Tap or Bottled, Know Your Facts
Mary-Anna Holden is a former New Jersey BPU Commissioner and Butch Howard is a former South Carolina PSC Commissioner.
What can you have delivered directly to your home or business, daily, 24/7, regardless of a holiday, with a gallon weighing eight pounds, at a cost of one cent, or less? It’s tap water, treated and distributed following the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act standards.
Granted, not all tap water is supplied by an investor-owned, regulated utility. There are nearly 53,000 drinking water systems nationwide. While some states may economically regulate publicly owned or municipal regional systems, most public utility commissions do not. In fact, some states’ regulators are not at all involved with water utilities. Drinking water quality and enforcement is largely left to state environmental commissions.
By contrast, bottled water, while literally thousands of times more expensive than tap water, is not as strictly regulated as tap water. Bottled water is regulated as a packaged food product under standards established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration through the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which stresses truthfulness in packaging.
What type of water? Does it adhere to the maximum levels of chemical, physical, microbial, and radiological contaminants? Does the manufacturer adhere to safe and sanitary production facilities? The FDA requires that the bottled water be compatible with EPA public drinking water standards, but is it?