Verna Steward descended the stairs of St. Olaf Lutheran Church in north Minneapolis on a recent afternoon with refillable water bottles in hand. Her goal: start a conversation with community members about tap water.
Steward is one of over 60 tap water ambassadors working with the City of Minneapolis’ initiative to teach the public about the safety and benefits of drinking tap water. The program, started in 2022, was designed so ambassadors could build trust in their communities and tailor their messaging more effectively.
“My organization felt that it was somewhat needed in the North Side community, because I know a lot of people that receive food stamps, and I noticed that they buy a lot of bottled water because they don’t really trust the tap water,” said Steward, who works at Neighborhood Hub, a community outreach center.
The city’s effort is one of many by public health officials and dental professionals in Minnesota aimed at setting the record straight about tap water. Minnesota’s public health agencies aren’t the only one’s noticing distrust in tap water among many of its immigrants and communities of color, who turn to bottled water and other beverages instead. Some dental professionals have also taken note, and are making concerted efforts to address the issue with patients.
Steward and dental professionals say distrust of tap water has many origins, from older homes with pipes that can discolor water and affect its flavor to unsafe drinking water in some immigrants’ native countries.
“If you’ve grown up in a country where the water supply isn’t safe, bottled water is just something that continues on as a habit,” said Dr. Priscilla Flynn, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Dental School.
Steward brought two women the refillable bottles during her November outreach effort and asked if they drank tap water. Yes, said Veronica Smith, but only because she’d bought a water softener. She didn’t like the taste of her tap water, which would leave a ring of minerals around the drain.
Cereatha Smith, also said she drank tap water, and that a relative in Brooklyn Park frequented her house to fill up large jugs with Minneapolis tap water because the relative was uncomfortable with the water in Brooklyn Park.
Steward often sets up a table at events to talk to people about drinking tap water, and frequently meets north Minneapolis residents who don’t drink it. In the summer, she brings a large cooler filled with ice, lemons, and tap water to entice people who might otherwise not to give it a try.
She set up a table outside of the Cub Foods on Broadway Avenue once, and was shocked by the number of people buying bottled water.
“The amount of people coming out of the store with cases of water was astounding,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe it.”
Five gallons of tap water costs about 2 cents, according to Minneapolis Public Works. A standard case of 24 plastic bottled water, on the other hand, contains about three gallons of water and can cost upwards of $4.
Steward said many north Minneapolis residents are paying $40 to $50 a month on bottled water on top of paying for their water bill. The same amount of money could buy enough tap water to fill approximately 225 bathtubs.
Some people are surprised after Steward convinces them to try tap water.
“They stand there and they’re like, ‘No way, this couldn’t have come out of the faucet,’” she said. “They were in awe about it. I had a couple people say, ‘We’ve been wasting money paying for water when the water is safe?’”
Respondents living in north Minneapolis were among the most likely city residents to drink bottled water, according to a 2019 city survey of over 1,000 residents. A little under one-third of north Minneapolis residents surveyed said they drank less water—bottled or tap—because they didn’t have money to buy enough bottled water to meet their needs.
Steward attributed a lot of north Minneapolis residents’ distrust in tap water to the fact that many live in older homes that might have outdated plumbing, which could give the water an unusual taste or color.
When people complain about bad-tasting or discolored water, Steward offers to visit their homes to check the water. Nine times out of 10, she said, it’s the pipes causing the problem.
“If you’re getting brown water or bad-tasting water, it’s definitely not Minneapolis tap water,” Steward said. “The taste is not coming from that; it’s coming from the pipes.”
If Minneapolis homeowners are worried about the quality of their tap water, they can call the city’s 311 non-emergency phone service and request that city staff test their water quality at no cost, said George Kraynick, a water quality manager for Minneapolis Public Works. The city also offers free lead testing kits, which homeowners receive in the mail.
“If you’re ever concerned about your water and think it’s making you sick, just call us, ” Kraynick said. “We’ll come test it and show you that something else in your house is most likely causing that ailment.”
Dental professionals raise concerns
The Community-University Health Care Center’s dental clinic is located in south Minneapolis’ Phillips neighborhood, and was founded with the goal of providing healthcare to low income community members. The clinic serves many recent immigrants to Minnesota.
