The capital region and Qualicum Beach can now officially lay claim to having the best drinking water in the province.
Close to a hundred people packed a meeting room in the Victoria Conference Centre in late April to watch a panel of judges sip water to determine which tap-water system was the “best of the best.”
Water professionals from a dozen communities across B.C. lugged two-litre samples of water to Victoria for the April 29 event put on by the B.C. Water & Waste Association, a non-profit that represents more than 4,500 people in the water sector.
Judges were asked to rate the samples on appearance, aroma, taste, mouth feel, after-taste and overall impression.
This year, the association split the water-tasting competition into three categories to acknowledge the differences in water-treatment in communities of varying population.
The Capital Regional District took top prize in the large water system category, while Qualicum Beach won for small water systems. The District of Hope snagged the prize for medium-sized water systems.
Robert Haller, Canadian Water & Wastewater Association executive director and one of the taste judges, called the water from the CRD system crisp and clean.
Other judges in the blind taste competition included Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto and two American judges.
Alto said she couldn’t tell that she was drinking water from the CRD, but she did give it top marks in its competition bracket.
Qualicum Beach was “among the best water that I’ve ever tasted,” but CRD water came in as a close second, she said.
“If there was one big group, I would’ve ranked them very close to each other,” Alto said.
Haller said the competition is all in good fun and serves primarily as a way to promote just “how terrific tap water is,” adding all the samples he tasted in the competition were good.
Sarah Pratt of the B.C. Water & Waste Association, who helped organize the tap-water-tasting contest, said contestants must bring the water from an end-user tap in a glass so the taste isn’t tainted by plastic containers.
Alicia Fraser, the district’s general manager of infrastructure and water services, attributed the CRD’s winning taste to Sooke Lake’s protected watershed and the regional district’s robust water-quality-monitoring program.
Fraser said where the CRD’s winning sample was taken remains top secret, but the sample came from a kitchen tap.
As for Qualicum Beach, operations manager Chris Stanger said he took the winning water sample from his kitchen faucet.
The CRD water system, which supplies about 430,000 people in the region, is fed by five reservoirs, the largest of which is Sooke Lake.
The CRD owns about 98 per cent of the land that drains into the water supply reservoir, making it one of the few water utilities that own and manage the vast majority of their water supply.
Some 250 people work in the CRD’s Integrated Water Services department, which also includes wastewater services.
Qualicum Beach, which has a population of about 10,000, draws water from nine wells sourced from two groundwater sources, which are stored in five steel and concrete reservoirs that can hold up to 9.1 million litres of water.
The majority of the supply comes from water deposited into the delta by the Little Qualicum River, with the Berwick aquifer only used during the summer months.
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