If you’re buying bottled water by the case during a recession, contributing to the multitude of plastic at our landfill and carelessly feeding a culture of litter at our parks and rivers, all because you believe Lake Waco water tastes awful, here’s a news flash: Change your ways because the water’s fine.

We never guessed we’d be saying that. For years, Wacoans and those towns that contract to buy Lake Waco water had to endure musty-tasting water that definitely had a “nose” to it, the result of blue-green algae blooms fragmenting in Lake Waco, leaving a pungent if harmless chemical called geosmin in the water. It’s actually more complicated than that, but suffice it to say that this annoying problem proved especially discouraging earlier this decade.

But a blind taste test by area leaders, overseen by Tribune-Herald staff writer J.B. Smith, signals things have changed for the better and may improve further. Smith conducted his test after a new $50 million treatment plant went online this month. Among other things, it will purify our lake water through “dissolved air flotation” technology.

Surprise: Not only did most of the folks doing the taste test — including three members of the Tribune-Herald editorial board — highly rate that water purified through the new plant but also lake water processed through earlier, activated-carbon technology. Other water for the test came from a bottled water company and a Woodway water well.

Results were mixed, but Lake Waco water treated through the new technology consistently scored at or near the top with close to the same results for our lake water treated through previous technology. The bottled water scored well but not so often as our lake water. The Woodway water scored so-so, with some noting its “funky” smell.

All of this reflects what we’ve quietly noticed in recent years. Even before the new plant went online, the city of Waco made significant strides in improving the taste of local water, something worth toasting. Water quality official Tom Conry tells us this is due to several things, ranging from the drought of 2005-2006, to the flooding that dominated much of 2007, to the fact that city officials are simply becoming more adept at battling taste and odor problems. He says our water will taste even better once the new plant begins using ozone to disinfect pre-treated water this fall, giving it a “crisper and sweeter taste.”

So for all of you who take bottled water when hiking or biking or on any other recreational endeavor or jaunt, it’s time you change your wasteful ways. Begin by more readily using local tap water instead of bottled water. If need be, buy a canteen. There’s no longer any good excuse not to.

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