Tag: drinking

Getting Water to the Dry, Dry West

  • Colorado Springs pumps water through the Rocky Mountains into town (Photo courtesy of the Colorado Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau)

Out West, a lot of cities figure many more people will be moving in over the next few decades. Water engineers wish those people would bring along all the water they’ll need, but of course they won’t. Shawn Allee reports these cities want to pipe more water from far away, and some people think that’s a bad idea:

Transcript

Out West, a lot of cities figure many more people will be moving in over the next few
decades. Water engineers wish those people would bring along all the water they’ll
need, but of course they won’t. Shawn Allee reports these cities want to pipe more
water from far away, and some people think that’s a bad idea:

The air in Colorado Springs is usually so dry it quickly chaps your lips.

What gives? Colorado Springs sounds wet enough.

“There’re really no springs in Colorado Springs, so when you start talking
about water, it’s a divergence between our name and reality. Sounds like we
had a lot, and in reality we didn’t.”

This is Matt Mayberry, Colorado Spring’s historian.

I’ve heard about this massive water pipeline project the town’s cooking up, and I was
curious just how long the city’s worked to quench its thirst.

Mayberry’s got an exhaustive book on that with an exhaustive title.

“Blah, blah, blah … the emergence and appropriation of rights in Colorado
Springs.”

The crib notes version?

Early on, buffalo manure poisoned Colorado Spring’s creek, so people dug wells.

Then, the wells got infested with grasshoppers.

And the town grew, and grew, and grew again.

“Very soon you had to bring water from further away, and ultimately to the
Western Slope which is a couple hours drive of here.”

Today, Colorado Springs pipes water through the Rocky Mountain range.

Doing the extraordinary for water is kinda ordinary for Colorado Springs.

Its latest pipeline project is called the Southern Delivery System, and it’ll pump nearly
80 million gallons into town each year – and it’ll pump that water forty five miles –
completely uphill.

Impressive, but some people are asking tough questions about it.

“Our concern with this project is the greenhouse gas emissions that it would
contribute to.”

Stacy Tellinghuisen is with Western Resource Advocates, a Colorado environmental
group.

She says there’s a connection between pumping water uphill and a large carbon
footprint.

“Water is heavy. Pumping it over a great distance takes a lot of energy, and
in the process it would require something along the lines of 60 MW of power,
which is about a tenth of a power plant.”

And, for the most part, the utility burns natural gas and coal to generate power. Both
emit carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Tellinghuisen says Western cities are considering at least five other water pipeline
projects, some with even larger carbon footprints.

She wants Colorado Springs to set an example by using dedicated low-carbon sources
like wind power for its water pumps.

I ask the Colorado Springs Utilities about that.

Keith Riley helped plan the Southern Delivery System.

“We think there are some ways we can minimize the carbon footprint by
looking at some new technologies.”

Riley says there were lots of environmental regulations to wade through before the
Southern Delivery System got approved.

But a large carbon footprint doesn’t disqualify utility projects.

Riley says, even if carbon were considered, the project might have gone forward
anyway because the city’s expected to grow over the next few decades.

“Water is the essential element for all of us, so when it comes to that level of
sustaining our own lives, then you get to some trade-offs on what we’re
willing to do to keep ourselves alive where we we live, where our cities are.
No matter what happens, we’ve got to move water to Colorado Springs, and
we’re uphill from the river, so we’ve got to get the water uphill one way or
another.”

Riley says Colorado Springs Utilities is considering low-carbon renewable power for its
new pipeline.

But it’ll be expensive, and no one’s stepped forward with all the money.

