Does the water taste funny ?

CARY, North Carolina - Vinay Jain knew his tap water tasted funny, but he wouldn't have guessed his family had been drinking treated wastewater used for watering lawns.

That turned out to be the case at his suburban-Raleigh home, the discovery coming after workers shut off an irrigation pipe in Jain's neighborhood. His neighbors had tap water but couldn't get their sprinklers to work, while Jain's sprinklers worked fine - but the taps inside his house ran dry.

It's unclear how the piping got switched.

"We believe that this is a unique situation," Cary Public Works head Mike Bajorek said.

About 500 homes in the town have irrigation systems served by reclaimed water. As a precaution, Cary officials were going house to house to check for similar problems.

Jain, meanwhile, isn't pleased his family had a reversed connection for nearly five months.

"In a place like Cary, it never even occurred to me that this might even be a possibility," said Jain, 37. "This gives the impression of a Third World country."

State regulations ban water systems from using the treated wastewater for drinking water. Cary officials said the risks are low, and that someone must drink a lot of water in one sitting to get an infectious dose of coliform bacteria.

Still, Jain and his wife, Priyanka, said they are second-guessing their children's claims of stomach aches at dinner.