Bottlemania - Elizabeth Royte [53]
It’s easy to scare up criticism of tap water—from environmental groups, academia, companies that sell bottled water and filters, and even from regulatory agencies that are supposed to be protecting water. Every time a town posts a boil-water alert, every time a well-water drinker shells out for tests and discovers something unsavory, every time a technician turns up an anomalous report or a water inspector gets caught fudging data (a criminal offense, but it’s happened—in New York City, Philly, Boston, Providence, and Portland, Oregon), another tap-water drinker loses faith in the system. “It’s always in the news—boil-water notices, bacteria alerts, notices in the mail,” Cris Dockery, a co-owner of the Exell water company in Jackson, Mississippi, told the Clarion-Ledger. “The more and more that happens over a period of time, people start migrating toward what they trust, and they trust bottled water.”
After learning about all the things that can go wrong with tap water, I don’t know what to think, or drink. It would be easier if I fell into an obvious risk category: then I’d buy a super-duper filter and maintain it in a way that would make Mike Klender proud. Switching to bottled water isn’t something I’m willing to contemplate at this point: it’s expensive, it’s heavy to haul around, and the production and disposal of all those bottles can’t be good for the planet. Moreover, I’m coming to realize that when the commons—which include clean water and clean air—are either scarce or threatened, public authorities must manage them, and to do that they need our financial and moral support. Opting out of public water in favor of private isn’t going to help preserve—or improve—municipal water supplies, but preserve them we must: too many people can afford to drink nothing but.
Of course, to feel truly comfortable with this decision I need to learn more about what comes out of my tap: I need to look beyond my annual report. But before I can arrange for a test, I notice something weird is happening with bottled water. Around the world, folks are starting to ask if it’s really such a good idea.
Chapter 7
BACKLASH
IN THE SPRING of 2007, monster rainstorms lash Central Texas, leaving thousands of people without clean water. In June and July, it’s the United Kingdom’s turn: back-to-back-to-back storms leave 350,000 people in Gloucestershire and the surrounding region without sanitary services or drinking water. The normally terrible weather, locals say, has gotten worse. Next up is South Asia, where unremitting rains—their intensity unusual even for Nepal, India, and Pakistan—leave millions without water and other basics. Authorities send out boil-water alerts, and shoppers lucky enough to have a bottled-water aisle—and the money to make use of it—strip those aisles clean.
Meanwhile, the beverage industry continues to release sunny news: Americans bought nearly eleven billion dollars’ worth of bottled water in 2006, and sales in 2007 are expected to rise 10 percent. In the European Union, South America, and Asia, the prognosis is similarly bright. I’m not surprised when I learn bad weather and good sales are linked.
But there are rumblings against bottled water too, and it isn’t just the nuns and the communists this time. In March, Alice Waters, goddess of the local-foods movement, decides to strike bottled water from her menu at Chez Panisse. “We asked where does all that energy and waste go, getting it to here and from here,” Mike Kossa-Rienzi, the restaurant’s general manager, says. “It wasn’t a hard decision.”
Soon, more restaurants on both U.S. coasts get religion. In London, where the distance food travels from farm to fork is already an obsession, the Green Party asks diners to request tap water; in France,