Sunset tap water being tested after residents raise concerns

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission announced Monday it’s testing the quality of the drinking water in the Sunset after residents complained over the weekend about the taste of their tap water.

In addition to testing the drinking water in the neighborhood, the commission’s water quality team will also test the water in surrounding neighborhoods as a precaution, commission officials said.

The test’s results will be expedited and SFPUC officials are hoping to have them by early next week.

SFPUC officials said in a statement:

“We will do everything we can to get to the bottom of these concerns. … Once we have the results, we will schedule a community meeting to talk through the results and answer any questions related to water quality and the groundwater project.”

In addition to testing the water, the commission’s water quality team will meet with a Sunset resident who used a home testing kit on her tap water recently, after believing the water tasted different than normal.

The team will try to determine what kind of test the resident used and what source of water was used for the test. They’ll also look at the home testing kit’s results and perform official water quality tests on the water source.

The commission maintains The City’s water is safe to drink, as no evidence of any quality issues has been confirmed.

Since April 2017, the commission began blending local groundwater into the city’s drinking water, delivering it to the Sunset and surrounding reservoirs, with these reservoirs serving 60 percent of The City.

On average, about 85 percent of the city’s drinking water comes from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, located near Yosemite National Park, while the remaining 15 percent comes from local reservoirs.

The commission regularly monitors and analyzes water from both individual production wells and the blended water supply. Recent data from Sept. 17 to Sept. 30 showed that up to 8 percent of water served to customers contained groundwater, according to the commission.

The utility’s workers regularly test groundwater, looking for synthetic and volatile organic chemicals, including pesticides, every three months. Testing from the first two quarters of this year did not show any harmful chemicals in the water.