Bottlemania - Elizabeth Royte [97]
Early in his administration, President Obama signaled interest in restoring some of the environmental laws weakened under the Bush Administration. By signing the Clean Water Restoration Act, he’ll return to the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers the ability to enforce the Clean Water Act—and halt polluters—on headwater streams and wetlands, not just on main waterways.
It’s likely this book, in its chapters on municipal water supplies, has given the bottled-water industry some ammunition against public supplies. But I’m not sorry: Public water systems need to be scrutinized, and fixed. We all have a right to clean water. And we all need to acknowledge that no water is pure, that all water is recycled. There’s no point skirting the issues and fudging the facts: in some places, at some times, bottled water may be of higher quality than tap. But that doesn’t mean we should all rely on it. For one thing, I’m not convinced there’s enough “pristine” spring water in this nation to meet all citizens’ needs, to say nothing of the energy consumption, associated greenhouse gas emissions, transportation costs, trucking congestion, and solid waste such a widespread shift to bottled water would conjure. And then there’s the question of transparency: Private bottlers still aren’t required to reveal the results of their tests and inspections, so we’ll never know if what they’re delivering is better or worse than the stuff that used to come from our pipes.
This raises another question: With all, or even most, drinking water privately bottled—an industry wet dream—would purveyors end up recreating the system prevalent in the nineteenth century, when the well-to-do bought spring water from private purveyors while the poor died of waterborne diseases? Finding it logistically and economically impossible to deliver individual water containers to tens of millions of customers (and later collect the empties), bottlers might hit upon a simpler solution: delivery through common pipelines. And when pollution from industry, development, or agriculture threatened to taint their “pristine” sources, of which they’d need an ever-increasing supply, the water companies would be forced to either halt the polluters, buy them out, find other water sources, or do what cities and towns have done for decades: build treatment plants to filter and scrub the water, then go after upstream polluters. Sound familiar?
I don’t think bottled water is going away, nor do I think it should (for reasons spelled out in chapter 9). I’m not in favor of general bans, though I’ve always thought it made bad economic sense, and sent the wrong environmental message, for municipal governments to spend taxpayer dollars on single-serve bottles of water. Bans do nothing to clean up water pollution, like atrazine or perchlorate; they don’t deal with naturally occurring water contaminants, like arsenic; and they don’t push us to limit our use of products that end up in our drinking water.
Ultimately, the power to improve public water supplies is wielded by consumers. We all need to find out what’s in our tap water—by reading our water quality reports (they’re online, if your local utility doesn’t mail them to your house) and independently testing what comes from our taps. Then consider your personal health. (Are you pregnant, nursing, immunocompromised?) If you’ve got any concerns after collecting the facts and talking to your doctor, buy yourself a decent filter and a reusable bottle—something that’s easy to clean and that doesn’t leach chemicals. Remember to bring it with you when you leave home. (Most airports allow empty bottles through security; they can be refilled at fountains on the other side.)
That takes care of you. But if your water supply is contaminated, you need also to work on political solutions to problems: Contact your utility and your elected representatives and any local groups working to halt polluters and protect watersheds from development. Let them know you’re concerned; ask what they’re doing about pollutants, and what you