At RV dump stations there is a hole in the middle to dump gray water or black water. There is a freshwater hose there in the middle to wash away any spillage. Then, out at the ends of the dump island, there are spigots of fresh water that are deemed safe.
The hose in the middle is labeled as non-potable.
This is what the spigot at the end of the island looks like.
Contaminated water and safe water. Of course, we only want to fill up our tanks with safe water. But then I had to start wondering about how different is the water, really, from these two different sources. Do we really think that there is plumbing for two different kinds of water underneath every RV dump station; treated water and untreated water? I don’t think so. That’s way too much work; too much infrastructure.
Here is what I think. Each outlet is delivering water from the exact same source. The danger of the middle hose is that it might get contaminated by people using it to rinse out dump hoses, so they label the water from that spigot as non-potable. I don’t know if this explanation is true or not, but it answers my burning question, and I can move on.
