High-water mark: Appleton tap water named state’s tastiest

Matthew Day

Staff

October 21, 2024

APPLETON – Facing off with the vast freshwater of Great Lakes Michigan and Superior, this year’s statewide competition for best-tasting tap water saw Lake Winnebago quenching well above its weight.

As part of the 2024 conference for the Wisconsin section of the American Water Works Association (WIAWWA), a panel of judges voted the water of Appleton – which is pulled from Lake Winnebago and provided to approximately 75,000 customers – was the most pleasing on the palette.

Chris Stempa, director of utilities for the City of Appleton, said his team and facility were honored by the WIAWWA’s Best-Tasting Tap Water in Wisconsin award.

Stempa said the taste competition is “good-natured” and enjoyed by water treatment teams as part of the annual conference’s educational and collaborative itinerary.

“It’s a small community of treatment plants,” he said. “Everybody kind of knows everybody. It’s been a fun little competition between some of our neighbors here, both locally and in the state.”

After having taken second or third place on other occasions, Stempa said this was the first year Appleton has taken the top honor – representing “a feather in the hat” as well as “a valuable opportunity.”  

“Though we’ve always believed our water is the best tasting, I think every other facility is going to think the same way,” he said. “I’m flattered and surprised by the amount of attention (we’ve received from the award) – it’s great. I’m just trying to figure out how to better leverage that and to better educate the public.”

A winning recipe 

Stempa said the water treatment process – which many can take for granted – is something of a point of pride for facilities.

“I consider what we do kind of like the offensive linemen in football – nobody says your name until somebody messes up,” he said.

The WIAWWA award, Stempa said, is a rare opportunity for positive publicity, while reinforcing confidence and providing clarification on behalf of utilities.

He said the award generated commentary on social media that he perceived as reasonably passionate opinions, as well as apparent misunderstanding.

“I think there’s confusion with customers – and I’m talking outside the City of Appleton – when they read an article about ‘best-tasting tap water,’ they’re thinking, ‘well, my tap water is better – my groundwater system’s better,’” he said. “I think the messaging might have been misinterpreted.”

Stempa said it is really a municipal drinking water system award – “it’s not drilling down to the individual’s private well water and what that tastes like and what the quality is.”

“So for us as a larger treatment facility, it’s something that really helps with marketing and messaging,” he said.

With treatment facilities like Appleton’s, which is staffed by engineers and scientists, Stempa said he appreciates the expressed perspectives and the opportunity to discuss water utilities’ processes starting from a relatable, if subjective aspect such as taste.

“When we provide a consumer confidence report – those are required reports that each municipality has to provide its customers – I can see why folks are intimidated,” he said. “You’ve got acronyms in there and compounds that are tested for that you can hardly pronounce. It’s something not easily understood if you’re seeing it once a year or for the first time.”

Different sources of water present unique processing challenges, Stempa said, and on a municipal level, these processes involve federally approved interventions.

Beyond the annually published reports, he said there is a goal throughout the industry to continue to better communicate the details of such treatments.

“We live in a world where it’s hard to find clean drinking water – you can’t just go out to a spring anymore and fill your glass,” he said. “Like it or not, there’s a large populace out there, and we all use the landscape, and because of that, water supplies in general are impacted. It’s a necessity that larger facilities like ourselves and others have to use certain compounds to treat the volume of water and the sources that we’re taking it from.”

Stempa said his facility strictly adheres to “the cookbook” for processing water pulled from Lake Winnebago – which he said starts with what they are obligated to do from a process and regulatory perspective.

“Our plant was designed and approved to meet certain criteria – certain conditions with certain ranges – so whether it’s the pre-oxidants all the way through softening and re-carbonation filtration with turbidity levels,” he said. “We’ve got UV instead of ultrafiltration now, so all the way through, the goal is to maintain set points, and those set points will deliver a product that’s regulatory compliant. Then you hope that all the aesthetics come with it.”

Other than appearance, odor and mineral content, tap water’s taste is among the primary aesthetic priorities of treatment facilities. 

“Some of the bigger municipalities – they each have their own unique taste,” he said. “I pick up on it because it’s what we do. From a general customer standpoint, if you can create a compliant water that doesn’t have the aftertaste of chlorine, that’s usually one of the first takeaways.”

Stempa said water from Lake Winnebago – as is the case of any surface water source – requires specific methods of treatment throughout the year.

“(Taste) can be harder to control in surface water, so there are things we can dial up if we perceive there to be an odor or a taste issue that’s not driven by some of the regulatory parameters that we have to oblige by,” he said. “Activated carbon is one compound that we can feed at the front end of the process that will take the edge off some of the odor and taste compounds. So that’s fed higher in one part of the season, typically with warm water.”

When the lake conditions are a little bit different in the winter, Stempa said the facility doesn’t have the level of turbidity in the water in solids and organics.

“So that’s probably the major compound that will drive that little bit of perception of taste that we have control over and that the operators will regulate,” he said.

Even with a well-crafted cookbook, Stempa said, the most vital component is the hard work and dedication of the Appleton utility team – and the WIAWWA award will provide lasting encouragement. 

“I’ve got a great sense of pride, and I know the staff do, too. … It was fun internally, but it absolutely does say something about what they do,” he said. “It does say a lot about the operations of the treatment facility, and probably more importantly, it really helps reinforce confidence in the water supply.”

A refreshing aftertaste 

As a resident of the Fox Valley, Stempa said he hopes the publicity of the area’s tap water will reverberate through the local economy.

“Any business that’s aspiring to relocate to an area, it always boils down to dollars and cents first and foremost – but if you’re a medical facility or a dialysis center, that water quality is really, really important,” he said.

Stempa also said the Appleton facility has the capacity to provide more water than it currently produces, should neighboring communities seek to acquire the “now-award-winning taste.”

As a result of the regional success, Appleton’s Department of Utilities has qualified to compete at the national American Water Works Association Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE) next year in Denver.

Stempa said he and members of his team were planning to attend the national conference even before winning the award.

“Aside from the competition, I’m just looking forward to the opportunity for myself and a couple of the staff who will be going – to give them the opportunity to see what’s on the national stage,” he said. “I firmly believe that we should never live in a vacuum, pretending that what we’re doing today is how we’re going to operate a year or 10 years from now. (We’re looking forward to) keeping pace with the equipment or technology and (seeing) what other facilities are doing.”

The responsibility of managing a life-enabling resource, Stempa said, is not lost on him or his “mission-oriented” staff as they savor the best-tasting water award and all it represents.

“It validates what our staff do every day,” he said. “Now, having won it, we would certainly love to win it again, so if we can be repeat champs next year, that would be outstanding. But for right now, we’re going to enjoy the best-tasting water award this year and look forward to the ACE conference in Denver next year and see where that takes us.”