How's your PUC water tasting these days?

Complaints about Sault Ste. Marie water quality are at their lowest since 2009, members of the PUC Services Inc. board were told Wednesday.

There were only 133 water quality complaints in 2017, compared to 1,424 in 2012 and 1,489 in 2014.

Those were the infamous brown water years, which prompted PUC to remove the Lorna Wells from day-to-day service, start unidirectional flushing and implement advanced treatment to correct the problem.

"The discoloured water incidents have really declined to the point where they're nowhere near anything close to what we were seeing in 2014," Giordan Zin, PUC supervisor of community engagement, told SooToday.

"But what we are still struggling with are taste and odour complaints," Zin said.

Ward 1 Coun. Paul Christian also is hearing taste complaints.

"Anecdotally, I'm still getting lots of complaints about water taste," Christian told the PUC board.

"I'll ask people 'how's the water?' and for the most part I'm getting the water doesn't taste good."

"Some people have come to accept it. Some people are using filtration systems. Some people are using bottled water. I suspect that's why the numbers are so low."

"I've tasted water in Sudbury. I've tasted water in Sault Ste. Marie. I've tasted water in North Bay. And ours tastes different from the other two places."

Zin said that PUC customers shouldn't stop calling if their water tastes bad.

"We need them to call in. Our customers are in the best possible position to tell us the quality of the water. If there's an issue that needs to be fixed, we need to know about it."

Meanwhile, the PUC board learned that the number of water main breaks has dropped significantly in recent years.

There were 58 water main breaks last winter, well down from the five-year average of 98.

It was the lowest number of breaks since the winter of 2011-12, but Zin says it's largely because of the weather and this winter has not been so lucky.

"We got a lot of snow and a relatively mild winter [last year], so that helped insulate the ground and it protected the water mains. We were just lucky that we got a good winter."

So far this cold-weather season, we've had 60 water main breaks.