Is Las Vegas water safe to drink?
Here’s an aricle by the Las Vegas Review Journal in response to the Las Vegas Valley Water District releasing its annual Water Quality Report about drinking water in Las Vegas.
Bascially the article says that Las Vegas drinking water is safe in spite of the presence of uranium. Read more here:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/report-las-vegas-drinking-water-safe-even-pinch-uranium
Las Vegas pulls its water from Lake Mead, a man made lake on the Colorado River. The radioactive metals leach from the Colorado Plateau where they are naturally ocurring. Uranium is an issue and if you want to remove it from your drinking water you need to use reverse osmosis at the kitchen sink.
You can see the actual Las Vegas Water Quality Report here.
The Colorado River also has high dissolved solids. These are the minerals in water. Some people claim that minerals in water are necessary. However, like anything, you can have too much of a good thing. I propose that the mineral content of water from the Colorado River is far too high. Too high to be healthy or hydrating. Once again it would require reverse osmosis to remove the dissolved solids.
Both of these mentioned above are regulated contaminants, meaning that USEPA regulates the amount that can be in drinking water.
What about the contaminants that are not in the report?
Of potentially greater concern are the presence of unregulated contaminants. Most serious among these would be a wide variety of pharmaceuticals. These come from cities upstream which discharge sewage into the Colorado River or its tributaries. You can see sewage discharge from St. George, UT where the water flows down the Virgin River and into Lake Mead.
This is a major, but not yet regulated, concern for all those drinking water from the Colorado River, as well as all major rivers in the U.S. Is Las Vegas water safe to drink?
I wouldn’t drink it.
