Water Profile for Highland IL

Just got the water report back from WardLabs and wanted to see what you guys thought. I do see a red flag when it comes to the Nitrate level with UNSAFE in parentheses.

So what do you guys think is the best style to brew with this water?

pH 7.6
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 299
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.50
Cations / Anions, me/L 5.5 / 5.8

ppm:
Sodium, Na 32
Potassium, K 3
Calcium, Ca 45
Magnesium, Mg 21
Total Hardness, CaCO3 200
Nitrate, NO3-N 11.3 (UNSAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 19
Chloride, Cl 55
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 135
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 111
Total Phosphorus, P 0.44
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01

Thanks everybody,

John

It looks like you have fertilizer (NPK) in your water. That’s probably OK, as I imagine the yeast will love it. My worry would be atrazine. Also you have moderately high alkalinity. My guess is that anything lighter than an Amber would require RO dilution or acidification.

It’s weird that your nitrates would be that high in a drought. When was the sample taken?

Cooper, do you know if your water source is piped in Lake Michigan water or does you municipality use well water or a combination? Just curious if you sample is representative of the Chicagoland area.

The 'safe' level is 10 so you aren't too far over that and 'safe' is defined for infants so while I wouldn't give this water to infants it's probably OK for adults. For brewing you would have to dilute with low ion water for most beers. This will, of course, in addition to lowering alkalinity to more acceptable levels, dilute the nitrate.

Disregard my previous question. I just now realized Highland, IL is near St. Louis not Chicago.

Wynne-R said:

It looks like you have fertilizer (NPK) in your water. That’s probably OK, as I imagine the yeast will love it. My worry would be atrazine. Also you have moderately high alkalinity. My guess is that anything lighter than an Amber would require RO dilution or acidification.

It’s weird that your nitrates would be that high in a drought. When was the sample taken?

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That's fantastic, SWMBO is going to LOVE hearing that...

ajdelange said:

The 'safe' level is 10 so you aren't too far over that and 'safe' is defined for infants so while I wouldn't give this water to infants it's probably OK for adults. For brewing you would have to dilute with low ion water for most beers. This will, of course, in addition to lowering alkalinity to more acceptable levels, dilute the nitrate.

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Is it common for more rural areas to have that much nitrate in their water? Is this something I should bring to the attention of my water company or do they generally not care about "slightly elevated" levels?

So I'm thinking I should pretty much stick to RO/distilled water and follow the primer.

Wynne-R said:

It looks like you have fertilizer (NPK) in your water. That’s probably OK, as I imagine the yeast will love it. My worry would be atrazine. Also you have moderately high alkalinity. My guess is that anything lighter than an Amber would require RO dilution or acidification.

It’s weird that your nitrates would be that high in a drought. When was the sample taken?

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I sent the sample off last week and they emailed me the results yesterday. Where did you get the Atrazine? I'm not seeing that in the results...

I don't see fertilizer either - though I guess it could be. . Nitrates at that level are not that uncommon in regions with certain geologies. Munich water, for example, occasionally goes higher in nitrates that yours and I suppose that could come from fertilizer too because they do have farms in Bavaria.

Given that you mentioned that the water comes from a supplier as opposed to your own well I'm a little surprised as 10 mg/L is a primary MCL. Your water company should know about it but it might be a good idea to call over there and tell them that you have had a report of nitrate above the MCL and say you are concerned.

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/crops/00517.html is kind of a nice summary of nitrate in drinking water.

Thanks Aj, I'll call and inform the water company and offer to send them the water analysis from Ward Labs as well as the site you referenced. I'll let you guys know what they say.

That is some fairly mineralized water and might be kind of tough to brew with. The red flag the OP points out is much worse than being pointed out here. The MCL for nitrate is 10 ppm. Unfortunately, Ward reports their 'nitrate' result as Nitrogen. That means that when you convert that nitrate as nitrogen result to actual nitrate, the concentration is 50 ppm. Ward should be flagging unsafe nitrate results when they report nitrate as nitrogen above 2.3 ppm to be in agreement with EPA protocol. But since they primarily service agricultural clients who are more likely to have nitrate issues in their water, I'm guessing that they don't want to raise that flag any higher than necessary.

This nitrate level is too high for brewing. The suggested limit for brewing is on the order of 45 ppm to reduce the potential to form nitrite in the brewing process. Nitrite is poisonous to yeast. The nitrate level is also too high for infants and could lead to blue baby syndrome, which is potentially lethal.

