We talk about the safety of the water in your home all the time with Doug Workman of Liberty Pure Solutions. With the recent mess at the Inner Harbor, Nestor recruited our safe water expect to discusses oil spills and your drinking water in Baltimore and ways to know it’s pure.
Nestor Aparicio discusses the Maryland crab cake tour, sponsored by the Maryland lottery, with 16 stops planned for the summer. He introduces Doug Workman from Liberty Pure Solutions, who talks about the importance of clean water, especially after a recent diesel spill in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Doug explains the common contaminants in water, such as PFAs, radium, and chlorine byproducts, and offers cost-effective solutions like under-counter reverse osmosis systems for as low as $18 a month. He also highlights the importance of regular water testing and the benefits of purified water for health and the environment.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
water quality, diesel spill, Inner Harbor, Liberty Pure Solutions, well water, reverse osmosis, PFAs, radium, nitrates, chlorine, municipal water, purified water, water treatment, Maryland crab cake tour, Baltimore positive
SPEAKERS
8
Nestor Aparicio, Doug Workman
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W N st am 1570 town, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. At some point I’m going to get my good glasses back so I’m not glaring all over the place. I appreciate everybody following us. Out on YouTube. We’ve had lots of sign ups, lots of views, lots of things. It’s summertime, and it’s not for the good baseball right now. It’s probably for the crab case. We’re doing the Maryland crab cake tour. Crab cake tour 16 times this summer with the Maryland lottery. I have the Back to the Future scratch offs for Greenmount station in Hampstead. This week, we’ll be back at fade leaves the mothership next Friday at Lexington market. That is Friday the 13th. I’m going to wash away all the ghosts and mysteries of Friday the 13th by having a delicious, faithless crab cake with some friends. And Luke Jones will be joining us as well, also on the road. We’re going to be at readers in Reisterstown. We’re going to be at the Y in Randallstown, at the pool later on in the month. I’m really excited about that. We’re going to be out in Eldersburg at 1623, brewing with my pal Mike McKelvin, talking about the the legend of Vince Bagley, amongst other things. And we’re moving it all around the beltway as well. We’re hoping to get back over to White Marsh to and those in red brick station as well. This guy keeps us out on the road. He powers us up. He’s one of our great sponsors in a lot of ways, plumbing, water heater. Let’s see what else. Indoor plumbing, making sure my he’s I’ve had leaky faucets, I’ve had leaky toilets, and more than that, I have the two dreaded words if you live out in the county, well, maybe they’re not dreaded, because if you know Doug worked, when you have our friends at Liberty, pure solutions, well water, I said to Doug three and a half years ago, Doug, I got well water. Say, you know, it sounds like well rhymes with hell, also rhymes with swell. Good to have you on. Doug, always pleasure to have you on talking about the freshness of water. And we’ll get to the oil spill in the or the gas, the diesel gas spill in the harbor. But the, how are you? Man, you’ve been, you’ve been on the IR, you had, like, some I thing going on and this and that you were helping Matt Stover with the job in a little while. Um, how are you happy summer to you doing
Doug Workman 01:59
great. Good to see you. We had a little cataract surgery. It’s just old person people, old person stuff.
Nestor Aparicio 02:05
Well, that’s why I brought up my glasses, because it looks like I need cataracts or I gotta get my I’ve had an eye prescription problem. A shout out to Brian Granick, my pal over visionary, visionary care, visionary eye and always mills. But I’m glad you’re back on the grid. It’s so good to have you back. But even weirder, you know, we met back with Matt Stover maybe 15 years ago when I had a conversation with Matt, because we’re lunch mates about water and you’re trusting the water. I think it was when they brought me water to the table at the restaurant we were at. I think we had a conversation about, I’m like, I’m always freaky about water when I’m on the road. I’m more of like a bottle water guy, and I checked the source and all that stuff. And you’re that guy for me, and you’ve kept my water clear. But when I hear about diesel water spill harbor swimming through the harbor, all that my girl, Katie Pumphrey, swam through the harbor. She’s the swimmer person. She’s coming to families next week. I mean, this isn’t sort of a nightmarish, you know, the Exxon Valdez and all these things we hear about, but this happened right here at the Inner Harbor, and it kind of freaks me out, and it kind of keeps a guy like you in business. I would think,
8Doug Workman 03:11
yeah, harbor is definitely dirty, but the 1000, 2000 gallons of diesel fuels not something to sneeze at, that can be very dangerous, not to mention it’s horrible for the for the fish, and certainly not something we want to drink, but it’s pretty common. I actually am auxiliaries for the Coast Guard as first responder, and those kind of calls come in pretty regularly. Certainly don’t hear about them all, but when it’s in the Inner Harbor, it kind of makes front page news.
