Nature
PUBLISHED
You may have never heard of Onoway, Alberta, a snoozy town with a population of just 1,029 Canadians. It does have a Wikipedia page, which notes that “every June, Onoway has a fair weekend,” and that a new high school is in the process of being built.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.It also has pink tap water.
According to the mayor, this is not a normal occurrence. This “alarming” hue is due to the unfortunate side-effect of a common water treatment chemical named potassium permanganate. Normally used to extract smelly and dangerous hydrogen sulfide from the water, a valve malfunction caused it to escape into the main water supply.
Although it can cause some skin irritation, there’s little else it can do except convince people seeing it gush forth from their taps that they’ve been experimenting with hallucinogenic substances without knowing.
The problem is currently being sorted, so don’t expect to head there in time to see the unfortunate magic still happening.
[H/T: BBC News]
