(ABC 6 News) – RPU held its second annual open house in honor of Drinking Water Week on Friday.

This open house was held at the Apache Mall water tower and wellhouse and included a tour of the water towers interior.

The goal behind this event was to showcase the unique processes that go into delivering safe drinking water to Rochester businesses and households, all 42,000 of them.

Rochester is home to 20 water towers and 32 wells, all of which play a critical role in the water delivery system.

“We have 32 wells throughout the city that pull water up from the ground and into the distribution system, then the distribution system or pipes are connected to our water towers, that help store the water at a higher elevation to induce pressure on the system.” says Luke Payne, Manager of Engineering and Construction at RPU.

Elevation plays an important role in why Rochester is home to so many water towers. The elevation of each tower is responsible for the amount of water pressure existing in each water line. If the tower is too high up, there is too much pressure. If the tower is too low, there is not enough pressure.

RPU staff shared plenty of more interesting facts about how they clean and filter water, as well as what layers of the ground Rochester’s water comes from (primarily sandstone layers found hundreds of feet deep).

They even shed some light on why there is a red air dancer atop the Apache Mall water tower: to keep the turkey cultures from nesting there.