City turned water off, now it's back on it smells!

Hi All

Wondered if anyone had any experience of this...the city turned the water off in my street a couple of days ago. I'm not entirely sure why the water was shut off but they have been installing a new pump station for my area (I'm at the top of a hill).

Since the water has come back on it has smelt. Hard to describe the smell, it's not really nasty more of a chemical smell.

Any ideas?

Call the water dept. and ask what was done...

Yeah, gonna do that in the morning. I was hoping to be armed with some possibilities. San Francisco here, I know calling the water dept is going to be a painful experience.

Anytime the water is turned off, then back on again, you will dislodge some of the crud accumulated on the insides of the pipe. If they replaced some stuff, bits could have been welded, either with arc welders if steel or chemically. It takes awhile for that to be flushed out. Not normally unhealthy, just unpleasant.

And then there's this thread:

Toxic water

So called the water dept, actually very easy - got right through to the person who could help (sort of).

So they just switched my neighbourhood over to new holding tanks. They have no idea what is causing the smell but are getting about a dozen calls a day on it. They have been back up to flush again today but the problem persists.

They told me they did all the required VOC tests etc and that the water is safe to drink.

However, it worries me that they say they don't know what could be causing it - you'd think there'd only be so many reasons and that after a couple days they would have checked all the possibilities by now.

Anyway, I'm going to stick to bottled water because my stuff taste so bad right now. I'll post again when I hear more.