Officials with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management say there’s no need to hoard cases of bottled water during the coronavirus crisis, as residents’ drinking water is safe.

“With so many things Alabamians have to worry about … the safety of their drinking water shouldn’t be one of them,” ADEM director Lance LeFleur said. “The water they get from their tap, whether it’s from a large municipal system or a small, rural utility, is 100% safe due to the proven safety requirements they are required to follow and that ADEM enforces. People don’t need to fear the coronavirus as far as their water is concerned.”

LeFleur said standard operating procedures include adding disinfectants to the water that enters homes and killing viruses before the water enters Alabama’s rivers and streams. He said ADEM, through its permitting and inspections, makes sure drinking water and wastewater systems “abide by the appropriate, stringent clean water standards.”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler said ensuring safe drinking water and wastewater services is critical to containing COVID-19 and protecting Americans from other public health risks.

“Hand-washing and cleaning depend on providing safe and reliable drinking water and effective treatment of wastewater,” he said in a letter to Gov. Kay Ivey, adding water workers and their suppliers are essential infrastructure workers. He urged officials to “ensure that these workers and businesses receive the access, credentials and essential status necessary to sustain our nation’s critical infrastructure.”

LeFleur agreed with the designation.

“From an environmental standpoint, nothing is more important than maintaining clean drinking water,” he said. “While coronavirus does not in itself pose a threat to our drinking water, nor to our wastewater treatment systems, it would be impossible to fight the virus without clean water. Our water systems and their employees are essential, and from our standpoint, so too are the people, our people, whose job is to make sure those systems are safe and well-maintained.”