EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Tap Water's Budget Bottleneck
Washington is humming with debate about how to trim the debt without stunting our economic recovery. Yet somehow, with all the recent rancor over spending cuts, pundits and politicians have largely overlooked one of our most essential public services--supplying the public with clean tap water.
Interestingly, House lawmakers, who control many federal purse strings for the nation's water supplies, spend nearly $1 million a year on bottled water.
Given the House of Representatives' commitment to rein in its own office budgets, you would think bottled water would be an easy place to start cutting. Not only is bottled water far less regulated than what comes from the tap, up to 44 percent of bottled water originates from the tap.
But not only is the expense needless, it sends the wrong message about both the quality of the tap and our commitment to public water as a nation.
Bottled water marketing has had a profound impact on the public's confidence in the tap and the political will to adequately resource public water systems. Today, these water systems face a $23 billion annual funding gap that the proposed 2012 budget threatens only to deepen.
Nestlé, the corporation that provides the House the bulk of its water, knows the impact of its marketing. It is staking its future fortunes on the ultimate decline of public water infrastructure--a trend it abets by leading people to believe its product is somehow "Born Better" than other water. Not coincidentally, that's the name of its most recent advertising campaign.
In 2003, one in five people drank only bottled water. Public opinion has come around after years of education by campaigns, including our own Think Outside the Bottle initiative. In 2010, a Harris poll found that about 40 percent of Americans had returned to the tap.
There's a new spirit among some lawmakers. After my organization, Corporate Accountability International, released a report about the volume of bottled water members of Congress drink, 16 lawmakers from both sides of the aisle stated they had either abandoned bottled water or intended to do so. The move helped Congress join the ranks of more than 1,200 cities that have already resolved to buck the bottle and support the tap, as well as the states of Colorado, Illinois, and New York.
These moves are the first steps in trimming the fat so that national, state, and city governments can refocus their resources on economic recovery and growth. According to a report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, every dollar invested in water and sewer infrastructure increases GDP in the long-term by $6.35. Furthermore, every job added in the water and sewer industry creates nearly four additional jobs in the national economy.
In other words, water systems are today what they always have been: the engine behind economic development and the guarantor of our public health for generations to come. And by cutting the flow of dollars to a non-essential use of our most essential resource--except in emergencies--we can take the first important step in rebuilding public confidence and funding for the tap.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
9 Comments so far
Show AllOne of the biggest challenges in the current corporate controlled world is to keep coporations from obtaining water rights and acquiring municipal water systems.
She's definitely preaching to the choir here. Except for our habitual right wing trolls who grace us with their presence, everyone here has stated many times the need to rebuild ALL our national infrastructure. Water systems, sewers, electric system, storm systems, all of it.
Two good documentaries on the state of the worlds water supplies and of the corporations seeking control are,
Flow - For the Love of Water
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/flow-for-love-of-water/
and,
Blue Gold - World Water Wars
http://www.documentarystream.com/blue-gold-world-water-wars/
Pretty messed up when you think that we can only survive about 3 or 4 days without fresh water. (Though some people have manage 7 or more days).
Did You Know????
OZARKA BOTTLED WATER(sounds so "back in the woods fresh" doesn't it?) comes from the Fort Worth Texas PUBLIC water system and is just run through ordinary filters before it is bottled for the public.
Yep, that is our corporations at work for you.
As a born skeptic, I was amazed that so many of my "progressive", not to say "countercultural", friends bought into the yuppified scam of bottled water, aka mass-marketed "spring water", from the beginning.
Without bothering to Google to refresh my memory, IIRC "Perrier" water and then companies like "Great Bear" were the thin edge of the bottled wave. As the products became more popular over the months, I would insist on general principles that NO FREAKING WAY could all this water be coming from the pure, virgin springs that the labels and ads boasted.
True, I didn't "know" that for sure; but it was one of those cases where "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows".
After bottled water moved into major mass-production, aka the "Evian" phase, it seemed even MORE obvious that the water was simply processed just as most municipal water utilities processed it, and overpriced for the "vanity" market in every sense of the word.
It's just a shame that people were, and are, surprised to find out that they've been paying through the nose for a non-superior product-- and have abandoned the sensible notion that local government ought to provide clean, fresh, safe potable water at cost.
Maybe my skepticism got the additional boost of growing up in a Roman Catholic family and parish community. Only a fool or an idiot could believe that all of the "Lourdes water" floating around was actually from the village of Lourdes, France, where the Mother of the Creator and Supreme Micro-Manager of the Universe is alleged to have miraculously appeared to heal the sick.
Even while I was still in parochial school, I knew that if all that "Lourdes water" was legit, Lourdes would long ago have looked like Death Valley.
"16 lawmakers from both sides of the aisle stated they had either abandoned bottled water or intended to do so."
Or intended to do so?! For crying out loud, what are they waiting for -- Aquaderm skin patches to dull the craving for plastic-contained water?
Aquaderm skin patches. Angry Kraut, that is truly wonderful. Thanks for the laugh.
I bet some corporation is wondering how to sell us the air we breathe
I've seen oxygen bars in Las Vegas and maybe elsewhere, I don't pay much attention.
They will commodify anything they can: food, water, energy, breathable air, medical care -- if it can be paid for they think it ought to be, and if you can't pay, then go die.
KrszyKat's observations about the infrastructure points out what a fix humanity is in. All the essential big engineered life support systems -- large fresh water aqueducts are great examples -- require enormous upkeep. Most large cities and big agricultural operations could easily be deprived of water without there even being any kind of deliberate sabotage. Compounding neglect could do it in a day or two.
The "system" could stop being systematic any time.