The City of St. John’s issued a news release Wednesday afternoon addressing concerns of an unpleasant taste and smell in the city’s drinking water.
The release said it’s not uncommon during the summer months for drinking water to have a “slight ‘earthy’ or ‘musty’ odour and taste”.
“This taste and odour is caused by trace levels of naturally occurring organic substances produced by plants and algae in the water source.
The human nose is extremely sensitive to these organic substances especially when showering or making tea as heating the water increases volatility of the organic substances.” The city’s water supply comes from Windsor Lake, Bay Bulls Big Pond and Petty Harbour Long Pond.
The release said while the water may taste and smell unpleasant, it’s not harmful or toxic, and it’s analyzed daily.
It’s also not known how long the taste and smell will persist because it’s a “naturally occurring phenomenon”.
In the past, it’s lasted for up to two to three weeks.
Meantime, the release said residents could add lemon or citrus to the water to improve the taste, or keep a cold jug of water in the fridge.
Residents concerned about their water can contact Access St. John’s by calling 311 or 754-CITY (2489) or by online web submission.

Researchers have found through a study that people didn’t find any different in taste of toilet water and tap water – meaning that they found both the water to be equally tasty.
The use of recycled toilet water is to be made if we want to get through dry months in the future.
Researchers have urged authorities to carry out marketing campaigns to make sewage water ‘less scary’.
Scientists say that people have to accept drinking water that comes directly from toilets amid fears of a global water shortage.
Recycled toilet water is safe to drink because it contains no harmful components, which are all flushed out before it enters the drinking supply.
The ‘blind’ taste test involved 143 volunteers and indirect potable reuse (IDR) water.
Furthermore, volunteers who were branded as nervous or anxious were found to like the taste of the IDR-treated and bottled water more.
However, participants defined as being more open to new experiences were found to find little difference in taste between the three samples.
Half of those people are in China and India.
The notion of drinking recycled wastewater has gained momentum in California recently amid years of drought.

There is something, somewhere, in the mouth that tells us we are drinking it.
Mouse research has previously indicated that drinking water triggers the firing of nerves that ferry taste information from the mouth to the brain.
Their sour taste cells had been impaired, yes, but why that would make their nerves not register the arrival of water was puzzling.
The team devised a new experiment to look deeper, engineering mice whose sour cells could be activated by blue light.
Then, when they had access to the laser-shooting bottles, they went over to get a drink.
When the blue light hit their sour cells, their taste nerves lit up and looked for all the world as if the mice were really drinking water.
Here’s why this works, the researchers believe: The cells we know as sour taste cells are probably more accurately thought of as sensors of pH.
The drop activates a pH-sensitive channel in the membrane that causes the cell to send a message to the brain, announcing, “Water’s in the mouth.” So why does sour taste sour and water taste like water, if they’re using the same cells to communicate to the brain?
In an earlier set of experiments, Oka and colleagues identified a set of neurons in the mouse brain that, when triggered, make mice want to drink water.
“Now the next question is how do they interact with each other,” he says, speaking of the sensors in the mouth and the neurons in the brain.

Algae causing taste, odor problems in region’s drinking water.
Ken Ruinard/Independent Mail In parts of Anderson and Pickens counties, the tap water tastes and smells so bad right now that some dogs won’t drink it.
"I feel bad because I didn’t realize at first that she wasn’t drinking what was coming from our sink," Shead said.
So I started giving her bottled water just like we are using.
Shead is one of nearly 200,000 customers in the Upstate whose drinking water is provided by the Anderson Regional Joint Water System.
In the span of 10 days, regional water system officials saw taste- and odor-producing compounds jump to roughly five times the amount they can effectively handle with treatments at the Anderson plant headquarters.
(Photo: Ken Ruinard/Independent Mail) When water system officials do a lake treatment, they have crews sometimes apply a copper-based algaecide on a portion of the lake, then follow that with a hydrogen-peroxide based algaecide around coves and docks.
"We can’t treat algae before we can see it," Willett said.
"We don’t want to do any more to the lake than we have to."
The project will allow regional water system officials to use more advanced oxidation processes when treating the water before it is ready for the tap.

KHS students haul water, get taste of third world.
Looking beyond the comforts of the developed world to the poverty of the third world, Killeen High School students lugged gallon-jugs around the Buckley Stadium track.
Admittedly a far cry from the daily travails of hauling water from remote wells and streams, the lesson still seemed to hit home.
Geography teacher Jennifer Larkin and two of her peers came up with the idea for the engaging simulation four years ago and have made the Water Walk an annual tradition in their classes.
“We’re raising awareness, trying to understand what it is like for children and families who don’t live close to sources of water,” said sophomore Littzy Paredes Brignoni.
In addition to hauling water jugs around the track, the students spent time reading facts about the global water crisis, a reality that leads to a wide range of preventable disease and hardship.
Larkin said she used 76 gallons of water a day on her own.
“We’re learning about water scarcity,” said freshman Madeleine Jones.
“Carrying water imitates children carrying water for their families.
“We’re seeing what’s happening in the world, not just in our own worlds, not just with ourselves.”

The life of a water master.
As the official “water master” for the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting competition, Von Wiesenberger has the task of getting judges up to speed on what makes for a good water.
As the author of several books on bottled water, as well as multiple other books and articles on food and beverages, Von Wiesenberger is an internationally known print and broadcast presenter.
“We use tasting sheets that were designed for NASA to evaluate the acceptability of mineralization in water for space travel.
Bottled water doesn’t have that smell, or at least it shouldn’t.
Also, if something’s floating in the water, that takes points off.
Clear and transparent is the goal.
Then there’s an aroma check, which in addition to the aforementioned chlorine can also include a swampy smell, which might indicate the presence of algae, or iron, which gives a metallic smell.
“Then we move onto taste,” Von Wiesenberger explains.
“Sweeter-tasting water means certain minerals, like potassium, while calcium and magnesium provide hardness.