I would plan on getting a RO unit for your home drinking water use. It can double for brewing use too. The tap water can still be used for brewing, but it does need to be diluted to reduce the mineralization to lower levels.

mabrungard said:

That is some fairly mineralized water and might be kind of tough to brew with. The red flag the OP points out is much worse than being pointed out here. The MCL for nitrate is 10 ppm. Unfortunately, Ward reports their 'nitrate' result as Nitrogen. That means that when you convert that nitrate as nitrogen result to actual nitrate, the concentration is 50 ppm. Ward should be flagging unsafe nitrate results when they report nitrate as nitrogen above 2.3 ppm to be in agreement with EPA protocol. But since they primarily service agricultural clients who are more likely to have nitrate issues in their water, I'm guessing that they don't want to raise that flag any higher than necessary.

This nitrate level is too high for brewing. The suggested limit for brewing is on the order of 45 ppm to reduce the potential to form nitrite in the brewing process. Nitrite is poisonous to yeast. The nitrate level is also too high for infants and could lead to blue baby syndrome, which is potentially lethal.

I would plan on getting a RO unit for your home drinking water use. It can double for brewing use too. The tap water can still be used for brewing, but it does need to be diluted to reduce the mineralization to lower levels.

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Wow, so the EPA's recommendation is 2.3ppm Nitrate and I have 50ppm once you convert the Nitrogen to Nitrate? Is this common for a lot of areas and are water companies familiar or do they care?

Fertilizer jumped out at me because the water analysis shows nitrates, phosphorus, and potassium. If it is runoff, I would expect atrazine because it is used in copious amounts on cornfields.

I don’t think so Martin. Both Colorado and Illinois say the MCL is 10 as nitrogen, 45 as nitrate.

Although low levels of nitrates may occur naturally in water, sometimes higher levels, which are potentially dangerous to infants, are found. Illinois has adopted a drinking water standard for nitrate of 10 milligrams per liter (10 mg/L) as N (nitrogen). This standard is mandatory for public water supplies and is used as a guide for private water supplies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also uses 10 mg/L as N as a mandatory national standard for public supplies under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The 10 mg/L standard expressed as nitrogen (N) is equivalent to 45 mg/L expressed as nitrate.
-http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/factsheets/NitrateFS.htm

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Here’s part of what the Illinois Dept of Health says about the source:

It is often difficult to pinpoint sources of nitrates because there are so many possibilities. Sources of nitrogen and nitrates may include runoff or seepage from fertilized agricultural lands, municipal and industrial waste water, refuse dumps, animal feedlots, septic tanks and private sewage disposal systems, urban drainage and decaying plant debris. Geologic formations and direction of ground water flow also may influence nitrate concentration.
-http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/factsheets/NitrateFS.htm

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BTW, I’ll bet those people would be very interested to know that your water dept has busted out of their MCL (maximum containment level.)

It rained a week ago Friday, didn’t it? The last of the hurricane. That coincides with the timing of your sample for runoff.

I do think this is something that I should report and I just left a message with the Regional Office in Glen Carbon IL to make them aware. I don't think it was caused by the recent rains we had last weekend because I mailed my sample off the week before that. But who knows, it could be from any number of different things. I feel like I'm doing the right thing though in letting someone know. There are a few families with infant children in the neighborhood and I just feel better letting someone know. Know what I mean?

The MCL is definitely as N: From the horse's mouth (or other end depending on what you think of EPA): http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/index.cfm

Potassium is not that high though 1 -2 does seem to be more typical and phosphorous is limited by the calcium concentration so it's hard to tell about that. Nitrate could come from fertilizer. Could come from minerals.

Sure enough, I stand corrected.

So I just got off the phone with a representative with the Collinsville Regional office for IL EPA, and she got in contact with the City of Grantfork (my water supplier) who gets their water from the City of Highland, who also does the water testing.

She told me that in the last three years, the City of Highland has been reporting Nitrate (I asked if it was NO3-N and she said it was just listed as Nitrate) levels of ~0.02 - 0.05 for the last three years.

So to me either their testing is flawed, or Ward Labs is flawed, or there has been some really crazy thing happening to cause the nitrate levels to spike up that drastically. Any thoughts?

That is quite a disparity. I wonder if it’s contamination. Have you lost water pressure recently?

I talked to a buddy that does wastewater and he couldn’t speak to it directly but he said the reporting is pretty much on the honor system.

I’m guessing the IL EPA isn’t going to let this go. I imagine they’re going to test your water at the tap as well as the source. It’s a public health issue and they have to get to the bottom of it.