Nestor Aparicio 03:38
Well, I guess people and maybe this brings us right to where we are. Doug workman keeps water clean. He keeps you healthier. He can get the little green stain out of the bottom. He’s done that for me. But the importance of water and clean water and and countries you can’t drink it in, and in states you don’t want to drink it in, and in places that I wouldn’t trust it in, what gets dumped in these tributaries, what gets dumped in water? And here’s the thing that scares me the most, because I’ve done the math on this. I’m not a I’m not a geologist, and I certainly not but I had the globe and the world map, and I I’m a Google Map freak about everything. We have more water than any we’re a little state. We’re little Maryland, even though we tax a lot and all that stuff, we’re little Maryland. We have more waterfront property, more water, more Harbor, more Chesapeake Bay, more kanawingo, more back River. As I drive over to my friends at Costas and drug city, I smell what goes on in the neighborhood I grew up in, literally, water’s all around us, and it’s what’s coming in our house, what’s coming in our spigot, that 95% of the water we’re consuming, or should be consuming, that we can make it and keep it safe, that when these things happen in the news, we don’t have to freak out about it if you’re doing the right thing. And I’m working on well water here, so I. Know, you got a pretty sophisticated system going on in here. I feel very, very confident when I drink my water Doug, and I appreciate it for that, but I know not everybody has that. I’m not here to scare people, but I’m here to educate people.
Doug Workman 05:11
Man, I think a lot of people don’t realize, even on municipal water and city water, you have different sources with different contaminants. The biggest hot topic right now is PFAs, but it’s only only secondary to radium, radionuclides that are in the water, nitrates, pesticides, herbicides, and, of course, chlorine, which we use to des decontaminate our bacteria, that’s got byproducts like trichloroethylene, that’s our carcinogens. And the thing most people don’t realize is, if they’re a homeowner, they can install a under counter reverse osmosis system for as little as 18 bucks a month that will give them all the purified water they can possibly drink in their ice and their, you know, their coffee and their consumables, and do a tremendous amount to save on the the environment as well as their own personal use, the purified water is much better. Bottled water is very costly. Because it’s expensive, you can pay more for 16 ounce bottled water than you pay for a gallon of gasoline, and we’re talking about less than 50 cents a day. Well, little more than 50 cents a day to have purified water right there in your home. So it’s kind of cost effective. It’s very efficient. If you want to do a whole house system where you have a conditioner with carbon taking all that out of your shower water, you can have that for as little as $58 a month and the under counter sink. So it’s all very cost effective. These days. There’s a lot of competition out there in the market. There’s a lot of companies that are selling, you know, systems that we sell for $5,800 that they’re selling today for $9,800 and it’s all about market and what it costs to get to the consumer. We do a lot of plumbing, and we have a ton of referral business, so we don’t have to do a lot of advertising. We don’t have a bunch of sales people out there. We have our our plumbers, and they all know water treatment, and they’re able to price it up for people without any pressure, and people seem to appreciate that. Like I said, we’re blessed to be growing by leaps and bounds, and I think it’s because of our customers. We got great customers. Talk about us. Matt Stover, you mentioned I just went to Texas and was able to install a complete system for him and his new home there in Dallas. And you know, he’s again, he’s very concerned about health. We started with him, our first sister, our first contact with him was at the Ravens training camp probably 10 years ago, maybe longer than that, longer
Nestor Aparicio 07:42
8than that. Yeah, Tucker’s been kicking the longer than that. Trust me, the kicker has been in the news. That’s, you know, pretty
Doug Workman 07:47
sure I met Ray Lewis in the in a chill plunge pool because it had a little green on the side, and we did something for the pool water. But those were days that was very lot
Nestor Aparicio 07:58
