Water Stores?
This area has hard water. HARD water. So hard I'm surprised that it flows. The Austin area is built on the Austin Chalk, a limestone formation that covers a large portion of the planet. The Austin Chalk is the same rock that appears as the white cliffs of Dover in England. So these two regions about six thousand miles apart were under the same ocean at the same time. Admittedly this was more than a couple weeks ago. Ask your neighborhood geologist.
The limestone is dissolved slowly into the ground water, which is then processed into water for your house. But limestone loves copper pipes, and will coat the insides of pipes in your house with new rock, much like cholesterol plaque in arteries. And it makes the water taste bad in the high concentrations we get here. Water softeners are the cure to both ills.
However, I see "water stores" in Round Rock and Pflugerville, a couple nearby towns that are famous for the limey-ness of their water. Retail water stores?
There are vending machines out front that will dispense gallons of tasty water for a fee. These are not unique. I have seen these elsewhere in Texas and even in California. Inside the store, presumably, they deal in larger quantities, or containers, or regular supply deliveries.
Of the three stores that I have seen within ten miles, two appear to be chains, on the main roads, in shopping centers. How bad does the local water have to be? I expected the Culligan man, but not a retail supplier.
2004-03