose bottled water. They hired a “water sommelier” to sell $7 bottled water to customers in a California restaurant. These high priced bottles were filled with tap water directly from a garden hose. These customers claimed to tell the difference between tap water and their “fancy” water. They loved the crisp taste of their garden hose water. Penn & Teller named their bottled water “eau du robinet” (French for “faucet water”) and agua de culo (Spanish for “ass water”).

Seventy-five percent of New Yorkers said they preferred tap water to bottled. When the water bottle says it’s “purified water,” that means it was treated just like tap water. Penta Water claims to have a new structure for water with health benefits, but there is only one molecular structure for water.

Bottled water alone costs up to 10,000 times the amount of tap water by volume. And even though the FDA regulates bottled water, their regulations are thin and not always enforced. There are warnings against buying a bottle of water and refilling it because the containers weren’t meant for that.

Water is one of our greatest natural resources. All plants and animals depend on it. The human body is 70 percent water. 80 percent of the earth’s surface is water but only 1 percent is drinkable fresh water. The United States alone uses 25 trillion gallons of water each year. There are an estimated 56 countries in the world that are without enough water, and many countries, and parts of countries, have no running water and must dig numerous wells or travel far to get to some water.