Posted at: 09/18/2012 5:38 PM
Updated at: 09/18/2012 6:32 PM
By: Gordon Severson

Print Story  Email to a Friend

Rochester Water Best Tasting in the State?

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- Cities get bragging rights for many things. Safest place to live, best parks, countless others.

Thanks to Rochester Public Utilities, the City of Rochester may soon be called the city with the best tasting water in the state.

After being named “Best Water in Southeast Minnesota”, a gallon of everyday Rochester tap water was sent to the yearly Minnesota Utility Convention in Duluth.

"It's judged on clarity, taste and some other metrics," RPU Communications Representative Tony Benson explains.

RPUS says they'd gladly put up their water against even the finest bottled water you'd find in the store.

We decided to put that claim to the test, filling an empty bottle straight from our unfiltered drinking fountain.

We stopped by Peace Plaza to conduct a little taste test of our own.

With one bottle filled with generic bottled water and the other one simply from the tap.

The results were about 50/50. Some people couldn’t even taste a difference.

According to back2tap.com, 50 billion bottles a year, 140 million each day, end up in landfills.

That’s something RPU is working to prevent.

"Maybe the next time that people go to the store and they take a look at five to ten dollars or whatever it might be for bottled water, they might think again," Benson says.

RPU’s drinking water will match up against the best water from four other regions in the state.

The judging will take place later this week.