By Peak Johnson

Jacksonville, FL, has a distinction that it may not want publicized too much. The city’s water quality has been ranked poorly by residents in a recent study by professors at the University of North Florida.

According to WJCT News, “A survey of the study was authored by Chiradip Chatterjee, assistant professor of economics; Russell Triplett, assistant professor of economics; and Parvez Ahmed, professor of accounting and finance.”

The survey examined how much residents would possibly pay to improveme the quality of their tap water. Ahmed said that he and others were able to estimate that “Jacksonville residents are willing to pay $6.22 in addition to their regular water bill.”

“They may not be willing to pay $6 a month — maybe they're willing to pay $2 or $3 a month,” Ahmed said. But, “if that addresses their perception of water quality, then that is a win ... for everybody.”

According to News4Jax, JEA, Jacksonville’s municipal water and electric utility, said that the city’s water is safe and that it tests it more than 50,000 times a year to make sure.

The study by the professors had sampled 700 random people. News4Jax was also able to develop its own survey by asking people how they felt about the tap water.

“All we do is drink the water out of the water softener at home and then here UNF provides filtered water and that’s the only time I use that is to fill up a water bottle. I never usually drink out of the fountains because it tastes like lead,” Michael Abear, a student of UNF, said.

Chatterjee told News4Jax, that “To summarize, the taste is bad, and my belief is that is what’s generating the concern of any kind of contaminates.”

Triplett added that “31 percent of residents surveyed said they are concerned or very concerned about getting sick from tap water; 32 percent said they somewhat agreed or strongly agreed that it has a foul smell or taste; and 34 percent said they somewhat or strongly believe that the water is in someway contaminated.”

To read more about how ratepayers perceive their tap water visit Water Online’s Consumer Outreach Solutions Center.