Delaware Drinking Water at Risk: Filtering strongly recommended

Kim Furtado filters every drop of water her family drinks, using an on-tap fixture.

Then she filters it again with a countertop model.

Her drinking water comes from "one of those shallow wells," said Furtado, a naturopathic health practitioner from Millsboro. "It's 60 feet deep and I'm not very comfortable with it."

Sixty miles north, Richard F. Davis, a former state representative and a DuPont Co. chemist, relies on a whole-house filter in his Mariners Watch neighborhood, three miles west of the Delaware City Refinery. Artesian Water supplies the community and, by law, routinely tests its supplies, taken from some of the state's deepest aquifers.

Davis, who said he considers his water safe, still wanted something extra.

"Since all of the water systems are interconnected," Davis said, "it's impossible to know where all the water comes from."

It's also difficult to get an absolute answer about just what is, or isn't, in Delaware's water -- difficult enough that some real estate agents routinely suggest water-filter installations even in the absence of known problems.

Although most residents are supplied by regularly tested public drinking water systems, thousands of unregulated substances can be found in the environment and water. Thousands of homes, meanwhile, take water directly from the ground, with testing left up to the owners.

Testing is a critical routine for most of the state's water suppliers. Filtering is ubiquitous.

"If people aren't asking about them, they should," said Pauline Murray, a real estate agent with Murray Realty in Newark. "A filter system would probably be an advantage. City water is loaded with stuff just as much as anywhere else."

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