In Naples, folks tend to spurn the tap
and hit the bottle to get their water
By Ward Sanderson,
Stars and Stripes
NAPLES, Italy — Like Naples’ violent volcano-sculpted landscape, the goodness
of tap water here goes up and comes crashing down again.
It just takes time.
Today, the military labels la aqua in Naples as quite harmless. Though many refuse to
consider it a fine and refreshing beverage, it isn’t poison.
“According to Italian officials and industrial hygiene specialists, the water is
potable,” said Lt. Fred Kuebler, a Navy spokesman.
It wasn’t always so. In the early 1990s, the military warned people to boil water
before drinking it.
The Navy in 1995 found E. coli in local water supplies, which suggested fecal
contamination. That was it. The military warned everyone to avoid it altogether.
It was only recently that the military changed its mind.
Because of this history, the military gives generous amounts of bottled water to people
who live in off-base, government-leased homes. And it still recommends drinking bottled
water.
“We want to ensure the health and safety of those people here on orders,”
Kuebler said.
People living on base are supposed to have better water; therefore, they don’t
qualify for the free stuff.
The water at the new $400 million Gricignano housing area outside of Naples is near the
water source; therefore, the water is very good. Water is desalinated at the Capodichino
naval air base, and the calcium is taken away. Kuebler said the water at the aging Agnano
base is considered safe, too.
Most Americans, however, remain on the bottle. It doesn’t seem to matter where
they live.
“I live in Navy housing, and I don’t drink the tap water,” said Petty
Officer 1st Class Tammy Green. “It has a funny taste to it. I buy water. It’s a
habit now.”
If the water’s not bacterially bad, what’s wrong? All that calcium.
Let it stand for a day and you’ll find it forming a hard crust in your glass.
Leaky plumbing? Ignore it for a week and you’ll find tiny stalactites clawing out
your valves. Sinks and silverware can become armor-plated in hours.
Allison Seed, whose husband is in the Navy, was happy when she moved from the suburbs
to military housing. Water!
“It’s nice and cold when it comes out," she said. “I’d like to
drink it.”
She tried the tap water. Then one day she boiled some while cooking.
The water turned from clear to murky, and, finally, to chunky.
“I saw all this white milky stuff on the bottom," Seed said. “And, like,
this residue ... it also smelled like chlorine.”
Kuebler said using chlorine is one way the water is treated in Naples, but that it
shouldn’t affect whether it’s safe to drink.
But Seed won’t even give the stuff to her pets. It forms a crust on the cat bowl.
“Whatever that stuff is,” she said, “I don’t want it.”
One sailor who works in the post office, Petty Officer 2nd Class Chris Jambois, is
another skeptic.
“They say the water’s supposed to be safe to drink from the sink,”
Jambois said.
So he turned on the tap while at work at Agnano and got a crisp, cold jet of ...
unidentified brown.
And never again.
“We always buy bottled water, me and my wife.”
Whatever is in the stuff, it also keeps many locals from drinking it. But it
doesn’t keep them from using it in coffee. In fact, that mineral tang is supposed to
be essential to making the famous Neapolitan espresso taste just so.
There also are water-worry critics both here and abroad.
“I can’t believe that people are still afraid to drink the water in
Europe,” one reader chastised fellow browsers of the Rick Steves travel Web site.
“There is no reason to buy bottled water, other than to follow the tradition in
restaurants. Water in Naples is also quite good.”
Then there’s Wylie Miller.
Miller is retired from the Air Force. He married an Italian woman and is in Naples for
the long haul. He’s been here 21 years. Come calcium, come E. coli, Miller kept
turning on the tap. And he’s still here to tell about it.
“Mine comes from Pozzuoli,” Miller said. “And it’s always been
good.”
He prefers the taste of bottled water. But he uses the tap stuff for soup and coffee.
But even this brave soul cannot avoid that quick-forming crust. But, Italian insider
that he is, he can fight it.
He buys Viacal, a cleaner available at locals markets. Miller said it melts minerals
off of appliances in minutes.
“That stuff works wonders.”
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