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There's something beautiful about a small town.

Did you know Kentucky has more navigable miles of water than any other state in the U.S. except Alaska?

Is Alaska still a state whose.

90,000 miles of streams and dozens of rivers?

It's also quite famous for some other liquids, those which flow from a barrel, that being beers, bourbons and wine.

Many of the world's best known distilleries can be found right here in the Bluegrass State.

And interestingly enough, pretty darn close to many of our lakes, rivers and streams.

We're here to take you on an expedition of the secrets and histories of our intricate waterways while visiting Kentucky's distilleries, breweries and wineries.

I'm Carrie and I'm pale, and we are two Kentuckians who are proud of our state.

We share a sip of what the Commonwealth has to offer on all.

Kyle Sup, Carrie?

Not much.

How are you doing today?

Not too shabby.

This is quite the place you guys picked out here.

Yeah, It's beautiful.

This is what's left of the falls of the Ohio.

All right, well, it looks very active out there.

Why aren't you and your little yellow boat paddling around, filming things?

Well, the water is a little rough today, so I think I'm going to skip this part.

I'm going to head up to the visitor center and learn a little bit about the history first.

Sounds good while you're doing that.

I believe I'll be going somewhere and learning a little bit about pure tap water.

That sounds great.

Drinking water.

A little bit of a change for you, Kyle.

Yeah, well, I think I'm going to go to the community boathouse in Louisville and catch up with some really cool paddlers there.

All right, well, you've got a good day planned.

I've got a day planned, but let's.

Let's do this.

I think there's a beer festival downtown Louisville.

Really?

Why don't we check that out?

Grab a beer, wrap up the show.

That sounds great, Kyle.

Don't drink too much tap water.

Yeah, I will Have fun.

See you.

I'm here with Dale, and we're at the falls of the Ohio River.

Dale, what do we see behind us?

Well, what we have is the city of Louisville walk from the way we see the Ohio River flowing to the states.

Between the states of Indian and Kentucky.

And what we call the falls is a series of rapids over two and a half miles long, where the water drops are probably 26 to 32 feet.

But why it's significant is the falls when they were here in these rapids are the only obstruction along entire 981 miles of the Ohio River.

So when the shipping would come down from upriver, they would have to portage, they had to unload their cargo above the falls, walk it to two and a half mile downriver and unload another ship on the opposite side of the river and vice versa.

So that's why the city of Louisville, Kentucky, is here.

People would have to have a place to stay.

The taller goods fix their boats.

What's under all that water?

I don't think the water is the largest with both floating fossil beds in the Western Hemisphere and also over 260 varieties of ocean sea creature fossils, more than any other single location on earth.

So the dam you're seeing back there is 37 and a half feet tall, almost four stories.

It doesn't usually look like that when you're standing in our bay, but you see a fisherman standing next to it.

You get an idea for the scale.

Well, I understand a lot of people rely on this water as a source of drinking water.

You don't drink the water straight, but once it filtered and clean, people do drink the water.

Hello there.

Well, Kelly, Kyle, from what I understand, we're going to talk about water.

We are right now.

Not not bourbon, not beer's, not wine, but water, which is important.

Which I would like to think is our best liquid asset, because Louisville Water has been making water right here since 1850.

Wow.

1860.

You people didn't just kind of wait for it to rain and grab whatever was out there.

Well, they did until that point.

They actually took a long time to get it, because before you had Louisville Water, you just cycle well and it was free magically appeared and we started pulling water from the Ohio River.

We gave people a product that wasn't entirely perfectly clean, but it was certainly better than what they were getting from the well.

And when you think about it, it's amazing that we did it at a place that looks like this.

This does not look like a water utility.

There is some giant object behind us.

It looks relatively old.

It is.

It is insignificant.

What?

What is this bar?

So this is the historic Louisville water Tower.

It's the oldest standing water tower of its kind in the United States.

And the water tower and the building behind it has been here since 1868.

We started with a pump station, a water tower and a reservoir to deliver water.

Today, these are national historic landmarks.

And so they're really important to the city's history.

This is pretty different.

It is that we've seen those water towers, quarantine, all, you know, those things.

And they were pretty much one totally different style than what this thing is.

So this is not a traditional water tower.

It doesn't hold water.

