by nabanga » Fri Jan 13, 2017 8:39 am
It is safe to drink - they don't just test it leaving the plant but also at many end user points round the city on a daily basis. The Phnom Penh Water Authority has had hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into it by the Japanese over the last 15 years, and they are still involved. They have won all sorts of regional awards for being a tight outfit, reducing leakage right down, and water quality. The very low leakage in Phnom Penh means the possibility of contamination through a hole in the pipe in low pressure areas is slim. I've had a couple of tours round the plant and it is as good as I've worked on in places like NZ and Australia, and they also have some top notch Khmer staff.
There is this paranoia about tap water in general that has been propagated by the bottled water industry over the last 20 years or so - but we should be far more cautious about the 20 litre bottles sold. Those "factories" generally take tap water, run it through a basic UV unit that is far too small for the volumes being treated, and put it into a dirty bottle that hasn't been disinfected since new. I tested water from 13 different bottled water companies once in another country and 12 of them failed WHO drinking water standards because the re-used bottles were full of bacteria, algae and in some cases, mosquito larvae.
Phnom Penh tap water quality is in the top 2 in Asia.
It is safe to drink - they don't just test it leaving the plant but also at many end user points round the city on a daily basis. The Phnom Penh Water Authority has had hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into it by the Japanese over the last 15 years, and they are still involved. They have won all sorts of regional awards for being a tight outfit, reducing leakage right down, and water quality. The very low leakage in Phnom Penh means the possibility of contamination through a hole in the pipe in low pressure areas is slim. I've had a couple of tours round the plant and it is as good as I've worked on in places like NZ and Australia, and they also have some top notch Khmer staff.
There is this paranoia about tap water in general that has been propagated by the bottled water industry over the last 20 years or so - but we should be far more cautious about the 20 litre bottles sold. Those "factories" generally take tap water, run it through a basic UV unit that is far too small for the volumes being treated, and put it into a dirty bottle that hasn't been disinfected since new. I tested water from 13 different bottled water companies once in another country and 12 of them failed WHO drinking water standards because the re-used bottles were full of bacteria, algae and in some cases, mosquito larvae.
Phnom Penh tap water quality is in the top 2 in Asia.