U.S. mayors resolve to trim bottled water

It doesn't seem as though mayors are attacking a healthy beverage so much as they are dealing with the obvious -- cities deliver the same healthy beverage from the tap...and then are spending as much as half a million in taxpayer dollars for someone else to provide it to their employees.

That doesn't make any sense and sends the wrong message about the quality of tap water, which is more highly regulated at large.

I don't believe that reckoning makes them "out of touch with American families." Mr. Keane seems to be grasping at straws to protect a sliver of his clients' market.

It is dissapointing, that the mayors are finding it easier to encourage a reduction in the consumption of bottled water, than to decide on a comprehensive recycling system.

Reduce, reuse, recycle is still the dominant paradigm I believe. I'm very encouraged that mayors are starting at the beginning -- why recycle what you don't need to use in the first place?

Mr Keane makes a good case when using to disaster-level flooding in the Midwest as a reason for not phasing bottled water out entirely. But what Mr Keane has apparently overlooked (or chosen to ignore) is that the resolution has taken such unfortunate contingencies into account. Resolution 70, as it was called in the Conference, encourages cities to phase out government use of bottled water, where feasible, but with exceptions, such as in the case of emergencies and when safe, clean municipal water is unavailable.

Moreover, Mr Keane terms bottled water as "a healthy beverage." Interestingly enough, the day after this article was posted, Nestlé issued a recall alert on its one-gallon Pure Life bottled water found at Shop Rite stores in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania because the bottles may contain a diluted form of a food-grade cleaning compound, which gives the water a bitter or sour taste and could pose a health risk if ingested in large quantities.

A healthy alternative to municipal tap water, Mr Keane? Although both tap water and bottled water are tested using similar standards, tap water is evaluated far more frequently and has more independent observance by the EPA and DEP (state and federal environmental authorities). The quality of bottled water, however, is often evaluated by the bottled water corporations themselves, since the gov't lacks the capacity to regulate bottled water. In some cases this has resulted in cases of bottled water contamination that have lasted for weeks before the public was warned.

Lastly, Mr Keane says that city gov'ts should concentrate on "floods, rising food and fuel costs and threats to their homes and jobs." The US Conference of Mayors does not meet annually to discuss one issue alone. A simple perusal of the adopted resolutions by the Conference clearly shows that all of the issues (and more) were addressed. See <http://www.usmayors.org/76thAnnualMeeting/> for all of the adopted resolutions.

Mr Keane needs to stop the spin and start doing his research, or, at least, quote accurate information.

Even being a bottler myself, producing Iskilde, I want to emphasize that from a purely content-related point of view, there is no better way to deliver water than through a tap.
But there are two catches here:
1. A tap will ususally supply you from just one source. If that source is not good, you are stuck with it anyhow. As you are stuck with which ever water distribution system the utility isusing to get it to your tap.
2. Drinking beverages from bottles appears to be the way most people prefer to hydrate themselves. It is probably safe to assume, that restricting supply of bottled water will cause an increase in the consumption of other bottled beverages - most of which will have effects on your health which are far more expensive for society, than the cost of supplying the water in the most convenient form.
Maybe it is time to address the real issues - even if they are perhaps more difficult to get a grasp upon.