I just moved into the place on 25 July so I haven't been there very long, but I haven't noticed a change in the water pressure or anything like that. I really hope the EPA does do a little more digging, testing, and auditing the city of Highalands water testing practices to get to the bottom of if cause like you said, it's quite a disparity... It's just funny to me that they've been testing their water, and getting the same results for the past three years, and then someone new moves into the area, tests the water, and gets something completely different. Maybe its different testing methods from one company to the next, I don't know.

Well I hope the state does it for you, but if they don’t, I’d do another test. That would tell you if the last one was a fluke or not. I can think of three possibilities.

1. Your sample was contaminated
2. Ward Labs screwed up big time
3. Fraud, plain and simple

If you do another test and it comes up dirty, you can cross off 1 and 2.

I hope you’re taking notes on this, so you can have a good story for channel 5. If that IL EPA gal (hope you got her name) doesn’t call back by Monday, I’d call her. Don’t be shy about mentioning your cousin that works for the Post-Dispatch and the neighbor that works for KTVI. I was going to say Senator Not-Yet-Indicted, but that’s probably a waste of time. You gotta love Illinois politics.

Wynne-R said:

Well I hope the state does it for you, but if they don’t, I’d do another test. That would tell you if the last one was a fluke or not. I can think of three possibilities.

1. Your sample was contaminated
2. Ward Labs screwed up big time
3. Fraud, plain and simple

If you do another test and it comes up dirty, you can cross off 1 and 2.

I hope you’re taking notes on this, so you can have a good story for channel 5. If that IL EPA gal (hope you got her name) doesn’t call back by Monday, I’d call her. Don’t be shy about mentioning your cousin that works for the Post-Dispatch and the neighbor that works for KTVI. I was going to say Senator Not-Yet-Indicted, but that’s probably a waste of time. You gotta love Illinois politics.

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Haha! That's exactly what I was going to do too. I had a from the City of Highland Water Company call me back and he came out today and got another sample to test. He also said that the water gets blended from two water facilities and he's going to check with the other one, Alhambra City Water or something like that.

I have his name and number too so I'll give him a call tomorrow to verify that he got another sample. We were going over the report and he said that the Hardness level was different too.

So hopefully I get a matching sample back from them and if not then I'm going to call Ward Labs and explain the situation and ask if they can send me out another bottle so they can do another sampling just to make sure there wasnt any contamination happening along the way somewhere.

That’s encouraging that the water company is not dragging their feet. Getting a do over from Ward Labs is a great idea. They have a dog in the hunt.

I see on their website they do agricultural testing, soil samples and whatnot. I didn’t know that before. It seems likely the nitrate is from their end. The place must be like a barn. If they only did water tests it would be different.

Good luck, John. Let us know how it comes out.

Latest news: The Highland Water Treatment Plant, who provides ~half of the water that comes into my neighborhood, with Bon Madison providing the other half, came out to my house yesterday and got a sample of my water.

Here is what he emailed me: "Glen from Grantfork and I came out and got a sample yesterday around 2:30PM. We tested the nitrates on that sample and got a 2.2mg/L."

I'm thinking Ward Labs somehow contaminated my water sample while they were testing it... I email the Customer Service Dept for Ward Labs and asked if they could send me another sample kit and if it were possible that my sample may have gotten contaminated with Nitrates somewhere in the testing process because the past three years my water has had a Nitrate level of ~0ppm, and that I had the Highland WTP test it and it only had 2.2ppm Nitrate. I haven't heard back yet but I'm being hopeful.

Also, if that sample got contaminated I can't trust the other numbers they sent me now can I?

No, not really. I'd say they owe you a new test. It's possible that your sample got mislabeled as being someone else's sample or it's possible that only the nitrate test got screwed up. There is no way to know really unless they run an audit trail which I would think they would want to do.

That’s a new wrinkle. Now they say, just kidding, it’s not .02, it’s 2. Two orders of magnitude. Are you #bleeping# kidding me? Somebody’s got some ‘splaining to do.

Sounds like somebody took a dump in the treatment pool and sort of neglected to tell anyone. Your original sample was what, two weeks ago? I find it easier to believe the problem has been diluted from 11 to 2 than to imagine they’ve been under-reporting x100 for years.

I gotta say Ward Labs is looking pretty good right now. I hope they do the right thing and give you another test. You really need independent analysis. Ideally IL EPA should step in, because both Ward and the municipalities have dogs in the hunt.

