11/30/2006

H2Thanks

by Barbara Currier Bell

It’s Thursday, November 23. Do you know where your drinking water comes from? If your answer is “a water main”, or “the water company”, then you get 50 points right up front, because you didn’t say “Poland Springs.” Most Milfordites could care less about fresh water. Our unconcern reflects the abundance of water in Connecticut, Milford’s geographic location, our high standard of living, and a French fad imported to the US by mass-marketers in 1978.

      The French fad would be Perrier, the original bottled water. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, drinking bottled water began as a status symbol but soon turned into a convenience, and then transformed itself, via the public’s quest for healthy life-styles, into a “necessity.” Various surveys have suggested that by now up to half of young adults “never or rarely drink tap water” and believe that bottled water is “better.” On the other hand, water quality testing done by the Natural Resources Defense Council (www.nrdc.org) shows that 25 percent of bottled water is tap water; that 20 chemicals required by the US Environmental Protection Agency to be monitored in tap water are not monitored in bottled water; and that a third of bottled-water companies have quality-control slip-ups resulting in chemical contamination. Not only does bottled water contain chemicals that may harm health, it lacks ones that are good. An example is fluoride. This chemical can be dangerous in large doses; however, if carefully handled in public water systems, it prevents tooth decay; indeed, a campaign is going on currently in Milford to help parents recognize they shouldn’t discourage their children from drinking tap water. Finally, bottled water is bad for the environment. The plastic for the bottles is made from crude oil; worse, fewer than 20 percent of the bottles are recycled. Any Milford beach or roadside represents the scale of this massive throwaway problem.

      Although Connecticut’s weather patterns, geology, and terrain assure plentiful fresh water, it took half of the twentieth century for public health agencies to build clean water standards and systems; after that, with escalating development, the action has shifted to environmental protection. Milford, a “downstream” community, has not managed its own water since about 1977. Our water comes from the South Central Regional Water Authority, which we helped create. Pipes carry water here from 10 protected lakes owned by the Authority in Woodbridge, East Haven, Branford, and North Branford. Our water is extensively tested for over 70 federal or state-regulated chemicals and 62 unregulated ones: so far, it’s proved to have few contaminants (only 23 of the 132 in 2005) at low levels (all well within health limits).

      In Connecticut, no natural resource is more taken for granted than drinking water, yet this simple liquid makes the difference between life and death. At under a penny per gallon, tap water costs $12.12 less than Starbucks coffee, $3.22 less than milk, and $2.88 less than Coke or Dasani. To an environmentalist, those figures add up to thanks!