Other Western cities are engineering clever ways of moving loads of water around,
too. And it’ll be a political and financial challenge for them to pay for the carbon
footprint.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Learning to Live With Less Water

  • Ellen Peterson has lived in Florida for many years and this is the first year her well went dry. (Photo by Arthur Cooper)

Droughts are nothing new for the Western US.
But lately, even some parts of the country
surrounded by water have gotten a taste of
droughts. Rebecca Williams reports as our
population grows, some experts say we’re going
to have to learn to live with less water:

Transcript

Droughts are nothing new for the Western US.
But lately, even some parts of the country
surrounded by water have gotten a taste of
droughts. Rebecca Williams reports as our
population grows, some experts say we’re going
to have to learn to live with less water:

(sound of birds)

Even in swampy, muggy Florida, people have been running out of water.

“This is the first time the well has ever gone dry.”

Ellen Peterson remembers water gushing out of her artesian well when she’d hook up the hose. These days she’s stuck with rusty water from her shallow well.

(sound of faucet turning on)

“Now if I let that sit it would settle out orange.”

We visited Peterson at the tail end of this year’s dry season. In the weeks since then, Florida’s been pummeled by major thunderstorms. But Florida water managers say it’s too early to know how much the rain will help.

This was the driest dry season Florida’s felt in more than 75 years. And it’s the third year in a row of serious drought. That’s meant some changes for people who live here.

Many cities put rules in place that limit watering lawns to one or two days a week. One woman actually ended up with a warrant out for her arrest after she watered her lawn on the wrong day and didn’t pay the fine.

Some cities in Florida are talking about adding a drought surcharge to bills for people using the most water.

Ellen Peterson says local water managers have even been capping wells in her area. Peterson may be 85 years old, but that didn’t stop her from telling her local official to back off.

“They told me they were going to cap my well and I threatened the guy with his life if he ever came back. (laughs) It hasn’t happened yet.”

So it’s not such an easy sell to get people to cut back on water.

(sound at a lake)

But that’s Gary Ritter’s job. He’s a water manager in the Lake Okeechobee area. It’s a giant lake – 35 miles wide – and it’s nicknamed the liquid heart of the Everglades. The lake level is 2.5 feet below average.

“For water to get to the Everglades it has to come from Lake Okeechobee. Now we have a juggling act as to how we manage this water in the system you know for multiple users for the water supply and for the ecosystem.”

The lake’s the center of a huge tug of war. Farmers and cities need the water, and the lake’s also a big tourist draw. And the Everglades are in major trouble – mostly because the water flow to this fragile area has been cut off by people.

Some experts say these kinds of conflicts are just going to get worse.

Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute. It’s a nonpartisan group that studies water issues.

“Places we didn’t think were vulnerable to water shortages in the past are now increasingly vulnerable. As our population continues to grow and our water supply doesn’t. As more and more people try to share that fixed resource there’s going to be growing competition for water and more natural and manmade drought.”

And he says we just don’t know what’s in store for us as the climate changes because of global warming. We could get a one-two punch.

First, from weird new weather patterns. And second, from more and more people moving into dry areas.

People have expected these kinds of problems for cities in the desert Southwest. But nobody really saw this coming in the Southeast.

Peter Gleick says even if you live in a place surrounded by water now, you shouldn’t expect to always have plenty of it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Stopping Septic Seepage

  • Dan Jacin stands by his newly landscaped sewage tanks (Photo by Julie Grant)

There’s an underground threat to water that’s making it harder to clean up for drinking. Julie Grant reports – it all
depends on where you live and whether the people who live nearby are maintaining their septic systems:

Transcript

There’s an underground threat to water that’s making it harder to clean up for drinking. Julie Grant reports – it all
depends on where you live and whether the people who live nearby are maintaining their septic systems:

More than one of every four homes uses its own septic
system.

That means it’s not hooked up to a city sewer line. When a
toilet is flushed, the water doesn’t go to a central treatment
plant. Instead, it drains into a septic system buried in the
yard. It’s supposed to decompose using a natural process to
clean it up before going back to the environment.

The problem is – those septics don’t get enough attention.

When they fail, as about one-in-five does, that untreated
toilet water winds up in rivers, lakes and wells. In a lot of
places, that untreated sewage drains into our sources of
drinking water.

