Aurora’s drinking water was judged the best in Kane County this year.
The city’s Water Production Division won the prize for 2021 out of eight total municipalities submitting samples in a recent competition.
The water was judged on three categories: taste, color and odor. A panel of judges in the Kane County Water Association compared samples from Aurora, Carpentersville, Geneva, Montgomery, North Aurora, St. Charles, Sugar Grove and West Dundee.
It was the first time Aurora earned the top ranking in four years.
At the Dec. 21 Aurora City Council meeting, Mayor Richard Irvin and members of the City Council raised a toast to the Water Production Division for winning the award for the eighth time in the 24 years it has been given.
The city’s water now advances to the Illinois WaterCon Competition in March 2022, which Aurora has won five times.
Dave Schumacher, Aurora’s water superintendent, said “a lot goes on behind the scenes” to create the city’s water supply, which is a mixture of Fox River water with water from wells.
The city operates a large intake and water production plant at Route 25 and Mitchell Road where it brings water in from the river, treats it, and distributes it throughout the city.
The use of river water once made a former Aurora alderman nickname the water, “Fox on the Rocks.”
Schumacher recognized people from the maintenance, testing and operations parts of the Water Production Division as all having to do their jobs to make the water good in the city. He quipped that the main job of management is to “remove the obstacles for all the others.”
