A team of celebrity judges awarded Homestead the honor of Best Tasting Drinking Water 2015 in a blind taste test during the annual Florida Section American Water Works Association Region VII competition. Each year, six utilities including Miami-Dade Water & Sewer Authority, North Miami, North Miami Beach, Florida City, Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority, and the City of Homestead battle it out for the honor of Best Tasting Drinking Water.
The rules of this high-stakes competition are simple: each competitor provides a one-gallon, room temperature sample of their water in a glass or plastic bottle on the day of the competition. Each sample is randomly assigned a letter upon being received. In order to be eligible, the water utility must not have any water quality violations from a regulatory agency for the current or prior calendar year. Each judge is given one 50 ml sample from each utility and evaluates its characteristics—taste, odor, color, and clarity—on a scale from one to five. The sample with the highest overall score is the winner.
“It’s very exciting that we won this year for the first time ever,” said City of Homestead Director of Public Works, Julio Brea. “As a City, we strive to bring our residents the best of everything and this is confirmation that our hard work is paying off.”
In the coming weeks, Homestead will go on to represent Region VII at the state level. Homestead will vie against the top utilities in each region to compete for Best Tasting Drinking Water 2015 statewide. For more information on the American Water Works Association and the competition, please visit: www.fsawwa.org
