The local water isn’t toxic—that I know of—but it’s really undrinkable.
I think I’ve said before that the tap water in Scotts Valley tastes horribly wrong. I still don’t entirely know why. It’s a more affluent than average community, so you’d think they’d have the tax infrastructure to pay for a better water treatment program. But it may just be that the locals are willing to buy their own water, so they don’t care that what comes out of the taps and public drinking fountains tastes like it’s coming out of an ass.
I drink a lot of coffee, and water is obviously a huge component of coffee. It’s not a component most people think of. I’ve seen many of the locals make coffee from the tap water, with the excuse, “Oh, it’s boiled; so it’s fine.” But it’s not. To my mind, it’s mostly ruined. Every once in a while you can find a blend of coffee that can largely mask the taste of the tap water—or render it ignorable—but very seldom. I’ve been drinking a lot of medium roasts lately, and the tap water turns them into what tastes like Folgers made with used swimming-pool water. I completely ruined a perfectly good 1-ounce sample bag of Colombian because I naïvely thought the coffee would overwhelm the water. It tasted like I had strained old grounds with heavily bleached notebook paper.
When I first moved to Scotts Valley to go to school, I did what most college students did—I went to Safeway™ and bought water. Like my dad, I had always figured buying water was a waste of money when I lived in communities where the tap water was barely less pure than the natural spring stuff. (I don’t know that the Scotts Valley stuff is actually impure; I just know it tastes like a coin collector has been boiling old pennies in it, so I presume impurity. It’s gotta be better than the ocean, but not by much.) Later, I took a five-gallon container to Vacaville on vacation and filled up with their tap water.
Now I have one of those Brita™ pitcher and filters. Works great. I’ll have to get another for the office. Currently I’ve been taking a 1.5-liter water bottle full of filtered water to work, but sometimes I need to make two pots of coffee (especially since I invite others to drink it).
Comparatively, I’ve noticed a lot of people who, when they want coffee, don’t make it themselves; they go to Starbucks.™ Now, I’m a big fan of their coffee, but I can’t reasonably see myself going to Starbucks™ every morning and paying $1.60 for decaf what’s been sitting in the urn for the past two hours. I’ll want more than one cup; and I don’t have the money for a $20/week coffee budget. If you drink a lot of coffee, you have to find ways of keeping your habit economical. But I can see why they frequently excuse this habit with, “It tastes so much better at Starbucks.™” Of course it does. Starbucks™ filters their water.