I talked to the guy at Ward Labs, Josh, and he asked me to send him another water sample and he'll run the test again for free, so I'll get that out to him this week and hopefully get the same numbers. Then it's going to be Highland WTP doing some 'splaining...

I got the new water test results back from Ward Labs.

Date: 18 September 2012
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 316
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.53
Cations / Anions, me/L 5.8 / 5.8

ppm
Sodium, Na - 39
Potassium, K - 4
Calcium, Ca - 44
Magnesium, Mg - 21
Total Hardness, CaCO3 - 198
Nitrate, NO3-N - 0.4 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S - 19
Chloride, Cl - 61
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 - 172
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 - 141
Total Phosphorus, P - 0.33
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01

From around 5 September 2012

ppm:
Sodium, Na - 32
Potassium, K - 3
Calcium, Ca - 45
Magnesium, Mg - 21
Total Hardness, CaCO3 - 200
Nitrate, NO3-N - 11.3 (UNSAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S - 19
Chloride, Cl - 55
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 - 135
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 - 111
Total Phosphorus, P - 0.44
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01

Everything is pretty close to the same except for the Bicarbonate and the Alkalinity... And I was extremely surprised and happy to see how much of a difference there was in the Nitrate level, had to have been some cross-contamination going on somwhere in the process, but I'm happy to see it so low now.

Back to the Alkalinity; at what levels for most beers do you want Alkalinity? I would assume I'd have to go at least 50/50 RO water when brewing anything other than really dark beer?

What do you guys think?

50 gets thrown around a lot as an upper limit but lower than that is better. There's a lot of 'it depends' in this. If you were doing delicate lagers you'd want the alkalinity, sulfate and sodium down. To get the sulfate level down sufficiently you'd need at least a 4:1 dilution (sulfate now at 57 would come down to 12 which is marginally OK) and that would also take the alkalinity down to 22 which is pretty good. But it would also reduce your calcium to 9 and chloride to 11 but while traditional pils is brewed at levels lke that a bit more chloride and calcium would benefit so you would probably want to supplement with calcium chloride.

But if you wanted to do an English beer with sharp hops character you want that sulfate - in fact you probably want more and you could use sulfuric acid to simultaneously reduce the alkalinity and add sulfate while leaving the calcium and chloride where they are. I don't advocate the use of sulfuric acid because of safety considerations and difficulty in obtaining FCC (food grade) material. Lots of brewers use phosphoric which is safer and sold in food grade by lots of LHBS.

OTOH you can get to exactly what you want by using straight RO water and adding salts as required. A big advantage with straight RO is that it doesn't matter what the vagaries of you water supply may be - the mineral additions are always the same for a particular style. It makes life awfully simple but there are those that find acid addition plus mineral addition adjusted for the variations in supply simpler. Matter of personal preference really.

I think RO water is going to be my best bet; like you said it's easy to account for where your numbers are going to be and you can easily make little fine-tuning adjustments from batch to batch using RO water. I got an RO system for under the sink that I think will work really well for brewing and cooking. The only thing is I might want to think about getting a water softerner at some point with the hardness coming in at 200ppm.

A softener is fine for your non-brewing uses, but don't use softened water for brewing. Many activities in the home can benefit from a softener, but I find that just plumbing a softener to the hot water heater is sufficient to gain most of the benefits with fewer detriments. This way, the dishwasher, clothes washer, and showers are hooked up. The cold water will still be hard, but that is preferred for human consumption.

Thanks Martin. Any particular softerners you would recommend for plumbing to the hot water heater? I'm getting this for under the sink. http://www.waterfilters.net/PuroTwist-4000-Reverse-Osmosis-System.html

Any updates on highland water recently? I've been all grain brewing for a few months now and I think my next step is going to bee water mod.

mabrungard said:

A softener is fine for your non-brewing uses, but don't use softened water for brewing. Many activities in the home can benefit from a softener, but I find that just plumbing a softener to the hot water heater is sufficient to gain most of the benefits with fewer detriments. This way, the dishwasher, clothes washer, and showers are hooked up. The cold water will still be hard, but that is preferred for human consumption.

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Those appliances use a mix of hot and cold water. As the cold water is still hard high soap consumption, streaks, stains and crud (the reasons you have a softener in the first place) will still be seen. I don't think this is very sound advice.

Most modern softeners have a bypass valve incorporated so you can draw unsoftened water for brewing when you need it. If for some reason your softener doesn't have the bypass valve then either plumb it in with external bypass valves, install a tee and bib on the feed side or install a saddle valve (commonly used to tap water for refrigerator ice makers) on the feed side of the softener.