“Well obviously, there’s potential health risks, that’s the
number one.”

Nate McConoughey is the sewage program manager with
the Board of Health in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. He spends
a lot of his time inspecting home septics to see if they’re
working.

“We don’t want these pathogens getting out into the
environment and getting into the creeks and streams and
rivers that people come in contact with.”

Or get their drinking water from.

Even though he’s trying to protect water quality,
McConoughey is not a popular guy with homeowners.

“Nobody really wants to see you come out and take a look at
their system. Because most people with 40-plus year old
systems realize that they’re probably not working as good as
they should.”

It’s McConoughey’s job – and the other inspectors he works
with – to tell people when their system is leaking sewage,
and when it’s time to put in a new system.

“We’ve all seen people with different reactions. Whether it
be crying or very irate.”

People get so upset because replacing a septic system
costs big bucks.

Just ask Dan Jacin. Last summer he had to dig up his front
lawn and put in a new set of sewage treatment tanks.

“Oh yeah, it tears up your yard for a year and hits your wallet
pretty hard.”

But Jacin says he didn’t have a choice. His 43-year old
system was backing up atrocious-smelling sewage into his
basement.

“I wanted relief from sewage coming into my house, because
that’s just not a fun deal at all.”

Jacin also had sewage burping up in his yard.

If a septic is working right, sewage drains from the house
into a tank. And it’s slowly sent from the tank into an
underground absorption area – where it filters through the
soil.

But Jacin’s septic wasn’t working anymore. The sewage
was draining off his property into a nearby stream.

(sound of a stream)

This stream runs into the Cuyahoga River, which runs into
Lake Erie – a major source of drinking water. Jacin felt
badly about causing that pollution.

But he felt even worse about paying for his new septic
system. It cost more than $20,000!

“And just fortunately I had enough money to replace it at the
time. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have the
money. Who’s going to give you a loan to replace your
septic tank?”

Now Jacin’s lawn has grown back, he’s landscaped to hide
the treatment tanks. And he’s glad he’s no longer polluting
the waterways.

But he still isn’t happy about spending all that money.

Inspector Nate McConoughey understands. But he says
there are low-interest loans available for new septics – and
they’ve got to be maintained – so the water is clean for
drinking and other uses.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Money Back for Water Bottles

  • Nationally, we go through more than 30 billion non-carbonated drinks every year (Photo by Lester Graham)

Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws to encourage people to return their empties. Only eleven states do. Now, some are expanding their recycling programs to include bottled water. Sadie Babits reports the states know requiring a deposit for the bottles will keep them from ending up in landfills:

Transcript

Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws to encourage people to return their empties. Only eleven states do. Now, some are expanding their recycling programs to include bottled water. Sadie Babits reports the states know requiring a deposit for the bottles will keep them from ending up in landfills:

Every time Mary Nemmers buys a bottled beverage, she’s pays a five cent deposit at the register.

She wants to get that money back eventually. So she saves up her bottles and once a month brings them here to New Seasons Market in Portland, Oregon.

(sound of bottles being sorted)

Nemmers thinks this is a pretty convenient system. She gets to shop while a store employee sorts and hand counts her bottles.

Today Nemmers is getting nine dollars and change for her empties. While she’s glad to get that money back, she’s excited to learn that Oregon’s bottle deposit program has expanded.

“I just got some news that they’ll take back all the cans for deposits. Not just the ones that they sell. That started in January and that saves me an extra trip.”

That’s only part of the change. People in Oregon now also get five cents for every water and flavored water bottle they return to stores. That ends up being a lot of bottles.

Nationally, we go through more than 30 billion non-carbonated drinks every year. And that number is growing. Most of them end up in a landfill.

For Heather Schmidt, it makes sense to require a deposit for these bottles. She runs the sustainability program at New Seasons.

“We’re getting more back from our customers and that’s a good thing (chuckles). And we know that there’s quite a bit of water purchased, you know, and we’re selling it we want to take it back.”

