Here’s Where You’ll Find The Award-Winning, Best-Tasting Tap Water In Iowa

We've all come across tap water that's a little...off.

Luckily for a lot of us, we don't have to have water purification to drink water straight out of the faucet. But there are some places that have either kinda cloudy or weird tap water and there are some places that just have the crispy, clean tap water.

The Iowa Section of the American Water Works Association recently held a contest to see what Iowa city has the best-tasting tap water that was held at the association's annual state conference.

Local personalities and conference attendees picked a winner based on categories like appearance, odor, aftertaste, and mouthfeel.

And the winner, claiming their 5th title for this, was:

Cedar Rapids

Cedar Rapids is of course very proud of this. The city's Utilities Director Roy Hesemann told KCRG:

We are proud of the consistent, reliable experience our customers can expect when they turn on the tap. City staff work hard to provide clean, safe, and great-tasting water to our residents and customers every minute of every day.

Cedar Rapids won the same award in 2012, 2013, 2022, and 2023. Ames won last year (which actually also marked their 5th victory in the contest).

Here's how it works: the judging panel gets small glasses filled with tap water from different cities. They have saltine crackers as a palate cleanser. There's no list of which cities were taken into the competition.

The win advances Cedar Rapids to the national competition. In that, Denver won best-tasting tap water in the latest competition this summer.