What better way to celebrate my election to the Water District than to hold a blind water taste test party for all those who volunteered on the campaign? And so we did. We sourced 6 different waters and used ranked choice voting to determine the favorite.
What water did we taste?
A: Downtown San Jose groundwater run through a water softener
B: Downtown San Jose groundwater not run through a water softener
C: Campbell water, which is surface water and imported water
D: San Mateo which is Hetch Hetchy
E: Downtown San Jose groundwater run through a reverse osmosis system
F: Oregon water through alivewaters.com (and no this was never intended to be a commercial for them.)
Who won? Surprise! It was not Hetch Hetchy. F, the Oregon water came in first place, (shout out to Joosey and David, who also are associated with the California Native Garden Foundation, and a little garden on Race Street for supplying the Oregon water).
Second place was good ol’ San Jose tap, B. That means y'all like that mineral forward flavor.
I also tested the samples using strips that measure things like hardness, chlorine, fluoride and more. Plus I tested parts per million. The notable differences were:
- The reverse osmosis water had close to nothing in it, of course, since the process takes everything out.
- The softened and regular SJ groundwater had the highest PPM, in the 300+ range while the lowest were E and F.
- The hardest water was B, which, as noted above, came in second place. That means y’all like to taste your minerals. “Aged in rock with hints of minerals” would be what the bottle might read.
There’s a lot more that could be said but I’ll keep it short. Also, the difference in preference between first and second place was not huge. (The ranked choice voting data visualization is here.) But yeah, good ol’ San Jose tap water is what many of you really like!
There’s a map here if you’re interested in seeing where water comes from via SJ Water Company. And, you can learn a lot more about water and stay up on water issues by subscribing to the Water District’s regular newsletter, here. Please sign up!
And, really, while the water tasting was fun, the party was all about thanking all the folks who supported the campaign. I could not have won without:
- The over 400 people who made a financial contribution
- The 60 people who walked a precinct, and many who walked multiple times
- The 18 house parties hosted by 40 co-hosts with a total attendance of 251 people
- 250 lawn signs proudly displayed
- 30 people in the Water Wheelers for Shiloh, riding bikes around in organized packs with Shiloh yard signs
Together we did it. Thank you! I look forward to representing District 2!
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