Out of the eleven states that have bottle deposit programs, Oregon is one of the first to include bottles for water and other non-carbonated drinks.

Maine includes just about every beverage bottle. Connecticut adds bottled water to its program in April. New York and Massachusetts are debating similar expansions.

Mary Nemmers says it was about time that her state recognize that something needed to be done to make sure water bottles stay out of landfills.

“Because I do a lot of walking and I’ve seen lots and lots of water bottles thrown around and in trash cans. I assume that the expansion will reduce that and I’d like to see Oregon stay on the cutting edge of recycling.”

Not everyone is thrilled.

I spoke with the president of the Northwest Grocery Alliance who told me stores want recycling off their property.

A spokesman for the major food outlet Winco said the same thing. Stores say it’s messy to deal with “garbage” and stores have to dedicate staff time to recycling.

Heather Schmidt says at New Seasons Market, they don’t mind.

“Operationally, because we’ve increased the volume, it does mean we’ve had to add some staff labor to that to process but it’s something that we’re committed to.”

While most of the bottles are hand counted at New Seasons Market stores, large chain grocery stores use reverse vending machines.

I can stick a redeemable bottle into the machine. The machine checks to make sure it’s the right kind of bottle. Once it’s accepted, the bottle gets crushed and I get my five cents. Those crushed bottles, along with the plastic ones, end up here.

(sound of recycling plant)

We’re inside a glass and plastic bottle recycling plant. It’s a labyrinth of conveyer belts and equipment. The last drops of stale beer and old soda pop in the bottles make it smell sort of like your gym shoes meet the town dump.

Sadie: “Can we check out where the plastic bottles go?”

John: “Yes, We’ll go back this way.”

That’s John Anderson. He’s the President of the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative.

“Now, the plastic, we have seen an increase, but we’re only two months into this expansion at this point and it’s a slower time of year for water and flavored water.”

We stop in front of three bales of recycled plastic that remind me of massive hay bales.

I can pick out the water bottles scrunched together with a lot of soda bottles. These plastic bales will be sold to manufacturers – mostly overseas – who will turn this plastic back into something useable.

Anderson says all of the glass though, stays local and gets turned back into beer bottles.

Bottle deposits work.

The states that have bottle deposit laws have dramatically high bottle recycling rates – as high as Michigan’s 97%.

But the U.S. average is below 40%. The rest of those bottles spend forever in a landfill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

The Energy Use of Bottled Water

  • All that energy goes into making the plastic bottles, treating the water, and, of course, shipping - sometimes from as far away as the South Pacific. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Bottled water burns up a lot of energy.

Rebecca Williams reports on a new study

that figured out how much:

Transcript

Bottled water burns up a lot of energy.

Rebecca Williams reports on a new study

that figured out how much:

Bottled water burns up a lot of energy.

Rebecca Williams reports on a new study

that figured out how much:

We Americans love our bottled water, for a lot of reasons. We actually drink more bottled water than beer.

And that bottled water uses lots of energy. As much as 2000 times more than tap water.

That’s from a new study in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

All that energy goes into making the plastic bottles, treating the water, and of course shipping. Sometimes from as far away as the South Pacific.

Peter Gleick is an author of the study. He says if you want to use less energy, tap water is the clear winner.

“Tap water may require a thousandth of the energy that it takes to bottle water. And the tap water in the United States is typically of very, very high quality, as high or higher than most of our bottled waters.”

