'Flavor Panel' uses tastebuds as a tool to ensure quality of drinking water

You’ve heard of wine tasting, but have you heard of water tasting?

Twice a week members of what’s called a "Flavor Panel" do just that at the River Mountains Water Treatment Facility in Henderson, and getting ready for this gig is similar to taking a wine tasting course.

“We undergo, I think, three or four weeks long training, learning about the different intensities of flavor," Carol Lane, Water Quality Monitoring Supervisor, told Channel 13.

Twice a week, a rotating group of Las Vegas Water District staff gets together to track the quality of our drinking water in a unique way using taste buds.

“So we get this sample, the bottle is usually filled all the way up, so you don’t want the water interacting with any air, picking up different aromas or scents," Lane explained. “We pour off a little bit of sample, you swirl it around a little bit, and then just like a quick little bunny sniff, and then you try to characterize the intensity."

The samples are randomly selected from meter boxes around the valley, and while most of us probably just taste plain drinking water, Flavor Panelists like Lane pick up on a few more complexities.

“I think mostly what I pick up on is chlorine and what we could call minerals or TDS. We get our water from the Colorado River system. We pick up a lot of minerals along the way, and that really gives it the TDS, or Total Dissolved Solids, that we pick up a lot and our customers pick up a lot on," Lane said.

Each sample is scored for different flavors — like salty or metallic — and high scores could indicate a problem.

For example, a dusty flavor could indicate a high mineral content and bitter could indicate high chlorine.

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Doug Mawhinney, Principle Chemistry Laboratory Scientist for the District, tells Channel 13, our sense of taste can be a useful tool beyond the typical expensive machinery and tests that our water undergoes.

“Well you sort of think of your your nose and your mouth, your tongue, as a sensor, as an analytical instrument and you have to calibrate it, and you have to understand, you know, what you’re detecting," Mawhinney said. “We do everything from measurement of TDS and pH all the way up through using some equipment to detect disinfection byproducts and metals, and some of that equipment gets up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Here in Las Vegas the water flavor does have mixed reviews among the public, but it's important to note that before our water hits our taps it goes on a long journey.

Originating from the Rocky Mountains, the water drains into the Colorado River and then into Lake Mead. The water is then siphoned from the lake bed and travels to treatment facilities. Then, the mineral-rich water is filtered and treated with ozone and chlorine before it hits our taps.

Beyond that, systems outside the water district, like corroded household pipes, leakage, or influence from fertilizer and soil runoff could also be impacting the flavor.

"You know our water is perfectly fine to drink. It meets or surpasses all the required monitoring that we have to do, and a lot of the taste problems people may have are really because of our source water, we do have very mineral-rich water and we can tell," Lane said.

Some of that is noticeable in the end product. But, if you don't like the taste, here are some tips:

• Maintain: Keep up with filter replacement and maintenance schedules if you have a built-in filtration system. And know your water hardiness (304 parts per million).
• Filter: Try an activated carbon filter, like those in carafe systems.
• Chill Out: Keep a pitcher of tap water in the fridge. You'll boost flavor and zap the chlorine-y taste.
• Citrus: Small lemon, lime, or orange slices equal BIG zest.

To ensure quality, the Water District reports that hundreds of thousands of samples are analyzed for 91 regulated contaminants required by the EPA each year, in addition to another 75 contaminants that are not regulated.
To learn more about how the results for PFAS, Fluoride, Heavy Metals, and more stack up, the 2024 Water Quality Report is your go-to guide. Channel 13's Geneva Zoltek interviewed LVVWD Spokesperson Corey Enus when it was released.

You can explore the data below, in both English and Spanish.