Water quality flier uses scare tactics, county officials say

A flier arriving in some Pasco County homes claims your tap water could make you sick, but public officials have attacked the mailing as an attempt to exploit people's fears to sell water filters.

"The following information is vital to the health and well being of your family," begins the flier mailed from a private Virginia company calling itself the National Water Safety Program.

What follows is a list of contaminants that supposedly lurk in Pasco's water supply.

Zephyrhills and Lutz are named specifically as "cities" in which water-borne chemicals could cause "liver cancer, miscarriage, colon cancer and other health problems."

Zephyrhills City Manager Steve Spina, who took a couple of calls from concerned residents based on the mailing, scoffed at the suggestion local water is poisonous.

"Our water's very safe. It's Zephyrhills after all," Spina said Wednesday in reference to the line of bottle water bearing the city's name. "This is just a scare tactic and a pretty unethical sales promotion."

Borrowing from the Consumer Confidence Report, a list of chemicals found in one's water that utilities must send yearly to their customers, the company claims Zephyrhills and Lutz tested positive for such chemicals as chlorine, ammonia, iron, trihalomethanes and sulfur.

The flier directs homeowners to call an 800-number to schedule a free water testing appointment. The operator who answered the phone at that number said the tester would suggest ways to "rectify the problem," but wouldn't reveal what the company was selling.

Bruce Kennedy, Pasco's utilities director, has seen such tactics before. Such companies are almost always pitching water filters or softeners, he said.

Kennedy expressed amusement at the suggestion chlorine and ammonia were health threats. They are the very additives that kill potentially harmful bacteria in untreated water.

As for trihalomethanes, which could cause cancer in high dosages, the regional water supply has recently reduced its levels from 80 parts per billion to 15 parts per billion, well within acceptable levels set by the government.

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