He says buying local bottled water saves energy. So he says try to buy as close to home as you can.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Contaminated Baby Formula

  • In China, infant formulas contaminated with melamine killed four babies and made thousands sick. (Photo courtesy of the CDC)

Earlier this year, when Chinese
infant formulas were found to be contaminated,
the US Food and Drug Administration banned
imports. The FDA said no amount of
industrial chemicals should be allowed in
infant formula. Now that the FDA has
found the same chemicals in US-made infant
formulas, the government says a little is
safe. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Earlier this year, when Chinese
infant formulas were found to be contaminated,
the US Food and Drug Administration banned
imports. The FDA said no amount of
industrial chemicals should be allowed in
infant formula. Now that the FDA has
found the same chemicals in US-made infant
formulas, the government says a little is
safe. Lester Graham reports:

In China, infant formulas contaminated with melamine killed four babies and made
thousands sick. The FDA said no amount was acceptable.

Then the FDA started secretly testing infant formulas made in the U.S. It found
melamine or a related chemical, cyanuric acid, in Nestle’s Good Start formula and
Mead Johnson’s Enfamil. ‘

Suddenly, the FDA decided a trace amount, one part per million is safe.

Lisa Madigan is the Attorney General for the State of Illinois. She says the FDA
should stop sales of those formulas.

“We have directly asked them to make sure these formulas are recalled as well as to
make sure that people across the country are aware of the problem.”

The FDA stresses levels of the chemicals in the U.S. infant formulas are more than
10,000 times lower than the levels reported in the Chinese formulas.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Brave New Warmer World for Vintners

  • Drier areas will find a warmer climate makes things tougher, but other areas might benefit (Photo by Patrick Tregenza, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)

Farmers are starting to see signs
of climate change. One crop that’s more
susceptible to change than most is the wine
grape. Lester Graham reports not everybody
thinks that’s bad:

Transcript

Farmers are starting to see signs
of climate change. One crop that’s more
susceptible to change than most is the wine
grape. Lester Graham reports not everybody
thinks that’s bad:

Vineyards are likely to be especially affected by climate change.

Gregory Jones is a research climatologist at Southern Oregon University. He says
growing grapes for wine is always a tricky business, and climate change will make it
tricker.

Gregory Jones: “Pinot noir is produced in a cool climate and cabernet sauvignon in
a warm climate, and you cannot produce one in the other without having it affect
style, quality and flavor.”

So, grape growers across the nation are watching things closely. Drier areas will
find it tougher, but other areas actually might benefit.

Bill Hendricks is showing me his vines. Pinot grigio, cabernet franc, cabernet
sauvignon.

Hendricks says grape growers in central Michigan – where he is, Virginia, Missouri, California – they’re all beginning to see changes.

“They see it coming. You know, the record year of ’99—what, 2001 I also think.
Like, last year we were about ten days above norm. This year we’re four days above
norm.”

As the climate changes, some vineyards might have to switch to different varietals –
different kinds of grapes.

(sound of the peninsula)

More than 200 miles northwest of Hendrick’s vineyards, on a peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan, there’s a wine
growing area called Leelanau. It’s known for its white wines. It’s always been a little too
cool for red wine grapes, but things are changing.

Chalie Edson is the vintner at Bel Lago Vineyard and Winery. He says he doesn’t
want to call the warmer seasons global warming.

“Not being a climatologist, I’m going to answer
‘no.’ It’s tempting to say ‘Yes, yes. It’s getting warmer.’ Whether that translates into
overall increase of warmth in expected temperatures in the years to come, I think that’s still
somewhat speculative. But, I sort of hope that it happens.”

Yep, you heard right. Global warming would be beneficial to Edson. You might be
wondering, ‘why?’ Well, because this climate is better suited to white wines, and red wines
sell better.

“People come to northern
Michigan just like they come to any other winemaking region and they ask for reds.
We’ve made some really great progress in the last ten years in making reds as the
winemakers learn better how to utilize the fruit that we have here. And we’ve also
had a string of really warm vintages.”

But right now, Leelanua County is known for its white wines.

Climatologist, Gregory Jones says there’s a real question whether wine
consumers will be able to keep up with the changes.

“If you’re in a historic region that’s always produced pinot noir and all of a sudden
you really can’t do that, you know, because the climate’s changed, then you’re going
to grow merlot and you’re going to do it very well in that same place, but the
consumer has to be retrained.”