Inside the tower is actually a pipe.

And the only purpose for this tower was to make sure the steam engines that were inside the white building didn't implode as we were pulling water from the Ohio River.

So it didn't store water.

It was really a surge protector more than anything else.

So the original water tower had statues on it.

There was a tornado that came through here in 1890, snapped the water tower at the base.

Everything snapped This.

Snapped it at the base.

Pictures are pretty.

That is a big tornado.

That is a big tornado.

We lost all of the original statues except for two.

You don't know what happened to those two.

They're probably in someone's basement, I would guess.

So we replaced the statues that you see today with nine Greek and Roman gods and goddesses and an Indian hunter and a dog.

The old annual reports tried to paint a very glowing picture of why we chose the Indian hunter and a dog.

In essence, it's always a connection.

Somebody knows somebody who has a connection.

The water company didn't have a lot of money in 1890 after the tornado.

So somebody knew someone with a garden ornamental company and said, hey, I've got nine Greek and Roman gods and goddesses and Indian hunter in his dog statues.

I'll give them to you for $1,000.

Throw them on the water tower.

And we said, hey, that's a great deal.

Wow.

Okay.

So what?

What?

This looks a little different.

This is.

I mean, I was not expecting this.

So in 1860, this is where the boilers were.

As part of our original operations, you had steam engines and boilers, and now it's the Waterworks museum.

So we're telling the story of Louisville's drinking water.

But it's really a story of the city's history.

There's a we had a fire bucket.

So this is what you use before you had the Louisville Fire Department and before you had Louisville Water to fight a fire.

There was actually a law on the books in Louisville that said if you made more than $40 in a year, two of these buckets had to be filled with water at all times for a bucket brigade.

Charles Herman, who was one of our first chief engineers.

This is his handwritten diary of what it cost to build the Louisville water Works.

So in 1860.

$829,000 to build this pump station, the water tower, in an original reservoir only.

And it's down.

To the penny, $0.81.

In $0.81.

You can buy a house in Louisville for that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

So in 1860, if you wanted water from the Louisville Water Company, we would come to your beautiful log cabin.

We would look at you and say, Tell us about your cabin.

You know, Do you want a faucet?

Do you have a cow?

Because that's going to be an extra dollar.

And you need to have.

A cow.

And do you have a horse drawn carriage?

I'm looking at one.

Well, I'm going to have to charge you an extra dollar for that.

I may skip it then.

So?

So the assessor would look at you and he would say, Kyle, you owe me $6 a year for water.

We actually had a tariff.

This is a copy of the tariff.

So this is how we charged you.

There you can see a cow is a dollar, but one of our most popular customers in the 1800s were street sprinklers.

And, you know, because we're such an old water system going back to 1860, we have a lot of old pipes in the ground.

So the pipe that you see behind me is one of our original 1860 cast iron water mains.

We can like antique, isn't it?

That's a big pipe.

That's a big pipe.

The race for pure water.

What was the race of the races?

I think of the derby when I think of Louisville.

Well, it really was a race.

When we started in 1860, all we did was take the mud out, send it to your house.

You had to let you have the what?

The cup.

Sit.

So the mud went to the bottom and you drank it really, really fast.

So a few years after we started, suddenly we had microscopes.

We had the germ theory, and a man named George Warren Fuller said, Hey, I think maybe we need filters to give us pure water.

So right here in the late 1800s, Louisville Water did a set of experiments that led to modern day water treatment that used filters.

So we found that if we could filter that Ohio River water, we could actually take out 99% of the bacteria, all of the mud.

Few years later, we start to add chlorine and suddenly Louisville has a very pure supply of water.

So, you know, I notice in these old pictures a lot of really cool hats.

And that's that's something to.

You were you know.

You knew I like it.

I'm really dig in the hats.

Okay.

So, Kelly, we're inching closer and closer to the Ohio River.

So I'm looking I don't see any passwords where this whole thing that you're talking about, y.

You're actually standing on one.

Yeah.

This is a pump.

This is the pump.

Well, the pump that we used to use that local water.

You have pumps here that are pushing water from the Ohio River.

Those are electric.

But this is a steam engine.

There are three levels.

Three levels where this particular pumping station opened in 1917.

You had this steam engine and another one in this building pushing water that was coming from the Ohio River.

