Yesterday a neighbor and I were discussing how the town of Concord recently voted to ban all sales of bottled water (here) — the first municipality in the United States to take such a drastic stand against the environmental poison that is the Cult of Bottled Water.
She supported the ban 100%. I supported it in spirit, but…
“I just don’t trust tap water,” I admitted. “I feel like there’s all these chemicals in our water system that the government doesn’t want to own up to. And I don’t drink soda or juice, so if I’m out and about, I drink bottled water.”
She smiled understandingly, but inwardly she was probably thinking You enemy of Earth. “I think you can trust the water supply,” she said gently. “I mean, I’ve never heard of someone getting sick from drinking tap water. It just doesn’t happen.”
“And what would happen if there was some sort of emergency and the tap water became unsafe?” I asked. “What would Concord do? Drink soda?”
From there, the conversation turned into a discussion about how New England seems immune to major natural disasters — “knock wood.” It was all inconsequential small talk until today, when my town was put under a boil-water order due to a massive water leak that has over 2 million people in Boston metro relying on a subpar back-up water supply (here). Luckily for the residents of Concord, they still have clean tap water, so they are spared the embarrassment of flocking to adjoining towns to sponge off their bottled water. (And I am spared the guilt of helping to empty my local Whole Foods’ shelf of evil delicious Evian.)
