Daytona Beach, Fla. won the first place award as the country's Best Tasting Municipal Tap Water at the 15th annual Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting held February 24-27. Daytona Beach won the silver medal in 2004.
The Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting competition held in Berkeley Springs, W.V., is the largest and longest running water tasting competition in the world. More than 100 waters from across the U.S. and 15 countries competed this year, with medals given to the best tasting water in the world and the best tasting in the United States. Judges included representatives from National Geographic Channel and several national and regional magazines and newspapers.
Each water was rated on several attributes including appearance (it should be clear), aroma (there should be none), taste (it should taste clean), mouth feel (it should feel light) and aftertaste (it should leave you thirsty for more).
Since 2001, the water from Daytona Beach's 20 million gallon-per-day Brennan Water Treatment Plant has been disinfected by Severn Trent Services' ClorTec on-site sodium hypochlorite generation system. On-site sodium hypochlorite generation has increasingly been used as an alternative to chlorine disinfection because it is effective and its use eliminates the need to transport and store large quantities of chlorine onsite. The Brennan Water Treatment Plant chose the ClorTec system because of its simplicity, safety of operation and reliability. In addition, the switch to on-site hypochlorite generation enabled the plant to discontinue an EPA-mandated Risk Management Plan that was previously required with the use of a chlorine gas feed system.
Source: Severn Trent Services
