Have you ever stopped to think about how many times a day you use water from a faucet or tap? We all use water many times a day for a number of different reasons but have you ever thought about how it gets here and what makes it safe to drink?

It's a long journey from the tank to the tap and a lot of hard work goes into ensuring the water received and then distributed throughout Naval Station Rota is purified and safe to drink. To ensure the process continues to work smoothly, a collaborative team of drinking water experts visited to verify that our water system is up to standards.

Assessment team members from Navy Region Europe, Africa, Southwest Asia (EURAFSWA), Navy Environmental Preventative Medicine Unit and Naval Engineering Facilities Atlantic visited the installation April 30 to May 4 to conduct a sanitary survey on the installation drinking water system, a survey that is conducted every three years on all overseas installations.

"These surveys ensure that our drinking water is safe to drink and meets the same standards that stateside drinking water does," said Amos Webb, installation environmental programs director. "They assessed whether Naval Station Rota is working towards the appropriate standards."

The water's journey begins at the Spanish Water Treatment Plant located 30 kilometers outside of Jerez. It then travels via pipeline to surrounding cities, as well as Naval Station Rota's Granulated Activated Carbon (GAC) Plant.

"The GAC Plant gets all of the impurities out," said Webb. "The reason for the GAC Plant isn't because the water provided by the Spanish isn't clean, it's because we store some water for an extended period of time for reserve where the Spanish do not."

Webb explained the reason for holding the stored reserves is for emergency firefighting operations and in the event of an emergency where we lose the ability to receive new water from the Spanish Water Treatment Plant.

From there, the water is dispersed straight to base housing, DGF schools and the pier facilities, to include the ships and tanks 69 and 70. The industrial side of the base gets all of their drinking water from the two million gallon capacity water tower, tank 69, while tank 70 is used primarily to refill the water tower.

The assessment team had multiple checkpoints along the journey to observe the physical condition of the water distribution and treatment system, the sampling process and evaluate the ability to respond to any problems should they arise.

"Our goal is a better, more resilient water system for all of us and we did very well," said Webb.

Webb credits our outstanding water treatment and distribution system to the hardworking men and women of Naval Station Rota's Utilities Energy Management (UEM) Division within the Public Works Department.

"Our UEM folks do a lot of the hard work to ensure we have safe drinking water throughout the base," said Webb. They sample, they test, they manage the GAC plant and replace the filter banks and overall preventative maintenance of our system."

While some samples of water need to be sent off for testing, The NAVSEA-certified Naval Station Rota water-testing laboratory, led by Angela Urbina, can do most testing locally. In fact, Naval Station Rota was the first installation throughout Navy Region EURAFSWA to have the water quality operators fully qualified.

"It's evident that they really do care about the quality of our water," said Webb of the UEM team. "It's a comfort to me to know that the people operating the system are very professional, they know what they're doing and they take very good care of our drinking water and the system."

Naval Station Rota enables and supports operations of U.S. and allied forces and provides quality services in support of the fleet, fighter and family for Commander, Navy Installations Command in Navy Region EURAFSWA.

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For more news from Naval Station Rota, Spain, visit www.navy.mil/.