They measure water in parts-per-trillion these days and our pal Doug Workman of Liberty Pure continues to educate Nestor on some Baltimore water basics about well water, reservoir, contaminates and ways to make sure it’s Liberty Pure – fresh and safe. Have you seen this truck?
Nestor Aparicio and Doug Workman discuss the importance of water quality in Baltimore. Doug highlights the need for regular water testing, noting that contaminants like pesticides and pharmaceuticals are now detected in parts per trillion, a significant improvement from parts per million in the past. Doug’s company, Liberty Pure Solutions, offers whole-house water treatment and purifiers. They discuss the impact of road salt and industrial waste on water quality, particularly in wells. Doug emphasizes the importance of local water treatment and the advancements in technology, such as hydrogen water. Nestor promotes upcoming events and sponsorships related to water quality and community engagement.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Water quality, Liberty Pure Solutions, water testing, water treatment, contaminated water, well water, reservoirs, water purification, water safety, Baltimore water, water contaminants, water filtration, water standards, water quality issues, water education.
SPEAKERS
8Doug Workman, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:02
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T am 1570 tassel, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are taking the Maryland crab cake tour back out on the road. We have really good crab cakes over Beaumont. Last week we had rocker Johnny Allen came out with us. NFL agent Chad Weasley. You’ll hear it all this week, as well as former Councilman Tom quirk, who talked about budgets and tariffs and money and state money and federal money, all at Beaumont last week, we also talked to Chef Maurice, which is pretty good over there. Back to the Future tickets. We gave away a few lucky ones over at the Beaumont last week, we’re going to be at Cooper’s north on Wednesday the 23rd then at Cocos on the 30th of April, and then on the red brick station in White Marsh on the seventh, with our Back to the Future promotion. It is spring, Lucas covering football. Lucas covering baseball. We’re talking about it each and every day here at am 1570 and it’s a sponsors like Doug workman and our friends at Liberty, pure solutions that come together and not just come on and talk water sports or politics or life or business, or those trucks. You that I see, I should send you a picture every time I see one of your trucks on the top side of the boat way, but just we’re all drinking water every single day. And, you know, in a contaminated world, I always like to get educated. So once or twice a month you bring Doug Ryan, how you doing? Happy spring to you. Spring. 80 degrees. It’s nice, good, good golf weather, you know,
Doug Workman 01:23
gorgeous out. Happy
Nestor Aparicio 01:26
Good Friday. Happy Good Friday as we tape this, and no question about it. So I have some notes here on water and I drive past lock Raven. I’ve fished in pretty boy with Dan Rodricks years ago when he tried to take me out of fish the water and where it comes from. And for most people in Baltimore, what do they need to know about their water?
8Doug Workman 01:51
I think it’s all different. So they gotta start by having it tested, and then just treat what they’re what they’re concerned about. So we, we do a typical whole house water treatment, but it also do a lot of water purifiers where people are worried about the quality what they’re drinking.
Nestor Aparicio 02:09
I’m from Colgate, East Point. I don’t need to say, and this is certainly not offensive to my friends at Costas, because we’ve all been to Dundalk. But you know, I grew up right across the street from the poop plant, like, literally, right at backwater. My best friend in the world as a child worked there 35 years and is now retired because he’s young and smart, not like me, but, you know, so I’ve had more than five beers with him, talking about, we don’t call it the poop plant. We have another four letter word for it. And when we drive by, you know, there’s that odiferous odor, and the back River was always like, and I’m from that area, from I mean, we fished catfish the whole deal the back river. But, you know, and I think to myself, alright, water, wood, water, taste act differently there on that side of town, because it’s different than you’re close to the reservoir or further away. Sometimes I’m up by MC falls. We’re chasing eagles, you know, as we go up above Cromwell, and I see the falls there, and the water looks so spectacular and beautiful. And I’m like, I’m gonna drink that in a couple of hours. I’m gonna flush it, you know, no matter where I am, I just think about water, and I think about how we’re all drinking in it. Is it different when you see water from West Baltimore, East Baltimore, different reservoirs to when you test it? Does it feel and look and smell, and is it just different everywhere?
Doug Workman 03:33
Yeah, it’s it all comes from different sources. Some of it’s well water. Some of it comes from the reservoirs. You can just Google the results of a lot of the water testing around. It’s got pesticides as well as pharmaceuticals, all the chemotherapy drugs, all the low blood pressure medication, all that shows up in the water supply. Eventually, because you can’t pull that much water out of the ground, you have to recycle some of it, and the more it gets recycled, the dirtier it can be.
