Drinking water in Cozumel

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I got (really) sick twice in the 80s from contaminated ice/tap water. At this stage in life I do not risk it and have no qualms about using bottled water for brushing teeth when the local water supply is not reliable.

I have thought about buying one of the the filters mentioned above but it seems like overkill for the places I travel where bottle water is safe and available.
 
Sort of off topic but with Cozumel being the giant tourist/diver destination it is, why is the drinking water system so “crappy”? Why no investment in infrastructure?
 
Sort of off topic but with Cozumel being the giant tourist/diver destination it is, why is the drinking water system so “crappy”? Why no investment in infrastructure?
They have Melgar torn up in town working on it now.
 
Sort of off topic but with Cozumel being the giant tourist/diver destination it is, why is the drinking water system so “crappy”? Why no investment in infrastructure?
If they put perfectly pure water into the system by the time people drink it, it might be dangerous. Many people have cisterns under the concrete around their house with a concrete lid and a pump to pump it up to a tank on the roof. Multiroom hotels may have a 1/2" water feed because they can feed the cistern 24/7 so long as the city water is on. I have seen houses with the water off of the roof being fed to the cistern under the sidewalk. We stayed in one once, not in Coz, that had a leaky pressure tank on the pump on the roof. The water was continually recycled off of the roof, into the sidewalk cistern and pumped back to the roof tank. The water may be fine. Or it may not be fine.
 
They have Melgar torn up in town working on it now.
That work is not being done to address the "non-potability" of the "potable" water. The work being done on Melgar is to alleviate the back-up of raw sewage that so very often spews into the air from the manhole covers on Melgar because the small-diameter pipes can no longer handle (and weren't designed to handle) the volume of sewage that the city produces. That work is now is now three months behind schedule and who knows when it will be finished. They are not doing anything to the rest of the city's water distribution system, just Av. Melgar.

The system is operated by the state government's agency CAPA. They, like all the others water agencies in Mexico, focus on supplying water to homes and businesses at low pressure, so that the individuals must wait until the nighttime water pressure is enough to push the water to a roof-top tank, and then use either gravity or a pressure vessel to run it through the owner's home pipes. CAPA is not mandated to provide potable water; just water. There are no cities in Mexico that I know of that have truly potable water suppled to homes or businesses by the government.

In Cozumel's case, semi-brackish water is pumped from deep wells in the center of the island from our (once) freshwater aquifer. Over-pumping has allowed saltwater intrusion to foul the aquifer and the wells. That brackish water is pumped to a tank where it is chlorinated before being pumped at low pressure throughout the city through a web of pipes that are buried in trenches carved out of the solid bedrock. Laid out in the same trench alongside the city's water pipes are crumbling sewer pipes made from asbestos and cement. These sewer pipes leak into the trench underground, and wherever there is a leak in the low pressure "potable" water pipes, the raw sewage in the trench can infiltrate the water pipe, contaminating the once-purified water. The water arriving at your house is a mix of once-purified water and raw sewage.
 
That work is not being done to address the "non-potability" of the "potable" water. The work being done on Melgar is to alleviate the back-up of raw sewage that so very often spews into the air from the manhole covers on Melgar because the small-diameter pipes can no longer handle (and weren't designed to handle) the volume of sewage that the city produces. That work is now is now three months behind schedule and who knows when it will be finished. They are not doing anything to the rest of the city's water distribution system, just Av. Melgar.

The system is operated by the state government's agency CAPA. They, like all the others water agencies in Mexico, focus on supplying water to homes and businesses at low pressure, so that the individuals must wait until the nighttime water pressure is enough to push the water to a roof-top tank, and then use either gravity or a pressure vessel to run it through the owner's home pipes. CAPA is not mandated to provide potable water; just water. There are no cities in Mexico that I know of that have truly potable water suppled to homes or businesses by the government.

In Cozumel's case, semi-brackish water is pumped from deep wells in the center of the island from our (once) freshwater aquifer. Over-pumping has allowed saltwater intrusion to foul the aquifer and the wells. That brackish water is pumped to a tank where it is chlorinated before being pumped at low pressure throughout the city through a web of pipes that are buried in trenches carved out of the solid bedrock. Laid out in the same trench alongside the city's water pipes are crumbling sewer pipes made from asbestos and cement. These sewer pipes leak into the trench underground, and wherever there is a leak in the low pressure "potable" water pipes, the raw sewage in the trench can infiltrate the water pipe, contaminating the once-purified water. The water arriving at your house is a mix of once-purified water and raw sewage.
So I guess I will continue to brush my teeth with bottled water.
 
I’ll be using a purifier/bottle on top of provided purified water. Redundancy.
 
I’ll be using a purifier/bottle on top of provided purified water. Redundancy.
You are going to filter the bottled water?
 

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