Road salt cause of strange tasting water in Delaware County

DARBY, Pa. (WPVI) -- Some residents in Delaware County might notice a funny taste from their tap water over the next couple of days. Turns out, that taste is the result of road salt that ended up in the water supply.

Janice Davis was on the job at the Darby Borough Municipal Building when a resident called in with the concern.

"I got a call from a resident that said, 'Miss Janice, did you taste the water lately?'" Davis said.

She had not drank from the faucet recently and wanted to better understand the resident's complaint.

"I came in the kitchen, tasted the water, I said, 'Wow, it tastes like salt.' It left a bad taste in your mouth," Davis said.

That bad taste, according to Aqua, is from the runoff of salting from area roads and highways because of recent winter storms.

The salt mix used to keep roads safe made its way into Aqua's water treatment facility.

Most of the salty water complaints are from Springfield and Swarthmore, but now Darby, Upper Darby and Lansdowne residents are complaining, too.

Aqua says it understands customers may be caught off guard by the weird taste, but says the water is safe and there is no threat to public health.

"We've been putting salt on the street for a long time, why all of a sudden did the salt run into the reservoir? I don't understand that. Have we been drinking it all along and never noticed it?" Davis said.

Aqua says the salt taste may last for another day or two.