I was bored and decided to scan over Ready.gov and noticed in their water advice column:



The second sentence caught my eye, because I've always read/been told to add chlorine no matter what.

Can anyone tell me how to check and see if my water source (city utility water) is chlorine treated? How long would this water be good for if stored, 6 months as they suggest or longer (blue barrel, non-climate-controlled garage)?

Any EPA compliant system has to add enough disinfectant to leave a residual. What if a fly craps inside the water tank (they are open to the air, and not perfecly screened, plus people climb through them for maintainance, etc.) You can check with you local water utility, but AFAIK, all public systems of any size (100+ users) that use ozone or UV light still add chlorine for the residual.

Adding a few drops isn't going to hurt anything, and may be an advantage if the container is being reused and might have a bit of contamination after the last time it was being used. OTOH, if everything were clean, you wouldn't need any chlorine as may be the case for bottled water.

You may need to read further, but I believe that info on ready.gov is intended for short term storage, i.e. fill up when warned the storm is approaching and use up or dump within a week or so.

Because if it came out of the tap from a municipal supply, it is not filtered and treated to the level necessary for longer term storage. Despite the lies from the anti bottled water loons, bottled drinking water is filtered to a much higher standard than city tap water. It's the same standard as the water used for bottled soda, juices and the like since it's produced in the same plants. That's why bottled water has a 2yr shelf life.

You're falling for the lies of the anti bottled water loons. The most blatant lie is to claim that bottled drinking water is "just tap water" which is absolutely false. I've spent some time in a bottling plant and their water treatment equipment occupied probably 30% of the facility. The water coming in is from the municipal water system, but that water doesn't even get used for flushing the bottling line between beverages. They pre-filter, chlorinate, post filter, de-chlorinate and reverse osmosis filter the water before it is pure enough for bottling with or without flavors. This is a vastly higher standard than municipal tap water. Whether there is any legal requirement is irrelevant, they expect at least two years shelf life and municipal water standards won't cut it. The bottling plants have more sophisticated QC labs than any municipal water system, indeed many municipal systems have very limited on-site test capabilities and rely on sending samples to outside labs while the bottling plants test everything on every batch.

That "no legal requirement" is what the anti bottled water loons hang on in their lies, as if no company on the planet ever does things that exceed the minimum legal requirements. They then go on to imply that some unnamed bottled water products are "nothing but tap water" without any citations to credible verifyable information. This is no different than the tactics of the anti gun loons.

"And yes when I was in college we bought a dozen bottles of "drinking water" and they were more or less the same as our local well managed tap water. The presense of a chlorine residual indicated someone was doing chlorination" - So you tested this water in the lab at school and verified the chlorine residual and contaminant levels, or did you just do a sniff test and come to your conclusion?

"I know at least one of the companies under contract to FEMA microfilters tap water ,ozonates it and bottles it. Thats it" - This again is a higher standard than that of municipal tap water.

People inclined to the veiw of the propagandists are inclined to believe the propeganda without independent verification, and unfortunately this is what happens with the anti gun and anti bottled water propeganda, people just believe it without rational thought or investigation of the claims.

Chlorine reacts with stuff including the bad stuff it kills and is thus consumed. In a municipal water system they are required to add enough chlorine to the water so that the samples collected from the far points of the system still have a minimum (max also) amount of reactive chlorine so that there is still capacity to keep the pipes disinfected i.e. if the is a water main break and repairs which allow contaminants in the water has to be able to disinfect the system again. If you get an annual water report from your municipal water system it's called "residual disinfectant level" and also usually indicates if chlorine of chloramine is used. Bottled water normally does not have any residual disinfectant in it since the water does not have to travel through miles of decades old pipes, but rather is filled into sanitized bottles and sealed.