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>The Bay area has particularly nasty water Isn't Hetch Hetchy water some of the cleanest?
by omegaworks 5y ago
>The Bay area has particularly nasty water
Isn't Hetch Hetchy water some of the cleanest?
- whyenot 5y agoYes it is and it's perfectly fine for house plants. TDS (total dissolved solids) is usually below 30 PPM, at least for me. But, there are parts of the Bay Area with less pure water.
- omegaworks 5y agoOh I didn't know there was such a disparity. Is there a water quality map somewhere?
- lathyrus_long 5y agoEach utility should report water quality. For most of San Jose, it's https://www.sjwater.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/ccr.pdf https://www.sjwater.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/ccr.pdf The parameters relevant to plants (EC, pH, chloride, etc.) are usually in the secondary standards, rather than the primary standards most important for human health. San Jose groundwater is terrible, EC ~ 700 uS/cm out of the tap. I wrote https://hydromisc.github.io/hydromisc/doc/nutrient-calculator.html https://hydromisc.github.io/hydromisc/doc/nutrient-calculato... to model the custom fertilizer blend that I'm developing now, since the cal/mag in the water plus the phosphate from the acid I use to neutralize the carbonate significantly shift the nutrient profile. That's obviously beyond typical houseplant practice, but professionals growing in non-soil media (nurseries, vegetable growers, etc.) do roughly the same.
- dehrmann 5y agoThe peninsula gets Hetch Hetchy water, San Jose mostly uses Delta water, and the East Bay gets water from the Camanche Reservoir. Mostly, anyway.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 5y agoEBMUD actually uses the Pardee Reservoir. But it's a trivial distinction because it's just upstream of the Camanche, both getting water from the Mokelumna watershed.