As part of their exam questions, dental providers at the clinic make it a point to ask families, “Do you drink city water, or bottled water?” It’s a question most families have been fairly receptive to, said dental manager Joanne Flores.
“We see a lot of the immigrant families coming in with their kids, and they have concerns over why they’re getting cavities,” Flores said. “They don’t like to see their kids in pain, so I think the majority of the parents are willing to listen to the provider’s advice”
Dental providers are worried about where people get their water because fluoride is added to all municipal water supplies in Minnesota due to its benefits to dental health. While some bottled water brands contain the mineral, many others don’t, or they contain less fluoride than recommended by public health officials and dental experts.
Fluoride helps strengthen teeth when they are developing and, once they’re mature, continues protecting them from cavities, said Dr. Priscilla Flynn, the University of Minnesota Dental School professor.
“The beauty of community fluoridation is that it’s an equitable public health strategy because the water is free,” Flynn said. “And so it crosses the economic boundaries between poor and rich. Everybody benefits equally, but you’ve got to drink the water.”
Even if people get fluoride from toothpaste, drinking tap water is important because frequent and long-term exposure to fluoride benefits teeth, Flynn said.
Flynn said there are “lots of undercurrents” when it comes to the issue of drinking tap water. It’s not just education or how long someone has lived in the United States, she said. Flynn has worked with health care professionals who were born in countries with unreliable tap water, and while they were raised and educated in the United States, many still don’t trust tap water.
Many Somali and Latino patients tell the Community-University Health Care Center clinic they drink bottled water because the water in the countries where they previously lived wasn’t safe, Flores said.
Over one-third of Somalis and Latinos who responded to Minneapolis’ 2019 community survey said they bought bottled water because they didn’t feel safe drinking the water from their taps.
Although habits can be challenging to overcome, Flores said, minds can change as long as people are given information and see others in the community around them changing their behavior.
‘They do have reasons not to trust it’
Cristina Flood Urdangarin was working as a community health outreach manager at St. Mary’s Health Clinics when she partnered with a city of Minneapolis program called Rethink Your Drink, which is aimed at educating Minneapolis residents about the harmful effects of drinking too many sugary beverages.
After conducting outreach in schools and churches in south Minneapolis, Flood Urdangarin and others realized that one of the reasons why people were consuming so many sugary drinks was because they didn’t feel safe drinking tap water. This insight led those working on the city’s Rethink Your Drink program to shift some of their focus to educating people about tap water.
Flood Urdangarin’s outreach is mainly focused on the Latino community, especially people who are low income and have no health insurance. She found that many Latino immigrants distrust tap water because the water in their home countries is not safe.
“That comes from their home countries, where they knew that they couldn’t drink the tap water because it was not clean—contaminated—and they were taught not to,” Flood Urdangarin said. “So they just bring the same traditions, conceptions here.”
The misconception that Minnesota tap water is also unsafe can be easily passed onto their children, even if the children have lived here their whole lives, according to Flood Urdangarin.
Some in the Latino community assume that tap water has lead in it, she said, and others think their water isn’t safe because they live in poor neighborhoods—a perception reflected in Minneapolis’ 2019 community survey where 36 percent of Latinos said they thought their water was not as safe as other parts of the city.
“When you put yourself in their place, you understand their reasoning—they do have reasons not to trust it,” Flood Urdangarin said. “So it’s a matter of experience, it’s a matter of education, it’s a matter of at some point taking a leap of faith and saying, ‘Okay, I’m gonna do it.’”
Worried about your tap water?
- If Minneapolis homeowners are worried about the quality of their tap water, they can call the city’s 311 non-emergency phone service and request that city staff test their water quality at no cost.
- Minneapolis also offers free lead testing kits, which homeowners receive in the mail. Request a lead test kit here.
- St. Paul homeowners experiencing water quality issues can call St. Paul Regional Water Services at 651-266-6350.
- St. Paul residents can pick up free lead testing kits from the customer service desk at the St. Paul Regional Water Services building at 1900 Rice St. in St. Paul.
