Director says water is safe

Business has picked up slightly at Anthony’s Pure Water Systems in Costa Mesa ever since reports of tap water tainted with trace amounts of prescription drugs have made headlines around the country.

“A lot of people have called and want to know what the remedy is and how to address it,” said Anthony’s owner Anthony Monkiewicz, who has sold water filtration systems in Costa Mesa for about 15 years. “I’m very careful not to alarm people about their drinking water, but this is something that is slowly and surely not positive and getting worse.”

Monkiewicz said the only way to be sure pharmaceuticals are filtered out of tap water is to invest in a reverse osmosis filtration system for the home, which costs about $500 for a good system. He’s offering free home consultations in the wake of media revelations on prescription drugs in tap water.

Local experts said they were not surprised at revelations in an Associated Press investigation released earlier this week identifying trace amounts of pharmaceutical chemicals in the drinking water across the country, but added that the local drinking water “far exceeded” existing state and federal standards for safety.

The Associated Press investigation has already led two U.S. senators, including Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, to push for hearings on the issue.

Both Costa Mesa and Newport Beach get their water from pumps monitored by the Orange County Water District, which is supplemented by the Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District.

Drinking water in Newport-Mesa is a touchy subject. Residents in Newport Beach opposed to the addition of fluoride to their drinking water last year rallied enough support to make the city council send a letter to the water district asking for a delay in fluoridation plans, which went forward anyway.

“We should be looking at our water more carefully, because we don’t have a lot of it and the stuff we do have is contaminated,” Newport Beach resident Dolores Otting said.

Otting led the charge in Newport Beach last year against fluoridation and has been an outspoken advocate for clean drinking water.

“People are bathing their babies in Viagra and not even realizing it.”

Newport Beach resident Larry Porter said media reports of prescription drugs in the water came as no surprise to him — he hasn’t trusted tap water in years.