Water: Don’t take it for granted
We nonchalantly take tap water for granted – its cleanliness and its availability are the reasons why.
America’s supply is safer than most, courtesy of the Safe Drinking Water Act signed by President Gerald Ford in 1974 and strengthened by subsequent amendments.
Contrast our good fortune to that of one billion people across the globe who lack access to clean water, as reported by a faith-based world charity that provides drilling services to third world countries, and another 2.6 billion – two-fifths of the world’s population – who lack basic sanitation to safely dispose of body wastes, leading to contamination of water sources.
We’re lucky, really lucky. Twist the tap, there it is, water that, with few exceptions, is clear and cool and refreshing. Except when it’s not.
The greater Attleboro area missed by a drizzle the drinking water emergency that has left some two million Boston area residents high and dry since Saturday when a feeder pipe west of Boston broke and began spewing millions of gallons into the Charles River. Officials then warned against using tap water until contamination testing could be completed; President Barack Obama has declared this catastrophe a federal emergency. One month after rains gave us a surfeit of water, travails of the Boston area’s labyrinthine piping stoppered drinking supplies that on a normal day help us to wake up with coffee, mix baby formula, shower, brush our teeth, rinse off plates, feed our pets.
Aren’t you glad we escaped the drought? Boston’s emergency is a teachable moment: Tap water in Massachusetts is of decent quality, fine for cooking, bathing and, yes, for drinking.
You’d just never know it, not by the mountains of plastic and glass bottles that make their way into our recycling bins or, alas, into the landfill. Who says that bottled water is any better? How do you know someone’s not just pouring tap water into that fancy container?
An estimated 40 percent of bottled water, including certain popular brands, use local municipal supplies, Forbes magazine reported recently.
So who’s getting fooled to pay premium prices for a commodity that’s already assessed via taxes?
Some 286 million Americans, including folks in this area, receive tap water from a community water system. These public water systems are monitored and regulated by EPA which has authority to take control if local managers fail to attain and maintain standards. Granted, it’s not a fail-proof system – there have been outbreaks of illness attributed around the country to water-borne microbes – but by and large our supplies are fairly trustworthy, fairly tasty, certainly plentiful and cheap.
Tap water is like air, always there – nothing more than a take-it-for-granted commodity until a day arrives, as it did last week in Boston, when it’s beyond our reach and becomes the penultimate luxury. Think on that next time you look at a faucet.
http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2010/05/06/opinion/7343397.txt
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