of fun. Well, I, you know, and I’ve known Matt forever, and he is the genesis of our relationship. But, you know, I see your trucks everywhere, out in the community, and I’m always thinking, just for the people that live on my street as an example, or the people that live on any street where there’s well water, or anywhere where there’s a question of that green ring, that orange, pink, salmon colored thing that stains wherever it stains. I don’t know what it is, but I know I definitely don’t want to be drinking it. My body doesn’t want me drinking it. I’m not a health nut, but I’m a wife who’s had I have a wife who’s had cancer twice from 911 and had leukemia twice. I just lost another friend to leukemia a couple weeks ago. Every day, somebody’s getting diagnosed with cancer. I’m losing friends to cancer and things like that. The more I can think about what goes into this temple that sometimes I’ve treated like a tent, I’ll be honest, like a Jimmy Buffett song, but, but I’m trying to go a little more temple in 56 here, um, when someone in my neighborhood would call you and come in and you see their water, what’s that delineation for you to look at it and say, don’t drink this. I mean, let me at least get you the $18 gadget, if not the $58 gadget. But you got well water? You got this, you got that. It’s coming from here. There’s a stream up here. There’s a business, there’s a factory, there’s something, there’s a farm, and they’re throwing poop over the head. Whatever it is, I don’t know could be anything, but it’s something you don’t want to drink. Um, when you find that person, how do you sort of even break the news to him? Like, Hey, man, if this were my kids and my grandkids and my family don’t drink this water, because I sort of knew that, going in to where my new place was three years ago, that I had well water, and when I heard well water, I’m like, I need Doug. I need liberty, pure I knew that
Doug Workman 09:51
I can tell you, 40 years ago, 35 years ago, when I started knocking door to door, selling water softeners in Baltimore. People. Weren’t aware that they had a problem. They were saying Baltimore had the best tasting water in the country today. People are very aware. There’s very little pressure needed to explain to people what’s wrong with their water. They’re aware what’s in it. Obviously, with Wells, you can see it with condition, with processed city water, you don’t typically see it, but you can smell it and you can sense it. So most people are very educated. Again, we don’t go out aggressively selling we talk to people who are calling us looking for something. So they usually didn’t have had us do the water test. Because we can test the water. We can use a lab, lab that we have where we can send it out to a certified state lab.
8Nestor Aparicio 10:38
So like right now, somebody need they call you. You come in. First thing you do is test their water, right? Probably, yeah, kind of like, kind of like, you go to the doctor. First thing, let’s get a checkup first, right? Yeah. First
Doug Workman 10:47
thing you do is check the water and on. Unfortunately, when you test the water, it’s just a snapshot of what the water quality is at that moment. So with Wells and with municipal water, the water quality changes. So even though you do a water test for them, because they want to know what’s in their water right now, usually with a little bit of conversation, we find out more. What do you want the result to be, and what kind of a budget are you working with, rather than, you know, not everybody needs the Cadillac system, and not everybody wants the cheapest thing on the market, because typically the cheaper equipment has a little bit higher maintenance cost. So most people, if you want to drive a Ford or Deuteronomy, want to drive a Lexus, or do you want to drive a Mercedes, it’s all a matter of of what the consumer needs and wants, and I think that’s probably real important. Part of the process is just educating them to what’s available on the market, and educating them to what they can do and how they can make their water better if it needs it. And we offer that testing, initial testing, on site, for free, and if they want to send it to a lab, there is a small fee with it, but they can get their filters. We’re start. We’re opening a new retail store up in Freeland, because that’s well water heaven. And anyway, it’s just very simple process. We don’t require both people to be home. We don’t want to require a funny decision today. We don’t give away free soaps and and fancy things to try to make people buy a system. Right then we’d like to educate them and then have them make an informed decision when they’re ready.
Nestor Aparicio 12:18
So somebody’s plumbing goes bad, you come out and just fix their plumbing, like, Hey, let me check your water while you’re there. For me, I’ve got a specific thing going on right now. My wife was away for a couple weeks, and you know how handy I am, Doug, not at all the little Blinky blink, blink on the refrigerator water thing is Blinky blinking, basically saying we need a new little filter thing that we have to buy for. I think we have GE Club, whatever we have, Kenmore, whatever we have. So my wife goes on the internet and gets that thing four to 3999 we put it in. She puts it in. What does that thing do?