And so Burgandy wines might not come from Burgandy in the future, and wine
drinkers will have to try to keep up.

(sound of bottles clinking and price-tag gun clicking)

At Plum Market in Ann Arbor, Michigan, wine buyer Rod Johnson says climate
change has been a good thing for wine – so far.

“So, places like Michigan which traditionally have been too cold is suddenly seeing a
lot of different wines like pinot grigio and riesling, even pinot noir being able to be
grown here. So that’s beneficial. Same thing in Germany. They’ve had great year
after great year after great year in Germany where it used to be they were too cold.
When we get to the point that we’re hurting the wine business, I think there will be a
lot more hurt going elsewhere in the world.”

So if those dry California areas or Mediterranean areas get too warm and too dry for
wine grapes, that’ll probably be the least of their worries.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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15th ANNIVERSARY OF WATER CRISIS

  • Dr. Ian Gilson and nurse Mary Busalacchi treated several of the AIDS patients who died during the cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee. (Photo by Erin Toner)

Fifteen years ago, 400,000
people got sick and more than 100 died
from contaminated drinking water. It’s
still the biggest outbreak of waterborne
disease ever in the United States. It
happened because a parasite got into the
water supply in Milwaukee. Since then,
there have been major changes in water
systems across the nation. Erin Toner
reports:

Transcript

Fifteen years ago, 400,000
people got sick and more than 100 died
from contaminated drinking water. It’s
still the biggest outbreak of waterborne
disease ever in the United States. It
happened because a parasite got into the
water supply in Milwaukee. Since then,
there have been major changes in water
systems across the nation. Erin Toner
reports:

Dr. Ian Gilson has been treating AIDS patients for 25 years. He says in all that time,
nothing’s been as bad as 1993 when Milwaukee’s drinking water was contaminated with
a parasite called cryptosporidium.

“We began to get reports of some of our patients having diarrhea that didn’t stop and we
had patients with weird stuff like an ulcer that was not related to acid, severe gall bladder
disease without stones. Ultimately by the time it was called a waterborne epidemic we
knew we had a big problem on our hands.”

Healthy people who drank the water, or brushed their teeth with it, or ate food that was
washed in it, had severe vomiting and diarrhea. But people with weak immune systems,
like those HIV with AIDS, couldn’t fight the parasite. And there weren’t good AIDS
drugs back then, so the patients just deteriorated.

“I distinctly remember several patients saying if you can’t get me over this let’s just be
done with this. One guy who was suffering terribly, we couldn’t seem to get him enough
morphine. And I ordered what I thought was a fatal dose of morphine because I thought
that was the only thing that was going to help him. And it actually relieved his pain.”

When it was all over, cryptosporidium killed 103 people with HIV and AIDS. Even after
15 years, the source of the parasite is still a mystery.

“The cause is not known and may never be known. There does not seem to be any
obvious explanation.”

Carrie Lewis is superintendent of Milwaukee Water Works. She says at the time of the
outbreak, the city pumped in water through an intake pipe about a mile off shore in Lake
Michigan.

The prevailing theory is that sewage overflows contaminated water in the bay, and that
the water was pushed toward the intake pipe and entered the treatment plant.

Lewis doesn’t buy it.

She says if human sewage was the source, people would have had to be sick to excrete
the parasite, and there’s no evidence of that. Some also speculate that cow manure
contaminated area rivers, but Lewis says regular testing in the watershed rarely finds
traces of cryptosporidium.

Lewis says she has no clue what happened, and she’s OK with that. She says what’s
important is what’s changed since then. Lewis says water testing at the time of the
outbreak amounted to taking a couple of samples a day – and that was considered good.

“Today we have hundreds of instruments testing the water every single second for all
sorts of different parameters, so the 15 years that’s gone by it’s a lifetime.”

