[at-l] Water filters...

[wdlists@optonline.net (Walter Daniels)]

>
> 1)  If the water source looks really bad, don't use it AT ALL, or if you
> do use it, count on boiling as your real protection, and don't wash
> anything in unboiled water either.
>
And even that is not good enough for some sources. For example near the gate
just before you reach South Mountain Pass (next road north of Bear Mt Bridge
in NY) you cross Coppermine Brook. The name says it all, this is straight
out of mine tailings and likely contains disolved heavy metals - never
tested. Boiling, filtering, or iodine/chlorine do nothing to heavy metals.
Except when the flow is really slow it doesn't look bad. Sometimes at low
flow there is a lot of an orange algae on the stream bottom which at the
very least looks gross. Fortunately the quantity of heavy metals in that
water is probably not high enough to cause trouble except for someone who
drank it every day for months.

Most streams in NY pass near houses, most of which are on septic systems. I
would not bet on their safety without serious treatment. We have wells at
Shenandoah Mt, RPH Shelter, Depot Hill Shelter and Wiley Shelter. These are
tested monthly but we leave them posted as treat before use because we have
a significant failure to past the tests. The failures are for colliform
counts - usually very low but any fails the test.