Belgrade tap water named best in Montana

BUTTE, Mont. — The city of Belgrade has earned some serious bragging rights.

The city of Belgrade’s tap water won a blind taste test on Thursday morning at a joint conference of the Montana Section of the American Water Works Association (MSAWWA) and the Montana Water Environment Association (MWEA).

Belgrade now moves onto the national AWWA annual conference in Washington D.C. in June, where they will compete for the People’s Choice and Best of The Best Awards.

Montana tap water has scored well at the national conference in the past. In 2015, the Big Sky County Water and Sewer District won the Best of the Best award. In 2019, Bozeman won third place in the Best of the Best competition.

Water is judged based on taste, clarity, aftertaste, and odor.

“It is definitely a point of pride and a little bit competitive between communities around Montana. It’s pretty fun to see the operators that work so hard on their water sources and bringing that into their communities to be able to take that to even the state level and the national level, and take home a prize for that,” said Carrie Gardner, national director for the Montana section of the AWWA and a water/wastewater regional team manager for Great West Engineering. “So, it’s truly important to everyone here just to deliver clean, safe, water. But that’s also a fun aspect, to be able to have some bragging rights, too.”

Belgrade was one of only three cities that provided samples of their water to the conference this year, joining Missoula and Kalispell.

Thursday’s taste test was part of the final day of the conference, where operators, engineers, consultants, and regulators from across the state work together to protect Montana’s water resources.

This year’s conference theme was Resiliency and Risk.

“All of us are here because we care about the communities we live in in Montana and being able to have drought resistant systems,” said Gardner. “Water is a critical resource. So our focus is delivering clean water, public health, and safety. Making sure we have sources available, and, that we’re cleaning that water going back so we can have less environmental impacts and be able to reduce the issues that drought causes.”