Tapping in to New York City's tap water advantage

Sustainable Riverdale

By Elizabeth H. Meyers
info@riverdalenature.org

Sure, most New Yorkers know that their tap water is the cleanest in the nation. New York is the best for everything, right? But if you’re like me, your attention is constantly pulled to images of glaciers, mountains and bubbling streams as an ad for the newest bottled water streams by, and your resolve to stay with basic tap can weaken.

This pull of marketing has been hard to resist. Americans have tripled their consumption of bottled water in the last 10 years, and now purchase 70 million plastic water bottles daily, 40 million of which go directly into the trash and are not recycled. That’s 14 billion plastic bottles per year in the trash!

But what are the facts? Is bottled water any better for you? According to multiple sources, including a large and independently verified study by the National Resources Defense Council in 1999, it’s not, and is probably quite a bit worse. Here’s why:

Bottled waters are less regulated than public tap water. For example, any water bottled and sold within the same state is totally exempt from U.S. Food and Drug Administration water standards. And bottled water companies need not disclose results of testing for contaminants, whereas municipal water departments must issue “right to know” reports, like the Department of Environmental Protection’s annual Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report.

In addition, municipal tap water must be tested much more rigorously than bottled water. The labs that test city water must be certified, and testing must be done much more often. Your city water is tested 100 times per month for fecal bacteria – three times every single day! In contrast, bottled water plants test for fecal bacteria only once a week, and are not required to test for two common parasites, cryptosporidium and giardia. Bottled waters have been found to contain higher amounts of bacteria (Poland Spring, Alhambra), arsenic, (Crystal Geyser, Appolinaris,Vittel, Volvic) and other contaminants than your bathroom tap.

It’s not all what you take out – it’s also what you put in the water that matters. New York City water contains small amounts of phosphoric acid, which sticks to the lining of your older water pipes and prevents lead from leaching into the water. It also contains fluoride, for healthy teeth, which bottled water does not. Some dentists believe cavities are increasing with increased drinking of bottled water.

Plastic bottles can also release toxins, such as phthalates and Bisphenol A, (BPA) particularly when they are heated or cleaned. BPA is a chemical with similarities to estrogen that has been linked to increases in breast and uterine cancer in animals, and will be the focus of a large human study over the next twenty years. Any bottle with recycling code #7 at the bottom is at particular risk of leakage. Hard polycarbonate plastics like baby bottles and Nalgene bottles can also release BPA.

And finally, there’s the bottom line. New York City’s tap water is incredibly cheap-two cents per gallon. Add a faucet filter, and it’s ten cents per gallon. Add a Brita filter, and it’s a pricey twenty-five cents per gallon that you’ll be paying for filtered, highest-quality water. In contrast, bottled waters cost the average consumer $3-5 per gallon or more, totaling up to $1,400 per year.

So back to those images of mountains and sparkling brooks: Sit back in your favorite chair with a tall glass of beautiful New York City water, and imagine your water as it tumbles out of the reservoirs of the Catskills into its eighty-five mile journey down the Delaware Aqueduct and arrives, perfectly filtered, into your glass.

Remember that 90 percent of our tap water arrives at our homes from the protected Delaware system upstate. The remaining 10 percent comes from the Croton system just to our north, which is less protected. Land surrounding Croton system reservoirs continues to develop with roadways, parking lots, buildings, and other sources of pollutants that oneday could reduce the quality of Croton water below EPA standards. The enormous questions surrounding the Croton system filtration plant are beyond the scope of this article.

But one thing is clear: Whether from the Catskills or the Croton system, tap is better. To your health!

Elizabeth Meyers is a Riverdale resident and serves on the Board of Directors of the Riverdale Nature Preservancy.

This is part of the February 19, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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