Thank Louisville for your clean bottle of water

For the first time in recent history, Americans are drinking more bottled water than soft drinks.

What you might not realize is that this healthy shift in beverage consumption might not have occurred if a Louisville man named George Warren Fuller hadn't performed some innovative experiments on muddy Ohio River water in the late 1800s.

Fuller's experiments at Louisville Water found that allowing dirty river water to settle and then using a chemical to bring particles together and finally filtering the water through sand and gravel could produce water that was 99 percent free of bacteria.

Using this treatment and filtration system, the Cresent Hill Treatment Plant opened in 1909 and the city saw a dramatic drop in the number of typhoid deaths from 71 deaths per 1,000 people to less than 45. In 1914, Louisville Water began using chlorine to further disinfect the water.

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The work at Louisville Water became the foundation of water utilities around the world.

Friday's report on the water consumption increase from the Beverage Marketing Corporation and the International Bottle Water Association says that every person in America consumed an average of 39.3 gallons of bottled water bottled water in 2016 while the average intake of carbonated soft drinks slipped to about 38.5 gallons.

But here's a consumer tip — in Louisville, we don't have to spend money to buy pre-bottled water at the store or fill up the landfill with those plastic bottles.

In fact, straight from the tap, Louisville water is requested by college students who miss it when they move out of town.

"We hear from customers daily about how much they love the taste of our drinking water and how shocked they are when they travel that the water in another city doesn't taste like pure tap" said Kelley Dearing Smith, vice president of communications and marketing at Louisville Water Company, "It's especially fun to hear from college students — they tweet about how much they miss the tap water and sometimes their parents will fill jugs of Louisville's drinking water to send to school."

Louisville Water's two treatment plants are ranked as two of the top 14 in North America and the company has trademarked its name "Louisville Pure Tap."

Earlier this month, Louisville Water Company and the Kentucky Historical Society dedicated a Kentucky historical marker to celebrate the place where modern water filtration began. You can check it out and enjoy a delicious drink of Louisville Pure Tap at Louisville Water Tower Park, 3005 River Road.

Reach Kirby Adams at kadams@courier-journal.com.

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