Community & Labour Action

Choose tap water

By ANDREA CLELAND
Thu. Apr 16 - 6:29 AM

In his recent review of the battle over bottled water, Roger Taylor appears to state the case against the move to ban bottled water in municipal buildings. His column, "Battle brewing over bottled water," quotes Brenda Hurlburt, the manager of Pure Choice Water Shop in Yarmouth, saying, "If the government wants to look at it as if municipal water will do, let’s go to the government offices and the people who are making these decisions and let’s make them drink the town water that’s not purified, or that isn’t treated, and see how long they like it."

In fact, this is exactly what the ban is asking municipal offices and municipal officers to do: choose safe, clean, healthy and affordable municipal water.

Recently, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (an organization that represents the interests of municipalities on policy and program matters that fall within federal jurisdiction) encouraged its members to phase out the sale and distribution of bottled water in municipal buildings. In Halifax, a coalition of local groups – including the Council of Canadians, Ecology Action Centre and the Polaris Institute – has provided three simple steps to phase out bottled water and turn on the taps. They suggest that municipalities:

•Assess the availability of bottled water and potable tap water in city facilities;

•Where drinking water is readily available, stop selling and providing bottled water;

•Where drinking water is not available, commit to reinvesting in water fountains and taps over a specified time period.

These suggestions are far from radical, and yet the bottled water industry continues to work at undermining people’s trust in municipal water. The bottled water industry would like us to believe that municipal water is not safe and that it is inconvenient. This perception generates a profit of more than $35 billion in annual sales worldwide, and does so at great economic and environmental expense.

Canada has some of the safest, cleanest and most accessible drinking water in the world. Not only is potable tap water available in most communities across the country, but it is also far more regulated than bottled water. Bottled water is an environmentally disastrous product in terms of the energy required to make the bottles and transport them, and is also expensive at an average cost 3,000 times that of tap water.

It is important that Halifax regional council has the opportunity to consider all facts, and it is important that people have access to safe water. Equally important, however, are the actions Ottawa should be taking on behalf of the public interest to rein in the bottled water industry by legislating health and environmental standards for bottled water production in this country.

In Canada, 33 municipalities from seven provinces have already acted to phase out the provision and sale of bottled water on city/town property and to promote public municipal water. I will personally look forward to many more bans on bottled water to come.

Andrea Cleland lives in the Town of Lunenburg.