Kelowna Has The Best Water In Western Canada? Rubbish
Earlier this week there was a competition for the best of the best when it comes to tap water. The competition was part of the BC Water and Waste Association's annual conference being held in Whistler.
Well, in the "Tap Water Taste Test" Kelowna was judged as having the best water in all of BC and the Yukon.
Well, to be completely honest, Kelowna was only competing with ten other communities. In all, just eleven communities from BC and the Yukon submitted a sample.
Prince George was not among them.
The judging was based on, appearance, aroma, taste, how it felt in your mouth, and after taste.
The reps from Kelowna were all over themselves about the fact that their water came from Okanagan Lake.
You may be able to knock a lot of things that may be wrong with Prince George, but our water quality is not one of them. Water in the city of Prince George comes 100% from an aquifer, it is clean, it is clear, no chemicals needed to make it better.
Yes, the City does add fluoride, but that's got nothing to do with improving the quality of the water.
The same cannot be said about what comes out of the tap in Kelowna. In that City, the water from Okanagan Lake has to be treated to rid it of any oil, sludge, duck droppings or anything else that might have fallen into it. After all, Okanagan Lake is highly used for recreational activities.
You may remember that Kelowna had to upgrade their water treatment system some years ago after they issued a boil water advisory because of the condition of the water. The means of treatment may have changed, but the source remains the same, Okanagan Lake.
Here in Prince George, when the water comes out of the aquifer, it is as pure as it can get.
Water quality in Prince George is something we should be promoting. It should rank right up there with employment opportunities and affordable housing when we are trying to promote Prince George as the place to "Live,Work and Play". But for some reason, we never sent a bottle of our finest to the competition in Whistler. Maybe we were too busy trying to twin with Jiangmen to call the folks at Fedex to deliver a bottle or two to the competition.
So congratulations Kelowna, we will toast your win…. with a glass of our own clear, clean H2O, but keep this in mind, you only took top spot because Prince George didn't bother to enter.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man's opinion.
Comments
I agree Ben. If there is better tasting and more refreshing tap water out there, I haven’t tasted it.
One of the first things I do when I visit PG is to down about 4 litres of it, LOL.
We may have a superior source of water, but our finished product is polluted with a neurotoxin. Kelowna wins hands down being that they don’t pollute the finished product with mass medication.
Latest major city to turn off the fluoride tap is Dallas Texas saving them $1 million dollars a year.
With 95% of BC choosing not to add fluoride to the water, then I think it is not a selling item to advertise fluoridated water as a strength in attracting people to PG. Its like using PG’s air quality as a reason why people might want to move to PG.
You can’t win if you don’t enter. PG couldn’t afford to send a shipment of water down, ran out of money sending the mayor to China.
They should have sent a sample of the water which comes from the spring along Hwy 97 N a few miles before Bear Lake.
Now that, is nice water! No chlorine or fluoride in it.
Eagleone, very true! It is a shame! Also, people want to have a choice when it comes to their health! It seems to have been a good idea 60 years ago but now it isn’t any more. Scientific research doesn’t stop and rest on ancient laurels.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/PG-Citizens-Unite-Against-Forced-Fluoridation/780375291986647
You would think queen mayor green could have sent a minion to whistler and have our fine water represented? Or go herself. Maybe her expense account was tapped out for the year already? Who knows.
Good thing we did not send water to Whistler. No doubt not sending water saved the taxpayers of PG some tax dollars.
Mayor and council would of had a meeting to decide the number on Councillors to accompany her on a trip to Whistler.
Bad headline really
Should read.. Of the sparse entries we had to the water survey Kelowna came first.
Even this test was a complete waste of time.. who cares ?
Eagleone.. do you drink our city water ? or buy bottled ? maybe installed reverse osmosis system in your house.? please enlighten us …
I agree with Ben 99.9 % of the time; and enjoy reading his commentary …… However, we’re going to have to agree to disagree this time.
Kelowna doesn’t poison it’s water with Fluoride; which is a poison, and can cause serious problems with the endocrine system; which is what happened to me.
I avoid Prince George water like the plague. Unfortunately, we are one of only a handful, I believe 7, communities in BC that are still living in the archaic 1950’s mentality.
As I said; agree to disagree
I agree with Ben’s verdict that declaring Kelowna water to be so excellent is rubbish!
Just ask one question: Where does Kelowna send its water from the Waste Water Treatment plants? I wouldn’t be surprised if it is dumped into the lake, the same lake where the tap water comes from!
However, unlike Prince George, Kelowna already stopped fluoridating its tap water! Obviously they were more concerned about their health then we are! How did they get away with it? Enlighten the public, that’s how!
Some BC communities which have stopped fluoridating their public water in the past few years. These communities include: Comox/Courtenay (Feb 1992), Squamish (Nov 1993),Port Hardy (Nov 1993), Kelowna (Nov 1996), Kitimat (Mar 1998), Kamloops (Oct 2001), Burns Lake (June 2003) and Golden (Nov 2005), not to forget Williams Lake, of course, in Nov 2011.