Doug Workman 12:53
8Well, that’s probably just a carbon filter. Okay. In all reality, I think you probably need to put a blank in because we already feed your if we already feed your refrigerator with reverse prospectus water, you don’t need that filter. So I’ll talk. You’re
Nestor Aparicio 13:09
always asking like I didn’t know if I needed it, but my head feels like I need it because I I mean, the water that’s in my car right here, every my water that’s in everything I do is your water.
Doug Workman 13:21
It doesn’t hurt anything to have that filter, unless you don’t change it. If you leave it in forever, it can grow bacteria and be nasty, but they make a blank that goes neurotic,
Nestor Aparicio 13:30
like Woody Allen or something, and it just makes me feel better, just I just it eases my head to not have the little red light blinking. If you could turn the little red light off. I learned this from my friends at Brooks Hoff. My little light went on my oil change. There was another role on my oil change. There’s a computer setting thing, whatever it was, fine. But like the little light goes off. And so, you know, when the dashboard light goes off, we all freak out, right?
8Doug Workman 13:52
That’s it. All the refrigerators come with that today because they want to sell you the filter. But when you’re feeding it with purified water, they make a blank that can go in. Unfortunately, you have to reset that every time you see the the blinky light, but probably you just push and hold the button and it’ll say, replace filter. And you can say you replaced it, and the light will go away. But you should put in a blank one, because eventually the carbon itself, if it’s not regularly maintenance, can cause a problem. Start putting stuff back in the water.
Nestor Aparicio 14:19
That’s why I ask, because Doug workman is here. He runs Liberty pure solutions. You’ve seen their trucks around town. You’ve seen their logo on my chest, although I am wearing this really good looking coffin state 120 I just really like this shirt. And it’s a little chilly this morning, so I’m wearing this. But Liberty pures with us all the way they put us out on the road doing the Maryland crab cake tour. We’re gonna be doing 16 crab cake tour stops this summer, all over the beltway, including Ocean City, Maryland. We have the Back to the Future scratch offs you want to come out and say hello, including the new Costas and Timonium as well. So I wanted to ask you this, because you went down with Matt Stover, and like, you know, Matt, I’m sure, has a big house and it’s nice, and it’s a job, and it’s in a house and whatever, it’s great. What? But you do really bad. Jobs, right? Like you’ve done schools, like, massive buildings, my dear friend Bill Cole from coal roofing, does you know commercial you know, giant malls, big things, you’ve been called in on those kinds of jobs. When those kinds of jobs happen, what typically, like, if you had a big water job in a big building, that’s like, I don’t even know where to begin with all of that, especially if you’re doing an older building and trying to retrofit it a little
Doug Workman 15:25
bit well, we run 27 trucks on the road, and couple of those guys are Master Plumbers. So we also plumb houses. We do we actually have a job we’re in the middle of right now. That was a million dollar plumbing job, just the plumbing for the house. But we also get involved in state and municipal and federal property jobs. We’ve do up to a million gallons a day with processed reverse osmosis for for example, steam systems, where they have to use high purity steam to run small towns. We can do those retrofits the iro systems, but up to a million gallons a day is about the largest job we’ve done, doing a pretty
Nestor Aparicio 16:04
8big commercial job, right? I mean, they don’t get much bigger than that, right?
Doug Workman 16:09
No, because it’s typically redundant to 500,000 gallon systems. That’s 500,000 is about the biggest you can cost effectively make a system, but you also want redundancy in case something goes down. So yeah, we have a lot of plug and play systems. Is that, like in
Nestor Aparicio 16:23
a hotel or something like that, when I’m trying to get water pressure on the 14th floor somewhere, is that
Doug Workman 16:28
pretty much, that’s a federal government job I can’t talk about it’s one of those signed an NDA, but, yeah, there’s, they’re big. Sometimes towns are run on on Steam. You have, you know, like an inner city, like in Baltimore City, you see those manholes that are blowing off. Sure, they typically have a leak in their system somewhere. That’s why you’re seeing it. But those high pressure steams run boilers. They run the a big boiler might run 50 buildings for their heat and heat exchanging. And so you’re, you’re adjusting your old style manifolds to get your heat during the winter time, and then industrially, they use that steam to power turbines and other other products. So steam is a big commodity. Used to be a much bigger commodity because the cost of steam is much higher than it was when we could do it with coal. But now it’s a little bit, little bit more expensive, but they still need to have high purity, or you decay the system. So a well built steam system provides good, clean steam so it doesn’t dissolve the pipes. But those are the biggest jobs we do, and we do all the Baltimore County schools for their municipal water treatment. Adjust the the pH and the chlorine and stuff for the schools. That’s a big job that we do, and we’re getting ready to bid on a lot of PFAs removal systems for our school systems and our a lot of lot of churches, a lot of public buildings that are having problems with PFAs, or they’re getting ready to get the funding properly through the MD and other other sources to fix that problem, but we might put in 100 cubic foot water softener for a municipality.
