SEQUIM — Olympic Springs is the only drinking water delivery company on the North Olympic Peninsula, so you would think it might enjoy an influx of customers in the wake of Port Angeles’ fluoridation.
Two weeks ago, the city began adding between 0.7 and 1.2 parts per million of fluoride to the tap water of about 9,000 households.
Though the compound is endorsed by dentists as a safe tooth-decay preventative, it also has its detractors, who call it “forced medication.”
Olympic Springs sells a reverse-osmosis filtration system designed to remove fluoride, and it delivers fluoride-free jugs of drinking water to homes and businesses.
Owner Doug Temple said he did see a rise in interest in both products. However, there wasn’t much of a surge.
“We’ve probably had 20 or 30 inquiries, and they’re still trickling in,” Temple said.
Several signups
But not all those calls have turned into buyers.
“We’ve sold two RO [reverse osmosis] systems, and there have been maybe 15 or 20 signups for delivered water,” Temple said Thursday.
“It hasn’t been, ‘Oh, we’re on a windfall.’ “
Olympic’s reverse-osmosis systems, which can filter up to 50 gallons of water daily, cost $645, including installation. That sum could be helping hold back the flood of customers, Temple said.
Olympic Springs’ brochures state that reverse-osmosis filtration systems remove fluoride as well as arsenic, lead, copper, cadmium, mercury, nitrate, pesticides, heptachlor “and much more.”
Temple did not cite an independent laboratory study proving post-osmosis purity, however. Instead he presented a sheet listing the pollutants the systems take out, with the Environmental Protection Agency cited as the source.
There’s another factor, however, that Temple said he expects will drive up deliveries: summer.
Olympic Springs’ trucks deliver 700 five-gallon bottles a day during the winter, spring and fall. That number swells to 900 a day in July, August and September.