Wow.

Yeah.

You need the power of a pump to push the water from the pumping station to the.

Reservoir poured in from the Ohio, which is high.

This we can we go check out where I'm going to finally let you.

See the source for Louisville's drinking water.

How about that?

Well, I'm holding on for dear life because I'm about 45 feet above the Ohio River right next to our intake tower where Louisville water is pulling in about 100 to 110 million gallons of water a day.

So I think we're about, what, five miles upstream from the city of Louisville.

And that's why this site was chosen, because we are upstream verses downstream and pulling in the pollution from the city during the 37 flood, like two thirds of the city was flooded.

It was a lot of the West End and a lot of the downtown area was flooded and the people who were there had to evacuate their houses and move into the highlands.

Back in 37, they were given the abandoned pumping station because with no electricity, no steam, there was no way to pump water.

And the water was just about at the lower level of the pumping station and it was still rising.

Louisville had about 6 to 10 days worth of water left in the reservoir and we went on a two hour rationing to hour, day rationing of water and then less of an ounce.

Our chief engineer came up with the idea of using a steam boat to work one of the steam ponds.

They gathered the man at the Crescent Hill reservoir got down through the flooded streets of the city of Louisville, got a steamboat, CC, slider and a barge full of coal.

They steamed up the flooded Ohio River, docked outside pump station number two made the steam connection between the steam boiler of the steam boat to one of our steam pumps.

And by 7:00 that night, we were able to get water into the Crescent Hill reservoir, preventing Louisville from running out of water.

I'm here with Kate Merchant.

Hey, where are we?

We're at the River Park Marina here on the riverfront in Louisville, Kentucky.

Well, tell me, what are you guys doing today?

We are getting ready to go out on our dragon boat and practice dragon boat paddling.

What goes into Dragon boat paddling?

Well, Tom, effort synchronicity with this bunch of great folks.

And it's just a really great adventure for folks that are.

Our boat is actually breast cancer survivor, so it's a way for us to get physical and be together and be out on this wonderful river on a beautiful day like today.

So tell me a little bit about Dragon boating.

Well, it's an ancient Chinese art that originated in the fifth century.

So tell me a little bit about why you ladies enjoy doing this.

Why you've come together as a breast cancer survivor group to do this?

Well, it's kind of a multifaceted reason.

Actually, first off, it's the physicality of it.

A lot of folks get a lot of great exercise and enjoy just being out on the water and involved in the sport.

But there have been there's been extensive research.

Some Canadian doctors have correlated the recovery from breast cancer with emotions that are involved in dragon boat paddling.

It's a really great recuperative sport.

Plus, it's just a really great time to get out here with folks that you have things in common with and be involved in a physical activity and teamwork and camaraderie and just in spirit building as much as anything.

It's a great way to to overcome some of the things that we face as breast cancer patients.

We're all survivors, you know, one way or another, we're all surviving this, and we're working together to support each other.

Everybody's had various levels of recovery in their adventure with cancer, and this is just a great group to be part of.

And the support and love and and all the things that we share together.

There's no better place in the world to be on a Saturday morning than this boat with this bunch of women.

Right here I am sending over water.

Water.

This is not quite your drinking water just yet.

This is the Creston Hill Reservoir.

Step two in making Louisville pure tap.

So this water, 110 million gallons of water just came from the Ohio River at our Zaun Avenue pumping station where we were earlier.

So it's just going to hang out.

The water is going to sit, mud is going to get to the bottom.

And then we really start the good stuff, which is all the things the scientists do to make this into drinking water.

We got a pretty neat looking building there.

What is what is this and why here on this reservoir?

So this is the house.

It's part of the Crescent Hill Reservoir, and it's been here since 1878.

Louisville Water has always acted like more than a water utility.

We really want to be part of the community.

And our structures are very grand, especially from the early days.

This was used in 1878.

The valves controlled the flow of water coming in and out of the reservoir.

So we no longer use the gate house every day.

The valves still work.

We can still control the flow of water, so it'll take about two and a half, three days to make your drinking water.

Once we started doing Avenue, we're about halfway there at this point.

It does take time.

There's a lot of engineering to what we do and there's certainly a lot of science.

Science.

Yeah.

So we go check out that science.

