This Missouri City Has Some Of The Best Tap Water In The World

Growing up I got spoiled with really good tap water. We, like many in Northern Illinois, drank and bathed in Chicago water. If you don't know, Chicago water is good enough to drink right from the tap no filter necessary. Nor, in many communities that get Chicago water, do you need a water softener to keep the water from irritating your skin. Surprisingly, there's a town near Kansas City that might just have tap water that rivals Chicago water.

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I'm talking about The City of Independence near Kansas City. That surprises me because the water in Sedalia and Warrensburg stinks. Sometimes literally. When it comes out of the tap at home without filtering or softening, it sometimes has that skunky smell. Other times the chlorine smell is so strong it smells like it came directly from the Nassif Aquatic Center. Don't even get me started on the taste. Let's just say if it's not filtered, I'm not drinking it.

So yes, I was surprised to see that The City of Independence just placed seventh in a contest for the best tap water in the world. Yes, I said the world. It's also the fourth-best water in the United States. This is according to a post on the City of Independence Facebook page.

The seventh/fourth-place finish was in the 33rd Annual Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting Contest. According to their website, The Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting Contest is "The largest and longest running water tasting in the world, dubbed by BuzzFeed and The Week 'the world’s most prestigious water tasting.'"

Don't look for a list of winners on the Berkeley Springs site though. They only release the top five in the world. Independence says in their Facebook post that they received word of their placement in the mail.

That's not the only award the city has won recently. They picked up the award for best-tasting water in Missouri at the American Water Works Association conference last month. With the win, Independence Water will be vying for the title of "Best of the Best" at the American Water Works Association conference in June.

It's not the first time Independence has won awards for the city's water either. In 2019 Kansas City Magazine said Independence ranked in "The top five best tasting tap waters in the world for seven of the last eight years at the competition held in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia."

The secret? Independence Water Production Manager Karen Kelly told Fox 4 is the 42 wells Independence gets its water from. She told the television station, "The water coming up from the ground is almost bacteria-free. So the ground does a lot of the work filtering the water for us. Then we just take it out of the ground and we do just minimal treatment."

By the way, Independence isn't the only municipality that enjoys its great water. Fox 4 says a dozen cities around Kansas City get the water. Cities include Blue Springs, Lee’s Summit, Oak Grove, Grain Valley, Buckner, and Sugar Creek.

Now if only we could get some of that water here. Or Chicago water, they could bottle that stuff and sell it.