The cryptosporidium outbreak so damaged Milwaukee’s psyche that people were willing
to do just about anything to make the water safe again. The city spent $90 million to
extend the intake pipe farther out in Lake Michigan. The filters at purification plants were
updated. And now the water is treated with ozone, which kills cryptosporidium.

What happened in Milwaukee caused changes around the country.

New federal regulations required water systems to test for the parasite and safeguard
against it. A drug was licensed to treat the disease.

Michael Beach is associate director for healthy water at the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. He says today people should have a lot of confidence when they turn on
their tap.

“Those types of outbreaks have virtually disappeared from the tracking system.”

Many water experts say municipal drinking water in this country is now the safest in the
world. They say the legacy of the Milwaukee outbreak is that water utilities are no longer
just managing a system of pipes and water mains – they’re in the business of protecting
public health.

For The Environment Report, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

Interview: ‘Bottlemania’

  • Author Elizabeth Royte encourages people to buy reusable water bottles instead of disposable. Just make sure your water bottle doesn't have BPA in it like this one! (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

We buy a lot of bottled water.
Globally, sales are more than 60-billion
dollars a year. Elizabeth Royte just wrote
a new book about the whole bottled water
phenomenon. It’s called ‘Bottlemania’.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham
asked her how we got to where we’re carrying
a plastic bottle of water with us at all times:

Transcript

We buy a lot of bottled water.
Globally, sales are more than 60-billion
dollars a year. Elizabeth Royte just wrote
a new book about the whole bottled water
phenomenon. It’s called ‘Bottlemania’.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham
asked her how we got to where we’re carrying
a plastic bottle of water with us at all times:

Elizabeth Royte: “Because of hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising telling us that
bottled water is pure and natural, will make us look better, and make us more attractive to the
opposite sex. If you’re smart, you’ll drink bottled water.”

Lester Graham: (laughs) “Okay, so at $1.39 a pint, it sounds like I’m paying for a lot of advertising
and not much water.”

Royte: (laughs) “Yeah. You’re paying for advertising, you’re paying for lawyers, you’re paying for
PR flacks, you’re paying for the right to extract water from communities where many people might
not. So there’s a lot of legal battles going on over it, so some of your money may be going toward
that. You’ll be doing your pocketbook and the environment a big favor by just getting a good
refillable, reusable, washable bottle and filling it up with good old tap water.”

Graham: “A lot of bottled water comes from public water supplies. Dasani and Aquafina, from
Coke and Pepsi, come from public water supplies, and, as you say in ‘Bottlemania’, ‘they filter the
bejesus out of it’. Other water comes from natural springs, or glaciers, or pure mountain rivers –
doesn’t that make it better?”

Royte: “Well, you’ve hit on it, because that’s what they’re trading on and sometimes they charge a
bit more from that. They do say it is a natural product – it’s coming from the Earth. Those other
brands, Aquafina and Dasani, do start from municipal water supplies, they’re very filtered. And if
you don’t want to have minerals in your water, then you should aim for one of those. Or, get a
reverse-osmosis filter and install it under your sink and you’ll get the same thing, more or less.”

Graham: “Okay, so I’ve been buying bottled water by the case, let’s say. You want me to stop
buying bottled water because there’s fuel used in it, there’s petroleum used in the plastic, I’m
paying more than I should have to for water. What should I do?”

Royte: “You shouldn’t buy bottled water for bad reasons. You should educate yourself. You
should find out what’s going on upstream, what’s going on in your watershed, what sort of industry,
agriculture, development. Read your consumer confidence report. Know the utility is found in the
water, then go a step further, and order up some of your own tests so you can find out what’s in the
pipes in your house. Because the utility is responsible for the quality of the water only until it gets
to your service lines.”

Graham: “But that’s a lot of work. It’s easier to buy a bottle of water.”