Well, all the really cool science happens in the lab, which coincidentally we happen to be very close and there's water there too.

You all know how much I like labs.

Let's check it out.

All right, let's go.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Kyle, what are you doing there?

A little bit thirsty.

I'm in a water place.

I thought, why not have a glass?

I'm going to make a lie.

This whole pure stuff that Kelly's been telling you about, I'm not sure.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Now that that finished product is right down here, that's what we start with.

There's a whole process to go through before we get to the clean stuff.

Looks a little healthier down there.

Yeah.

So what you started off here is our source of water.

That would be the Ohio River.

So you definitely do not want to be consuming.

That Next process we go through is a little bit of sedimentation where we just have the reservoir across the street do its thing naturally, Letting sediment settle to the bottom of it Step after that is very important.

This is where we add chlorine to the water, where we eventually at this point here, add ammonia to it.

Another point we have is softening.

This is where we adjust the H. We're adding lime to it at this point.

So if you're at your kitchen tap or your bathroom tap and sometimes you see some white crusty material on the outside of it, that's actually calcium.

And we're adding that to the water intentionally so that it coats the inside of the pipe.

Wow.

That's a lot of steps.

That's a few of the steps.

Didn't go into everything.

But would you say this makes it pure?

Yes, pure tap.

Okay, so this looks very sciencey.

What do we got going on in here?

This is our heavy metals laboratory.

So not that kind of heavy metals.

We've talked about things that you can maybe see in the water, things in higher concentrations, the ones that you can't see in the water necessarily.

That's what this laboratory is for.

That's what this instrumentation does.

We have one best tasting water and we really strive here at Louisville water to not just make sure that a water quality meets our regulatory guidelines, but that it also meets and exceeds esthetic guidelines.

So that includes taste and how it smells and how it feels.

And all of those characteristics really come into play, into collectively making an excellent product.

Okay, let's go.

You know what I'm talking about, though, is bourbon.

Come on.

You guys are making that right?

I mean, that's coming from the water.

Yes.

Yes.

Finally, we've come to the good stuff, Kyle High board experience.

It's a well-rounded.

Oh, this is fantastic.

So welcome to the office states.

Well, it's the home for Bill of Bourbon.

So we've got four marks here that we that we celebrate here on.

Sites are bullet warnings labeled bourbon or bullet rye whiskey or bullet ten year bourbon and our budget barrel stream the family.

Absolutely.

So So stick to our little history on Seattle.

It opened up its doors, opened in 1935, and it was an.

Operational distillery up until the early nineties.

It was.

The home to a lot of iconic.

Brands in the industry.

So step on it here.

This is you know, we.

Talk a lot about bourbon, but one thing we like to talk about here specifically is kind of Louisville's rich bourbon heritage.

So the land here is always been rich and fertile here in Kentucky, which makes it possible for our grains to grow.

So our corn and our rye, specifically topography, if you will.

There's a lot of limestone in the ground.

And water has always been kind of a key part of why a lot of your bourbon's made here.

But one thing we're we're proud to showcase here specifically is Louisville Water.

So we've actually partnered with the Louisville Water Company here to showcase some of the country's best tasting tap water.

So you want to have water quality.

I've actually got a friend inside here that could they could probably share a little bit more information.

Than I could.

So is there any bourbon in there?

There might be.

So I think we should go check it out.

Kevin, I appreciate it, but thanks so much.

Beautiful place, Pierce.

Thank you.

So we're here in a very nice looking, I don't know, a parlor, maybe.

A parlor?

I'd say it's a parlor.

Yeah, it's a parlor with Chris, Bobby with Louisville Water, who is a scientist who knows things about how this right here works so well to make this.

What is the chemistry?

What what makes that happen?

So we're really fortunate in this area of the world that we have rich limestone geology and in the water here and Kentucky and Louisville, especially our source of the Ohio River, it's very rich in calcium.

And that means that the water just it's not too hard, but it's not too soft.

So when people talk about the esthetics of drinking water, certainly the water needs to be clear.

Taste, you know, taste good and it needs to not have an odor.

And what makes water taste good for most people is the minerals from the geology.

And that's a natural process.

And so we're gifted in that way in this area of the world to have a lot of calcium in the water, especially when you get into products like bourbon and even breweries that are making beer, having good quality water coming into their process.

