How Your Tap Water Gets Clean: The hidden journey from river to glass, revealed through science, history, and engineering.

The water in your glass may have been in a river, a lake, or deep underground only a day ago, carrying silt, microbes, and chemicals. By the time it reaches your tap it is clean enough to drink without a second thought. How does that transformation actually happen?Edward Callenford traces the hidden journey from source to glass: the screening and settling that strip out debris, the coagulation that clumps invisible particles into removable flocs, the filtration beds that polish the water clear, and the carefully judged disinfection that kills what remains without harming you. He explains the science behind each step, the public-health revolution that treated water sparked, and the modern threats, from aging pipes to new contaminants, that keep the work urgent.Clear, authoritative, and illustrated with original diagrams, this book reveals the quiet engineering that made safe drinking water, one of humanity's greatest lifesavers, feel utterly ordinary.