Bottoms up, Baltimore. We’re drinking Susquehanna River water now.

Turn on the tap, Baltimore. For the first time in almost two decades, we’re drinking river water.

Water from the Susquehanna River is being sucked down at this very moment by pumps behind the Conowingo Dam, then pushed through a 37-mile tunnel to a Baltimore filtration plant and out to almost 350,000 households from Cockeysville to Dundalk.

Another hot and dry summer has parched the Prettyboy, Liberty and Loch Raven reservoirs, which supply the region’s tap water. That’s pushed Baltimore public works crews to take the unusual step of pumping in water directly from the Susquehanna River — about 30 million gallons of it per day.

Maybe this isn’t the best time to discover that one Lenape translation of “Susquehanna” is “muddy river.”

The river water arrived Friday, flowing through a concrete pipe that’s buried along Interstate 95 and big enough to drive a car through. The “Big Inch” pipe was laid in the 1960s and empties into the Lake Montebello filtration plant. When river water flowed in during the drought of 1999, Anne Draddy’s daughters were still young enough for bath time.

“I still have that memory,” she said recently. “They were in the bathroom. I just remember this kind of yellowy, brown water and it has a little bit of sediment to it.”

Others grumbled back then about their tap having a fishy taste or bringing to mind algae.

Officials want to avoid the colorful descriptions now. They plan to dilute the river water by mixing it with the usual fresh water from the reservoirs. The river water should be 20% to 40% of this mixture, said Paul Sayan, who oversees the city water system. The public works department is calling this treated flow “a blend.”

You know, like a fine wine.

The department says the blended water won’t be of reduced quality because it flows through all the same filters, treatments and tests. It’s unclear if the water was mixed back in ’99.

Only households on public water from Interstate 83 eastward to Harford County can expect to drink this because they are supplied by the Montebello treatment plant. Families may notice a change to the color, smell or taste of their water, the department said.

“We believe that odor and taste issues will be minimal if they exist at all,” Sayan added.

What’s murky here (no, not the water) is whether the city has to pay. An old agreement between the city and dam owner Constellation Energy requires the city to pay when it withdraws water that would otherwise run the turbines of the hydroelectric dam, city officials said.

When asked about this cost, a Constellation spokesperson said the company doesn’t expect any charge.

“Constellation has contributed water at no-charge to the City of Baltimore to supplement the City’s drinking water supply when needed on a temporary basis, and we expect to do the same again here,” spokesperson Mark Rodgers said in a statement.

Of course, Baltimore isn’t alone in drinking the East Coast’s longest river. The Susquehanna supplies drinking water to millions of people from Binghamton, New York, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Baltimore hasn’t pulled water from the river since 2008, but recent years of below-average rainfall have left dry conditions across much of Maryland. Prettyboy Reservoir can hold about 20 billion gallons of water, but its water levels fell to about 50% capacity this summer.

Baltimore enjoys this reliable backup supply at a time when cities worldwide aren’t so lucky. A water crisis in Puerto Rico has authorities shutting off water for hours, sometimes for days at a time, to ration dwindling reserves.

There’s a proud history to Baltimore’s public water system. It was here that a Johns Hopkins University-trained sanitary engineer developed the methods to disinfect municipal water systems and pipe clean, safe drinking water across a city. For his breakthroughs in the early 20th century, Abel Wolman became known as the father of clean water, and Baltimore earned a reputation as a world leader in municipal water systems.

Let us celebrate the marvel of Baltimore’s water supply. Decant a cold glass of the blend. Let it breathe. Cheers!