that people don't recognize an obvious, major difference between bottled and tap water.  The former does not contain chemicals added by the water districts: chlorine or chloramine, and flouride.  Even a normal water filter does not remove flouride, so the only way to avoid it is to buy bottled or buy a second filter just for the flouride.

On the other hand, buying bottled water is very environmentally destructive, due to the consumption of plastic bottles and the waste problem they create, even if "recycled."  (Plastic cannot truly be recycled; in other words, a plastic bottle cannot be made into another plastic bottle, but will be made into something else.)  So, one can sacrifice one's health, as we have chosen to do, by using a filter for the chloramine but subjecting ourselves to flouride, or sacrifice the environment but drink water without flouride, though it might have chemicals that leached from the plastic.  Sheesh!  This is another problem caused by overpopulation that has no solution except lowering the population.

This is a very obvious example of how public goods are much more effecient than private ones.  Some others include...

*Imagine the public transportation system we could have if every consumer dollar spent on cars went there instead.

*Imagine the health care we could have if we payed for a universal health system instead of giving money to insurance companies.

*Imagine the libraries we could have if all the money spent at Barnes & Noble went there instead.

Just a few examples of why public goods are better than private ones... and why social democracy is better than capitalism.

comes from springs.  That was the type of bottled water to which I was referring.

If you look at the fine print on the labels of many so-called "spring water" brands, you'll see "From a municipal water source."  

Bottled water is a HUGE issue here in western Maine where Nestle pumps millions of gallons of pure water from the aquifer. And they pay no money per gallon either, rather they have a contract with the Town of Fryeburg water company for x number of gallons/year. Concerned citizens, myself included, have fought Nestle every step of the way, a battle that has been going on for years now. We even tried to get a state referrendum passed that would require Nestle (and any other corporate water miners) to pay a few cents per gallon that would go into a water conservation trust fund to benefit water conservation/quality in the state. Nestle brought out the big guns for this, reframed it as a water tax that would jeopardize hundreds of jobs (in its water bottling plants in the state). Cries of "No New Taxes" were heard throughout the state in a complete misrepresentation of what was actually proposed. Nestle assures people that they have no intention of jeopardizing the aquifer but their record elsewhere, both nationally and internationally, isn't reassuring. (Water that comes from Fryeburg is sold under the Poland Spring label).
    Recent studies on the aquifer itself have indicated that Fyeburg and surrounding towns are already very close to what they have determined is a sustainable level of withdrawal but studies have neglected to include negative impacts already being seen in nearby lakes and wetlands because of the designated study area (which ends where the lakes begin, like the aquifer somehow has walls around it right there.)
    People who benefit from Nestle's water mining are private landowners who stand to become rich by selling land to Nestle once test wells prove there's plenty of clean water to be had.
   The aquifer in question runs under the whole of the Saco River watershed. It starts at the headwaters of the Saco in Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of NH and runs though Bartlett, Conway, into Maine until it meets the ocean in Saco, ME.  It is a sand and gravel aquifer which means lots of water flows freely through it. The water is very clean (Class A water, nothing needs to be done to it before bottling). Ironically, the past couple of years when most of the research on sustainability have been done, have been very wet years with rainfall above average. We have no idea what would happen if we were to have a couple of years of low rainfall or even drought, which does happen.
    I have some sympathy for folks living in towns and cities with terrible water. But I agree that bottled water is no solution, the solution is to upgrade water systems so people can actually drink tap water.
   Clean, potable water is more and more rare. Allowing conglomerates to pump it out and bottle it for profit is just wrong.

Everyplace is different, apparently.

Friends of mine in New Haven, Connecticut, who had an aquarium with fish -- and of course, everyone should understand that when you have an aquarium, the "pet" that you are maintaining is really an enclosed piece of water, and the fish come second -- , needed to drop some potent chemical pill into the water, periodically, in order to neutralize something deadly in the tap water that they used to fill the tank.

Fifteen years ago, when I lived in Poplar, Montana, capital of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, on the left bank of the Missouri, the tap water was disgusting: stinky and brown and foul-tasting.  I never knew why.  The residents told me it was not always like that, but that not long before, on account of some super-sonic flights flown from the AF base at nearby Glasgow, some subterranean structure "cracked," and the result was some sort of unspeakable pollution.  Whatever.  Anyway, the water was utterly undrinkable, and shipped-in bottled water was the only solution.

Here in NYC, we have a famously high-quality water supply.  My husband and I go through the motions of maintaining a Brita filtered-water tank, but I wonder if it is really necessary.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!