Royte: (laughs) “It’s easier in the short run, but it’s going to hurt you financially in the long run, and
its contributing to climate change. That’s the carbon footprint of the transportation, the making the
bottles, the landfills, the incinerator, the litter – it goes on and on and on. It is a little bit of money
up front. But it’s only up front. You’ll get that reusable bottle, you might have to get a filter, but
again, you’re going to save money buying this filter and maintaining it over relying only on bottled
water.”

Graham: “So, let’s say you go to lunch or go to meet someone for coffee and your friend comes in
with a plastic bottle of water they bought at a local store. Do you resist the urge to say, ‘hey, do
you know?’ or do you go ahead and let them have it. Let me hear your elevator speech to your
friend.”

Royte: (laughs) “I don’t have friends like that.” (laughs) “All my friends have refillable, reusable
bottles.” (laughs) “No, yeah, I sometimes do resist the urge. I do see people in their cars with
these bottles and I don’t say anything because I want to keep them as friends. But I try to model
good behavior, and they see me filling up my bottle, and I hope some of that rubs off on them.”

Elizabeth Royte is the
author of ‘Bottlemania: How Water Went On Sale
And Why We Bought It’. She spoke with Lester Graham.

Related Links

Perchlorate, Pregnancy, and Politics

  • Perchlorate is a chemical in rocket fuel that has been found in some drinking water supplies. It’s been linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women and babies. (Photo courtesy of the CDC)

Critics of the Environmental Protection
Agency say the agency is putting pregnant women
and children at risk. Rebecca Williams reports
the controversy centers on a chemical that’s found
in some drinking water supplies:

Transcript

Critics of the Environmental Protection
Agency say the agency is putting pregnant women
and children at risk. Rebecca Williams reports
the controversy centers on a chemical that’s found
in some drinking water supplies:

Perchlorate is a chemical in rocket fuel. It’s been linked to thyroid problems in
pregnant women and babies. It’s been found in milk, and lettuce and water
supplies from coast to coast.

But the Environmental Protection Agency has not set a safety standard for the
chemical in drinking water. Recently, a draft document obtained by the press
stated that EPA does not intend to set that standard.

The Washington Post reported that White House officials edited the EPA
document. And took out references to some studies that linked perchlorate to
thyroid problems.

Senator Barbara Boxer is a Democrat from California. She says she’s troubled
by this news.

“To me it’s just an immoral decision that EPA has made not to set forth a
standard for perchlorate. Perchlorate interferes with production of hormones
that are needed for development of the brain and the nervous system. This is
really a dangerous, dangerous chemical.”

Boxer endorsed a bill that would force EPA to set a standard.

The EPA says, ‘whoa, hang on a minute, this is just a draft.’

In a statement sent to The Environment Report, EPA assistant administrator
Benjamin Grumbles says quote.

“We know perchlorate in drinking water presents some degree of risk and
we’re committed to working with states and scientists to ensure public health is
protected.”

Grumbles says the agency will release its draft decision soon. That version will
be open to public comment.

But some critics say politics is shaping this entire decision.

Perchlorate has been used for decades by the defense industry. The chemical’s
used for making and firing rockets and missiles.

John Stephenson is with the Government Accountability Office. It’s the federal
agency that acts as a watchdog.

“Setting a standard is important because, in the Department of Defense’s case,
they don’t clean up anything for which there is no standard.”

Stephenson says his watchdog agency is bothered by some recent changes at
the EPA. This spring, the EPA changed its chemical review process. It’s used
to decide how dangerous a given chemical might be.

Stephenson says now, the Department of Defense and the White House can
keep their comments private.

“And EPA can receive comments behind closed doors in what amounts to a
black box. So let’s say the Department of Defense offers up some new
research on perchlorate that they think is compelling reason why the standards
should be set or shouldn’t be set at a certain level but nobody else in the
scientific community can see what this is until the end of the process.”

Stephenson says he’s lost confidence in the EPA to change this.

The GAO is urging Congress to step in and bring more light to the process
that’s supposed to keep the public safe.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links