One way is through reverse osmosis and using a carbon block rated to remove pesticides.

Granted a fair amount of water is wasted in the use of a reverse osmosis unit so may not be a viable option for all.

There is little danger of pesticides where I live and I certainly don't use them on my property. Homeowners can get their water tested if they are concerned. Nothing unnatural has ever shown up in any of my wells.

What Nutmegger said. Nothing has ever shown up in my well, nor anyone elses in the area to the best of my knowledge.

Personally I use few chemicals on my property, but the chances of any measurable amount penetrating the solid clay (think "candle wax" for a visual of what the subsoil is like here) and getting 180ft down to the aquifer our well draws from, certainly isn't a worry that keeps me up at night.

We have borough water which is chlorinated to the extent that it taints the tea with a very nasty taste. A simple Brita filter makes it usable, so the filter jug lives next to the kettle and in the summer I also keep a jug of filtered water in the fridge.

I was thinking more about chemical from adjoining farmland. Maybe you don't have much farmland around you or upstream from you.

Just a very ritzy horse boarding farm, that wouldn't think of using chemicals on their pastures -- but they do have a very effective manure management system! Actually a river that runs through my property ends up in the reservoir system for the coastal area of my county.

It still has to get underground, though and the permeability of soil is going to be a variable there.

Anyway, water is a chemical too, don't forget, and one which 100% of the people who come into contact with will die.

I spend my working life testing well water from private water wells to public water systems and I can tell you some of the smelliest and nastiest looking samples are often the ones with the least bacteria in them.

Coliform and e-coli are mostly found in samples from old wells that are cracked and that have insecure leaking septic systems that have been put to close to the well.

Another reason water tastes bad is because a lot of times the well water is fine but the piping into the home needs replacing or the faucets are leaky and bacteria grows around the leaking areas.

City water systems often get complaints because their water smells. They probably don't flush their lines enough. It is always worse in the summer when the sulphur "rotten egg smell" comes out the faucet. That's when everyone complains!

People worry about water and if it is safe to drink . They worry when the cities add chlorine and chloromines but then they panic when the water is not chlorinated.

One day it will all dry up.

A distant memory is telling me that the rusty taste was due to iron producing bacteria found somewhere along the line, and the eggy smell was due to a magnesium element in the water heater causing some kind of reaction.

I was never worried about the cleanliness of the water, it just tasted rank, so I never drank it

FWIW, the presence of chlorine doesn't bother me either.

I have had eggy smelly water in both New Zealand, Iceland and Indonesia. The water came from natural volcanic springs

I"ve spent the past year or two reading a lot about water in the western US and your statement is not without foundation. From what I understand, Texas is very dependent on the Ogallala aquifer (maybe north/west Texas) and it's being depleted quickly, and there's not much that can be done to replenish it. It took 15,000 years to fill. There's an unfunded $18 billion plan on the books to pump water uphill from the Missouri River, but that is not likely to happen.

This is a great article that sums up the problem: What Happens to the U.S. Midwest When the Water's Gone? .

I suspect water (lack thereof) will be a far bigger issue facing the US and developing nations than climate change itself; climate change just happens to make the situation even worse.

Another great article about aquifers, this one more focused on California:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...hidden-crisis/

There is no adjoining farmland, and not much nearby; undeveloped land is mostly trees. There really isn't much "upstream" from Pulaski manor either.

That's for sure. The droughts we have had in CT the last two summers have made me very solicitous of our well water -- only flushing when essential, collecting the cold water when I'm having to run the taps to get it hot and using that water to water plants, baths with barely enough water to get wet, saving water used to rinse lettuce and suchlike to water plants . . . every little helps.

There was one of those consumer reality shows on the BBC last night, they were helping a family with children in Glasgow to save money on regular expenditures, phone contracts, which laundry detergent, that sort of thing.

One of their money saving suggestions; spend just ten minutes in the shower. Turns out the mother normally spent 45 minutes in the shower!! She had long hair, but even then ......

Even though we are in a temperate rainforest and get nearly 5 feet of rain per year on average our summers tend to be dry so we get annual water restrictions that at times are stricter then what I have seen in places like Phoenix or Los Angeles.

Those desert regions need to stop wasting so much water on things like grass.