Some Steinbach residents have been getting visits in recent weeks from door-to-door sales people who are trying to sell them expensive water treatment systems. But do we need them?

The head of Water Works for the City of Steinbach says the city makes it a top priority that the water coming through the taps meets a high standard. Mike Heppner outlines the rigorous testing that is done.

"Every morning, first thing, there is an operator that enters the pumping stations and the treatment plant and we do water testing through those particular facilities. That happens Monday

Mike Heppner, head of Steinbach Water Worksthrough Sunday, seven days a week. Even on weekends, there are guys coming in to confirm. On Tuesday's, typically, there are a barrage of samples taken at six or seven locations and those samples are sent in to a third party lab in Winnipeg and analyzed and those reports are sent directly to the Drinking Water Officer. If there is any indicator showing on any of those samples, as soon as the lab recognizes it, there are phone calls made both to the Drinking Water Officer and also to myself and our primary operator. More often than not, it's a site error or a sampling error that's been made. We haven't had any situations where we've had indicators like that which have been legitimate."

Heppner says the underground water that Steinbach taps into does not require a lot of treatment.

"It is a simple water to treat. We're dealing with groundwater which typically does not have some of the characteristics that surface water does as far as viruses and bacteria. The primaries that we deal with are ammonia and iron. We have vertical pressure filters at the plant that remove the iron and the chlorine that we add burns off the ammonia."

He notes Steinbach has developed a tradition of maintaining a high standard of tap water and is committed to continuing that in the future.

"There's a pride in our crew that drives us to try and maintain that high level. It was that way before I started and I've tried to keep it that way."