For the seventh time since 2008, the community of Clearbrook in Abbotsford, B.C., has been awarded a global gold medal for the standard of its tap water.
Clearbrook claimed prime spot within the municipal water class on the thirty third annual Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting, held on Saturday in Berkeley Springs, W.Va. The occasion payments itself because the “Academy Awards of water.”
“We’re very proud,” mentioned Jason Hildebrandt, company administrator for Clearbrook Waterworks District, which supplies service to about 10,000 individuals within the 2.1-square-kilometre space in western Abbotsford, about 70 kilometres east of Vancouver.
“For us, it is an affirmation of the work that we’re doing to keep up this water high quality all through the system.”
‘Chemically good’
Maintaining the water high quality via the system, which operates independently from the Abbotsford Mission Regional Water System, is a key a part of the gold-medal components as a result of the supply itself is so pure, Hildebrandt says.
Clearbrook’s water, he says, originates from the Abbotsford-Sumas aquifer about 40 metres under the floor. At the purpose the place Clearbrook attracts its water from the aquifer, there’s about a 10-metre layer of clay sitting above. That layer, Hildebrandt says, retains contaminants from getting via.
“So, the water that we’re pulling out of the bottom is chemically good,” he mentioned. “It’s good in each approach, so our greatest problem is ensuring it tastes the identical on the finish consumer. And it is simpler for us to do this as a result of we do not put chlorine within the water. We do not must.”
Hildebrandt says Clearbrook Waterworks District has a “actually rigorous upkeep and sampling program” labored out with Fraser Health and the B.C. Centre for Disease Control that permits it to maintain the water unchlorinated.
‘It would not go away a style’
So how does water out of a Clearbrook tap style? According to Hildebrandt, it would not.
“It would not go away a style, and it would not go away a really feel in your mouth,” he mentioned. “And that is a huge deal for some individuals, and we discover that once we get the judging playing cards again.
“They at all times rank us prime marks for mouthfeel. In different phrases, they are not tasting that oiliness that you simply may really feel generally after a bottled water or one thing like that.”
Hildebrandt says former Abbotsford Mayor Bruce Banman used to name water from Clearbrook “probably the most tasteless water on the planet.”
Ontario municipality claims silver
At the Berkeley Springs tasting, the silver medal within the municipal water class went to a different Canadian entrant — North Muskoka, Ont. — whereas St. Paris, Ohio, claimed bronze.
Three former gold-medallists — Clearbrook, Emporia, Kan., and Eldorado Springs, Colo. — completed within the prime 5.
“The consistency in winners from yr to yr with totally different panels of judges validates the alternatives,” water knowledgeable Arthur von Wiesenberger mentioned on the Berkeley Springs website.
Other classes embody greatest non-carbonated water, greatest glowing water, greatest purified ingesting water and folks’s alternative.
No different Canadian location received gold.
However, Jano from Village-Blanchard, N.B., took bronze in the most effective non-carbonated class, and Clearly Canadian from Marchand, Man., was awarded bronze within the individuals’s alternative.
