# Drinking greenish water

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-greenish-water/692348>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 4, 2014, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-greenish-water/692348 "2014-07-04T15:19:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 12

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**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2014, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinking-greenish-water/692348/12 "2014-07-05T01:31:48Z")

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Does it have to do with keeping water cooped up in a closed bottle without fresh air? Versus drinking pond water?

For several years I lived in a rural area – a trailer in a forest – drinking untreated water from a hole in the ground, occasionally skimming off the algae scum. So yeah, I glowed in the dark – but **chiroptera** asks about that like it’s a _bad_ thing!? 🙂

> [@Tiny Houses](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-houses/691679/18):
>
> Yes. Well pumped water into a HUGE tank elsewhere on the property. A portion of that water was periodically pumped into a smaller holding tank near the trailer, just a bit uphill from it so there was some naturally-occurring water pressure.
> 
> Somebody had to manually open the valves for a while, once a month or so, to refill the smaller holding tank. The procedure was to fill it until it overflows a little bit, so all the pond scum floating on top of the water runs off.
> 
> Water with pond scum tastes a hella lot better than city water full of chlorine.
> 
> (ETA: PS: If you liked that trailer picture, there’s about 6 more views of it there too, at: [Index of /pictures](http://doggie.freeshell.org/pictures/) )

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