Nestor Aparicio 04:03
8Doug, how long you’ve been doing this? At Liberty, pure, how long you’ve been a water guy, 35 years. So let’s go. That’s that takes us. I’m just trying to do the math on that. So that’s 1990 right? So that’s right around I went on the air in 91 so I feel like I’m good at what I do. I probably know more about the Orioles and the Ravens than anybody I’ve ever known, or anybody I’ve ever known, or anybody that anybody will ever know. So I feel strongly about that. But if I did water every day for 35 years, I know this thing started with me having to be in a radio station. Have a radio tower. Now. I have video. I have all this. The technology has come so far in my industry that when young people come to me, I don’t even know what to tell them about getting into journalism or getting a newspaper job or a magazine job, or like a television job, or being Vince Bagley, or any of that, right? I would think the water part of this, you just mentioned chemotherapy, you know, all of these things that might not have been floating around in the water in 1991 or not as prevalent. Or maybe I’m even wrong. Maybe the water is clean. Now, I don’t know, but the testing part and the science part of little Nestor being pool boy, trying to get the chlorine right, seeing the little numbers right, and the little thing to what kind of testing is available now, not to mention what kind of crap they’re finding in the water, right?
Doug Workman 05:16
Yeah, today, we’re testing in parts per trillion. When I started in the business we were testing in parts per million. So it’s gotten much better. The testing a trillions,
Nestor Aparicio 05:24
a lot more than a million. I did the math the other day with Tom Quirk. We’re talking about budgets and deficits.
Doug Workman 05:29
Yeah, yeah. Trillion takes a lot longer to pay back than a million.
8Nestor Aparicio 05:33
Oh, yeah. But it’s not only that. We just say million, billion, trillion, and it’s like they’re one apart. No, there are hundreds of zero, you know, there’s zeros apart. And I the same thing with my wife, right? My wife had leukemia, and this is in 14 and 15, and we’re talking blood right, blood cancer. And we’re going to do a big segment on Wednesday. Good plug. Thank you. At Cooper’s north, we’re going to be doing this for LLS. Ron Schultz, my high school athletic director, his son, Nick Schultz, Curtis Schultz, everybody remembers from the Terps, we’re all going to be together talking about visionary of the year and blood. But I was blown away tug, and it’s one of the things that took me a little bit away from sports to come talk about parts per billion Carl Sagan stuff and water and and water safety while I’m selling your plumbing, and everybody needs you. Everybody needs someone like you, whether it’s they certainly want clean water in their home, and they certainly need a filtration system. And if they don’t, they spring a leak, they need you. They they have a bathroom, they have running water. They need you. So, I mean, you know, from across the board, it’s better than selling pizza, to some degree, because not everybody eats pizza. But I would just say, you know, the testing part of this for my wife and seeing every single day that these doctors would come down with sheets of data about her blood, stuff I’ve never heard of stuff. I don’t want to hear about it again. Same thing about IP Fauci and all the things that you talk to me about. I’m not a scientist, and I’m going to go play one on the radio, but it is amazing how testing works, and what you can find that look, I’m not here to scare anybody about their water. I’m just trying to to educate them to knowing what clean water is versus what you might be getting out of your tap water, or if you’re drinking, you know, fountain water out of the bubble, or at the park or whatever. I’m much more worried about that than I was when I was 20 years old. And when you got into business
Doug Workman 07:27
in 1988 Baltimore was rated number three in top quality water in the world, in the country. But I think that was taste and the things that we’re testing for now, we had no idea what PFAs was. We had no idea. You know, the levels of lead have gone from five parts per million down to like 15 parts per trillion that are allowable in the water. And that’s a huge difference. And treating to those standards at a municipal level is almost impossible. If it’s not possible for every 100 gallons of water that the municipalities produce for us to consume, we only use one of it for personal use. The rest goes to industry. So from a practical standpoint, it doesn’t even make sense to treat it to that level. But they couldn’t, if they had to, they when you say goes to industry,
Nestor Aparicio 08:15
you mean car wash, yeah? Car washes? Yep.