This is important.

I heard we're doing a story on water.

I was like, water, Not this.

So I wasn't super excited.

But I got to be honest, this was amazing.

I mean, to learn the steps of what it takes to make water this good and then how you can turn it into this stuff.

Well, you know what, Chris?

I appreciate everything you guys have done today.

And I think let's just finish off.

I'll give you that one.

Yeah.

Hey, Kyle.

You finally made it.

I mean, seriously, I've been waiting here and waiting and waiting and waiting.

There's a beer fest.

Can we get up and go see the beer?

All right.

Thirsty, Kyle?

Yeah.

You know, I think.

I think little water's got some beer tap up there.

But I need to get a beer.

I've been waiting and it's time to go.

All right, let's go.

Put your order down, for crying out loud.

Ready?

All right, so, Derek, we're at a pretty cool festival here.

Thank you, sir.

From what I know, you had a little something to do with a.

Little bit work.

Just.

Just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit.

What exactly is going on here today?

Well, today is a Kentucky craft bash.

So this is the festival that's by the Brewers and it's for the Brewers.

So everybody here, it's Kentucky exclusive.

Everybody brought a flagship beer and a taproom only beer.

So something that would never, ever be served outside of their taproom.

What we want to be able to give people is the experience of Kentucky, right?

Yes.

But you get to Pikeville all the way up to northern Kentucky, Louisville, Lexington, we've got you covered.

How many of you got here today?

We got 31 breweries today.

We're pouring 80 different types of beer.

Wow.

How many breweries, Derek, are in Louisville itself right now?

We've got 14 breweries in the city itself right now.

And what we're talking about here is there's these are starting to pop up all over Kentucky.

Yeah.

So in 2009, we only had five breweries in the entire state.

We've got 51 active licenses right now today.

That's unbelievable.

It's a good eight years.

It's a good many years.

I know the part of the experience that we want to give people is it's not just the liquid, right?

It is an overall experience of what is unique about this, what is going on with this brewery and what really makes them tick.

And that's one of the one of the reasons we threw this festival to is we wanted to show off the diverse range of personalities that we have.

There's a problem.

There is a problem.

Do you look at your hands?

They are empty.

They are empty.

My friends.

I've been drinking water all day, pure tap water.

But it's time for a beer.

It's time for a beer, my friend.

Let's go get one.

Let's go get a beer.

All right.

And what is Schnitzel Burg?

Louisville.

It's a neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky.

It's right next to Germantown.

So is your beer German inspired?

Some of it is German, but we do kind of the gamut as far as settings go.

This is one of the best settings I've ever seen for a perfect fire beer folks.

Yeah, just having shade tables.

People are places for people to hangout and share and then their ability to come up and have your best.

Oh, awesome chill space.

All right, I'm here with Wade and Ken.

If that's really their names, We, um.

We interchange them.

Yeah, I think they were chit swapping.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Old Louisville.

They're from old Louisville Brewery.

It's an amazingly collaborative effort across the board.

We talked with Derek, and I said this is a family, right?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's a family.

And I think that's fine.

And you guys are having fun, right?

Oh, it's awesome.

So we're a new brewery here in Louisville.

We opened on December 9th of last year, so we're only about six months old.

That's awesome.

So what's in the name Mile?

Why?

So the name came from just west of downtown Louisville.

The Ohio River is a mile wide.

Yeah.

So we're the locks and the north shore of the Ohio where the as opposed to the Ohio is is kind of goes up and it's a mile wide.

It's the widest point of the Ohio River Avon.

What's up?

A good word.

What's the story here.

So Goodwood is primarily beer that is in touch by wood and we use limestone water.

We want to really, you know, focus in on the barrel.

They gave a lot of quality.

So this beer really barrels, bourbon barrels, even red wine stays on.

Give it a little good touch, you know, keep it true to Kentucky itself.

Even a really nice clean crisp here.

Kyle, you look awfully worn out.

I'm the one who had to paddle here.

So, you know, I mean, drinking, whatever, you know, it's beautiful.

You know how many breweries are in Louisville now?

14, 14 or 15 or more comfortable?

Well, it'll take you two weeks to make your way around.

Mills.

Kyle, it only took me 2 hours today.

And on that note, until next time.

We'll see you down the street.