@sun That said, there are plenty of water systems that skimp on maintenance in order to increase profits & dividends. The water system in the town I recently left had gone something like 20 years without upgrading their pipes until constant breaks and water loss started to affect their profits. Then they pushed through a big price increase (they were already the highest priced in the area) and began a multi-year replacement program.

If you weren't in one of the parts of town where water mains repeatedly broke, you wouldn't know. (One water main burst and flooded the garage where I used to live. Another one blocked off access to a neighborhood as a torrent of water deep enough to carry away cars came across multiple roads. A close friend's parent's house used to have floods running across their driveway multiple times per year.)

So there's no assurance that the water coming from the pipes is actually germ-free, as no one knows what it may have picked up from the ground during the trip.