Doug Workman 08:21
8Manufacturing. Toilets, you know, office buildings, not
Nestor Aparicio 08:25
none what I would say in an airplane, non potable. You know, water that we’re not really drinking right,
Doug Workman 08:30
water that doesn’t need to be potable, but they’re making it to a potable level, which, you know, it’s understandable why they can only treat to a certain level and a certain standard. We know chlorine byproducts triomethylene or carcinogens, but we still use chlorine to take care of the bacteria in our water, because that makes you sick right away. But most people don’t want to bathe in chlorine or drink chlorine. They know the concerns about it
Nestor Aparicio 08:55
well. I don’t think there’s any question. If you travel at all, and you know, whatever hotel room you’re in, you get a, you know, you draw some water in every hotel everywhere in the world there’s bottled water because, like, it’s just not, I don’t know whether we get sick from it or get long term cancer from, you know, moving around and drinking different waters in different places, but I do know if you have contaminated water where you Live, it’s the worst thing in the world, right? And what? Give me a horror story? Give me you got a call and you tested water. You’re like, holy smokes, whoo. What is in your water? Does that happen? Once a week, once a month, once a year, in the modern you’re just out in Kearney or Parkville or Perry Hall, wherever you are, do you ever find a nightmare?
8Doug Workman 09:43
Yeah, I would say that we find nightmares more than than we’d like to but not much surprises me anymore, but we do find certain areas where we’ve put systems in because the people gave us water tests that were done by, typically, a water treatment company or a door to door salesman. They weren’t that accurate, and we’ve got one right now that actually has sea water coming into their wells. And took a sea water system like you put on a yacht to get rid of the water, get the water down to where it was potable. What part of town was this that that the most recent one was down, for sure, but we have a lot of salt intruded Wells from road salt in the Baltimore County, Carroll County, Harford County areas. It’s the same type of situation. You have to take the salt out, Desalinate it, or take the chlorides out before you can can use it, because it destroys all your appliances. Very similar to a pH or a low acidic problem
Nestor Aparicio 10:41
is that where you see that green, blue thing at the bottom, yep, it’s
Doug Workman 10:45
just, it’s just very aggravated if you have a lot of high chlorides from either salt or potassium, Baltimore County spreads a liquid potassium, which is probably a calcium base cat. So it’s calcium chloride more than sodium chloride, but it typically comes from the salt they put on the road of whatever capacity. Sometimes they’ll put a salt dome where they store the salt. And if it’s somewhere near, near a a well, it can become contaminated. So those are the most, I would say, egregious systems we have that cost a lot of money to get the problem solved. But obviously, if you can’t use your water, it’s it’s a far price to pay half having to move if you can’t use the water. So
Nestor Aparicio 11:27
8why would you not jump in the Inner Harbor with the mayor of Baltimore last year and swim in it? Why? Why would that be a bad idea? Have
Doug Workman 11:34
you ever seen the bodies floating in there? No, and the syringes.
Nestor Aparicio 11:38
Well, just the notion that some of the greats in the city are marked, this goes directly to the bay. Don’t put things in it. Nobody pay, I mean, nobody pays attention to trash in our society, anywhere in this country. It’s not a Baltimore problem or a city problem or county. It’s just like in a general sense. But that part of it, and, you know, I lived at the harbor for 20 years. I would not float. I would not jump in the way my floating water, but I wouldn’t jump in the water. And, you know, look, man, we swam that rocky point as kids, right? And I would say back River was this and that, but rocky points around them, around the bend, that’s the thing. Man, it’s all connected. That’s, that’s the part of all of it that it’s all connected that. You know, I don’t Republican, Democrat. I remember had Martin O’Malley did an hour on water because that after he was governor, that was sort of like his whole thing was, like, we need to keep the bay clean. It’s the most important thing. And I know you don’t have talk politics in the past, but what is the government’s responsibility to water? Because you’re clearly unhappy with it, you make a living off keeping people’s water clean, because the government can’t make it as clean as they want. To make it right. But you know, there’s a hell of a responsibility to make sure Flint Michigan doesn’t happen again. I mean, I’ll just say that that’s not Republican or Democratic, that’s just
Doug Workman 12:54