BTW, reverse osmosis does not remove all fluoride and it wastes enormous amounts of water down the drain, plus it removes all minerals from the water, making the water slightly acidic and unhealthy.
Best not to add the fluoride to the water to begin with – common sense, of course! Brushing with fluoridated toothpaste puts the stuff directly on the teeth, drinking it is a bad idea.
Reverse Osmosis reduces flouride in water significantly. As for making the water unhealthy, you need to know if the person wants to be unhealthy from flouride or mineral free…lol
Are there any communities on record of having removed fluoride from their water because it is dangerous, or, have they removed it because:
1) The perceived benefits are inconclusive and they don’t want to spend money on something for which the perceived benefit is inconclusive; and/or
2) They agree that they shouldn’t be putting something into the municipal water supply that not everyone wants to have included.
There is a huge difference between removing it because it is dangerous and removing it for one of the other two reasons. They shouldn’t be confused or seen to be the same things.
For the record, I don’t see any value in adding it to the water supply, but it’s primarily because of the two reasons I listed. I’m positive that living in PG and breathing PG air for over 30 years was far more hazardous to my health than drinking PG tap water.
Cool thing about minerals and fluoride! They don’t have to be in the water in order to consume them. Besides if you have ever had the luxury of passing a kidney stone you will see the benefits of not having minerals in your water!
Take the fluoride out and we might have decent water!
When the body ingests acidic water (such as water that has all minerals removed) over a longer period of time it balances the body’s ph by drawing calcium from the bones – o.k. if a hip fracture is not a big deal.
Prince George tap water (check the city’s water analysis report) has a very good amount of naturally occurring minerals, including a small amount of naturally occurring calcium fluoride.
We are very fortunate! Nothing needs to be added.
In the Similkameen area of B.C. owners of some wells are told not to consume the water because of a high amount of natural fluoride in the water. They are told to drink bottled water and cook with it instead.
We should be counting our blessings and not manipulate our tap water with an industrial grade chemical.
Chlorine is a poison as well. I wonder about all of those people who swim in pools and use hot tubs that are contaminated with it.
Gasoline is toxic. Sure hope I don’t get any on my hands when I’m filling up my mower!
Anyone here use bug repellant with deet in it?
What about getting a nice tan this summer? Probably not, that would be harmful. Better get ready to slather some nice chemical ointment into your skin. Hmmm . . .
Agreed, NMG. The fluoride issue for some is simply a smoke screen for those who are irrationally afraid of chemicals. Newsflash, chemicals are everywhere.
Chemicals are everywhere, but we can choose to avoid the ones which are actually avoidable!
We now have outlawed DDT, lead in paint and in gasoline, asbestos in houses…well, maybe it is fun to some to intentionally ridicule the fluoridation issue when they have nothing more important to do or when there is a buck in it! People who are against fluoridation do not have to hide behind any smoke screens as there is enough up-to-date (!)scientific evidence that the stuff is a harmful neurotoxin (The Lancet, the EPA, Canadian Physicians for the Environment….etc).
In 2009 the Canadian Defense Department instructed all CFBs to no longer accept fluoridated water!
Why? Is the Defence Department hiding behind a smoke screen too?
PG: “People who are against fluoridation do not have to hide behind any smoke screens as there is enough up-to-date (!)scientific evidence that the stuff is a harmful neurotoxin (The Lancet, the EPA, Canadian Physicians for the Environment….etc). “
These articles do not address fluoride when used at scientifically acceptable levels. But feel free to keep on peddling this false misleading information.
Go ahead JB use all the fluoride you like but I don’t want any in my drinking water or the water I shower in and the City of PG isn’t a doctor or a dentist and has no business medicating me. Safe or not the practice of fluoridating the water is a very old practice that has ethical issues at the very least! Time to stop it!
So JB admits that fluoride is bad for human consumption, but gives the disclaimer, ‘when used at scientifically approved levels’….
This assumes a lot here. Johnny is assuming that their is in fact scientific liturature that is able to prove a safe level of consumption for all people, which there is not.
Johnny also assumes that by mass medicating the water… that is used for drinking, cooking, watering vegetables, bathing, and otherwise ingesting… that they can somehow magically be rationed to ‘scientifically approved levels’ to all people no matter their random consumption level, and do this through a single source alchemy that is proven to have daily accumulated levels of variance many many multiples of so called ‘scientifically approved levels’.
So in Johnnys world we assume that their is a 100% scientifically safe level of ingestion for all people, so long as one only drinks one cup of water a day, but if they go over the safe limit of drinks of water a day and also use it to cook or water their plants, then any over consumption beyond the safe levels is just collateral damage out of greed for more than ones allocation of water? Or its just a scientifically safe variance on the effects of a population study… one to be determined by a municipal works employee with grade 10 education?
PVal I use reverse osmosis bottle water for drinking water, cooking water, and baby formula. I use city water for everything else.
Its unfortunate because PG has some of the best well water in western Canada if it wasn’t for the poison they add to the water.
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