Although Wannon Water and the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services have said the water is safe to drink, people are buying up water from other sources.

Swinton’s IGA manager Brett Maloney said customers had been coming in to buy entire pallets of bottled water.

Mr Maloney said people had been expressing their concerns about the taste of the water to staff members as they made their purchases.

“We’ve been going through pallets and there has been an increase in water sales,” he said.

The manager said he was not surprised people had started buying up water because he had made the same choice.

Wannon Water said on Thursday the taste and smell of drinking water, affected by compounds linked to high algae levels in stored raw water, should improve within days.

Gateway Coles grocery manager Kathryn Carter said she had not noticed a similar spike, but the store generally sold a lot of water.