human, yep, we call it flushing or brushing. It’s the same water. So a lot of times, back in the day, in the 80s, I was a door to door salesman for water treatment, and I know one of the one of the things we did is take a brand new toothbrush out of the package and dip it in the back of the toilet, the toilet tank, and then handed the people see if they want to brush their teeth, because at the end of the day, it’s the same water that you’re pulling out of your tap if you’re not purifying it, and it doesn’t, doesn’t need to be said. We used to be very concerned about scare tactics, but honestly, the the news, the public news, is scarier than anything that our company would say. But I think people are very concerned about it. And as a local, not only a distributor, but we’re we do our own manufacturing. So when people buy from us, they’re buying manufactured direct pricing. And we we manufacture what we sell in service. So it’s all in house. Nobody, nobody’s going to pass the buck if there’s anything that needs to be corrected. And we’re able to do the whole project with having a having a lab and and having our water treatment in one place. They just have to make one stop and and take care of the problem. I like
8Nestor Aparicio 14:05
when you say lab, it makes you feel like a scientist, like it’s like your doctor, Doug Workman, you know what I mean. But the lab, then the lab brings me water like this. So you bring me you every time I’m over, you’re like, take a couple cases of water. I’m like, my water’s clean. I got a sister lad take and put it in car. You’ll have it. It’s really good. It really does taste good. I But, but you literally on your trucks. If you go to somebody’s house and they have a problem, you leave them water so they can drink, right? I mean, and it’s brandy you have. But I, when I’m at your place and your places, and I should say this, Doug workman from Liberty, pure solutions, is our guest and our friend and our sponsor. But it keeps my water clean. Helps me when my water heater blows up, help me get my plumbing together, help me with well water and green things. So we’ve been at this about a decade, and I got introduced to him by Matt Stover, maybe a decade a half ago, but you always give me these and you’re as local as anybody. I mean, right off on sweet Ave road right off four corners, and every time I’m there, you give me these things. But. This lab you speak of, educate me. What have I I’ve known you too long to know what really happens if I sent you over to my kid’s house in Dundalk and said, Hey, go test his water, tell him what he’s got or whatever. What? What does that mean? They call you and then you come out, what happens? We
Doug Workman 15:17
do a lot of on site testing, which is typically by our technicians, and it gives us a rough idea what’s going on in the water. If somebody wants bacteria or metals or nitrates tested. We actually bought envirochem, which was a long term lab here in the Cockeysville, and we bought it, moved it up to Freeland and renamed it Aqua lab USA, and they do state certified testing on some compliance testing and things like that. And we’re eventually trying to figure out how to merge the two with a retail store up there in Freeland. But testing is as important as treatment. If you don’t know exactly what the before tests are, it’s kind of hard to know what you’re treating for. So we like to do an actual scientific lab. They’re way over my head when they’re talking, but they’re they’re actual scientists, chemists, biologists that do the water testing for a lot of other sources, but obviously Liberty pure taps into them because they’re very efficient and accurate. And so our customers can run up there and drop off a bacteria sample for like, 15 bucks just to check it once a year. In case there’s an issue, especially on wells, the health department suggests you get your water tested at least once a year. Okay,
Nestor Aparicio 16:31
well, I’m glad you’re I mean, you guys come in, you keep me clean. I got well water. And, you know, I grew up on tap water. I don’t know which one’s better or worse, right? Like when you buy a push, Oh, they got well water. Is that? Is it good? Is it bad? I don’t know. I just know it’s not what I grew up with. It’s like, Hey, you have an electric stove or gas. So what about, you know, they both fried chicken. But you know, which one do you have in is there a better, you know, in that case, when you I guess it depends on which well, you’re sitting on Yeah. Well,
Doug Workman 17:01
8people used to think city water was always better, but the fact is that either way, you’ve got to be responsible for your own water quality. So with the well, you have a variance of problems, but you’re not paying it to have it delivered. So it’s usually a little bit cheaper. But at the same time, you can either have great well and great quality water which is rare or you have small problems, or that you need to treat it just like a municipal does for municipal water. But as we all know, prices are getting crazy for any utility, so water and sewer prices constantly are going up. So I would prefer to have a well, because I’m in control of it, and all I’m doing is paying the Elector, and then I can purify it to the level that I want for my family.
Nestor Aparicio 17:45
And you can always get it perfect, right? I mean, you know, it’s perfect for human consumption, as you like it to be, right? Until
Doug Workman 17:52
we start testing for whatever it is past a trillion. I don’t know what that number is, quadrillion.
