Roseburg Fire Department Assistant Chief Dave Newquist, left, sample water last Thursday. At right is city police Chief Gary Klopfenstein and Public Works Director Dawn Easley.

Judges were poised and ready to score four different glasses of water from four different water districts around the state Thursday for the American Water Works Association best tasting water competition and meter challenge.

Klamath Falls walked away with the best tasting water, followed by Medford. Roseburg placed third.

Roseburg Fire Department Assistant Chief Dave Newquist, Roseburg Police Department Chief Gary Klopfenstein and Roseburg Public Works Director Dawn Easley judged the competition.

“One of these had like a little taste of chlorine in the aftertaste,” Newquist said. “But overall, they really just taste the same. It’s hard to judge.”

Each judge was tasked with ranking each of the four glasses of water from each district on categories like appearance, odor, taste and after taste. Each category was ranked from one through 10.

“It’s hard to taste the difference, they really all just taste the same,” Klopfenstein said.

It was a seemingly impossible task to taste the subtle nuisances between different glasses of water, but they are there. According to Roseburg Water Plant treatment operator Shawn Tew, taste comes from the treatment of the water. Each plant follows the required regulations and standards set by the state but not all water plants treat their water the same way.

“A lot of it depends on the type of treatment you’re doing. We’re a conventional treatment plant,” Tew said. “Basically we run it like you would run water through a river. We have activated charcoal, then we have some garnet, then some rocks.”

The different minerals and chemicals contribute to the overall taste as they leave behind different flavor profiles in the water. According to Tew, what makes Roseburg’s plant conventional is in how they don’t use membranes or UV light.

Since Klamath Falls walked away with the best tasting water, they will be competing in the section competition in Spokane, Washington, in May.

“We have the National American Water Works Association and it’s broken down into sections. Our section is Oregon, Washington and Idaho,” said Central Point Public Works Department Assistant Cyndi Weeks. “It’s a tier thing, the winner of today’s competition gets to go to the section competition and the winner of that one goes to the national competition.”

In order to compete in Thursday’s competition, each water treatment plant from each district must have a stellar record.

“In order to compete you can’t have any water violations,” Tew said.

Tew won the meter challenge, where contestants were tasked with putting together a water meter as fast as they could. Time was deducted if there was a fault in their meter when tested.

Tew won with an assembly time of 55 seconds and no faults in his meter.

“This is my first time, ever. It was pretty exciting, I was pretty happy,” Tew said. “I am going to be heading up to Spokane to do the exact same thing in May.”