8Nestor Aparicio 18:09
Glad I’m working smart so I don’t have to be about all this stuff. Uh, I’m trying to get educated. I’m trying to understand this. But you said steam and my add mine went back to seventh grade. My seventh grade teacher at Holabird middle it was junior high. Then name is Mr. Schley. If anybody’s out there, they remember Mr. Schley because he had this writing on the back wall. It said, the steam that blows the whistle never turns the wheel. Remember this, for it may help you in later life, this was the punishment if you were talking during class. And as you can imagine, Doug, I had this problem when I was in 1979 so what would happen? He called them steamships, steamboats, steamboats. He called he’d say, Mr. Aparicio, 100 steamboats and and a half to write the steam that I didn’t even what the hell it meant. I I was 35 before I figured out what it meant. The steam that blows the whistle never turns the wheel. So, yeah, you’re telling me that it does turn the wheel. Well, the big cities work
Doug Workman 19:21
the same steam does blow the whistle that blows the wheel. But I think what he was saying is the actual steam that’s blowing the whistle is free. It doesn’t have to be used to blow turn the wheel. In other words, you can either be a worker or you can be a Whistler. So where do you
Nestor Aparicio 19:37
want to be being educated by you Doug, you know, I don’t know what to say, but I wrote those damn things down, and all I could say is, I hope Mr. Schli didn’t lie about me. A lot of me, because it was seventh grade, it was it was all the things that are being tested right now. That was a good thing, three branches of government, executive, judicial, you’re right. I mean legislative, like the whole deal, right? So all of these civics lessons in life were closed. Talk to me by Mr. Schley, and if I didn’t shut up, I had to write steamboats. So I mean, when you said steam turning the wheel, I had to get that out. Doug, workman is here, still trying to educate me. He’s at Liberty, pure solutions. All you really need to know is he can make your water clean, and water is the key to life. It makes my coffee, it makes my hydrate, it powers me up. So I can get the Planet Fitness and workout and get my hot yoga in and do all the things that I do, Doug. I appreciate you. Did I leave anything out? I mean, it’s just as simple as you go to Liberty, pure.com you call it one 800 clean water. You the million ways to get in touch. But if you have a don’t wait until the pipes are burst, right? You do that too, and the toilets don’t flush. My wife told me, she came in this morning. I got I gotta get your ticket out. I got to put a ticket in. She’s came in. She said, the water in your sink is dripping every 20 seconds. I’m hearing it. My hearing is going bad. She said it’s making the same sound, and it’s a drip, drip, drip every 20 seconds. So I got to put a ticket in with you. I don’t know what that is, but send
Doug Workman 20:59
8us. Send us, send us a picture of the spigot so we can bring you the right part. It’s probably just a washer, but let’s get bottom Baltimore positively purified. I got all
Nestor Aparicio 21:10
sorts of problem. My little pink lights flash in. My water’s fine. I gotta get an empty thing. Water makes it water makes the world go round. I even you’re, you know, soap scum is still an issue. Even though the water’s clean, I still had to get Mr. Bubble in a tumble in this Scrubbing Bubbles and do all that stuff. I’ve been a bachelor. Last month, my wife’s been away. It’s been tough on me. Doug liberty, pure solutions can keep your water clean. They’ve been keeping my water clean for a long, long time. And here to educate us as well. And let’s keep the harbor clean as well. Doug, I will be in touch. I appreciate you and come see the drip. Drip, drip. Alright. Take care. My cat’s going to be in there at 2am listening to it. I am Nestor. We are wnsta and 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore positive. Stay with us. You.