Nestor Aparicio 17:58
When’s the last time it happened? What, you know? What I mean, you’re not the scientist. But when the science comes along, they’re like, We can do this even better. Hey, I would think right now, if you have leukemia in 2025 God willing, because of all the work everybody’s done in science and whatever, I would think the testing is better now than it was 10 years ago. I just wouldn’t believe that
8Doug Workman 18:16
absolutely. And there’s new technologies coming out all the time right now I’m drinking hydrogen water, but you can’t, you can’t bottle that. You have to make it as you’re drinking it. There’s a lot of talk about free radicals and stuff. So we take our reverse osmosis water and we hydrogenate it, but you have to do that with, Oh
Nestor Aparicio 18:35
man, we’re running out of time. Your osmosis, reverse what on our next episode this year for liberty, pure solutions. Uh, we’ll get him back on. Spring has sprung. Tell everybody how to find you and your crew, and I had to get in touch with you. And you’ve been a recurring guest around here for a long time, and we talk about you the ads and whatnot. But sometimes I like take a little deep dive and learn about the water and really educate other people, because we’re all we’re all drinking from the same pond.
Doug Workman 19:01
That’s it. Well, the easiest thing is our 800 numbers one, 800 clean water. That’s easy to remember, but we have a website. It’s liberty, pure com and our local number of courses, as it’s been for 35 years, is 410-527-1024, and we’re there 24 hours
Nestor Aparicio 19:19
8
a day to help. 24 hours a day is a fact that was up to my ankles in water eight weeks ago at five in the morning, and Doug came to the rescue. Liberty pier solutions, they provide me some water here on the set. They’re also sponsoring the Maryland crab cake tour and getting us out on the road with the Maryland lottery. I’ll have these Back to the Future scratch offs on Wednesday at Cooper’s north in Timonium chapel. So some great guests. We’re doing a whole term for leukemia, lymphoma society that day as well. Burger of the month. I might have that Orioles are taking on the Nationals as well, doing a happy hour over there and having some fun on the 30th. Speaking of happy hour and fun on the 30th, we’re going to be a Cocos pub. And because I’m doing the 27 my 27 favorite meals. To eat out in Baltimore in August to celebrate our 27th anniversary. Burks is no longer with it. You ever eat at Burke’s dog down at quarter light? Lombard, right? I mean, iconic, right? It’s where I was. Sports writers. Hung out when I was a kid, and when I was like, 1718, 1920, I would hang out there and have a crab melt, proper french fries, coleslaw. Sometimes the frosted Mick Ultra wasn’t Mick Ultras MC Lite. Then they didn’t have any. You didn’t know from ultra hell. People were drinking low and brown back then. So this is back in the 80s and 90s. And they had these onion rings that were as big as my head. So the onion rings were unbelievable under themselves, and I found them twice in life’s travels. Place called Jack stack in Kansas City, makes the same onion rings incredible, but they had this crab melt, which was a English muffin, crab meat, crab. But it wasn’t like a crab cake, but it was like a crab Imperial a little bit, and it was zipped down with some a very, very extra sharp cheddar cheese on top, and it was melty and mushy and like a pizza top, and it was just one of the most delicious things ever. And Coco’s crab cake is the closest crab cake that I can simulate what they did at Burke’s, but she doesn’t do it with cheese and English muffin, but on the 30th she is. So we’re going to recreate the Burke’s crab melt at Coco’s, it’s going to be the burger of the night, even though it ain’t even a burger. And she’s doing all of this to celebrate spring and the graduations over at Morgan and through the city. So the 30th of April, we’re going to be over Cocos. Jamie Costello is joining us. Senator Cory McRae is joining us. Howard Perlow, local, a real estate person who there’s this huge party in Vegas that that I’m a part of every year on previous weekend. So the 30th, we will see you, Cocos. I will have the Back to the Future scratch offs, and if you come by and you will birch crab melt. It sounds to me like Coco’s going to be trying to recreate that. On the 30th, we’re going to be at red brick station, and I’m not drinking clean water. On the seventh, I’m going to be drinking blueberry ale with real blueberries in it. That’s May the seventh. We’re gonna be doing that at red brick station, and we’re looking forward to get back over to White Marsh. That was one of the original places back when I began my career, that I would go and drink and hang out with, with with my friends and on the avenue in White Marsh. Don thanks for coming on. Always a pleasure. We’re sending everybody out to Liberty pure anytime you see this logo on a truck out there, honk like hell. Tell me listen to 1570 but more than that, make sure your water is clean, because it’s so, so important. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S, T am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking. Baltimore. Positive. You.
