A few days ago, I wrote a column quoting Dennis Miller as saying only in America could you take something that falls for free from the sky, bottle it, and sell it for a profit.

He was talking about water and so am I.

Let's set aside, for a moment, the ecological costs and just talk about the monetary costs of bottled water.

Folks, it's freakin' expensive!

A story last month in The Seattle Times reported buying bottled water costs 2,400 times as much as drinking tap water.

The story was about Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and a new initiative of his to convince residents of the rainiest city in America to stop using bottled water.

His city charges one third of a cent for a gallon of water, compared to an average 79cents for a pint of bottled water.

Here in Pottstown, water has recently been in the news as outraged residents complained about estimated water bills.

And they're right, it is pretty silly and came about because the borough needed to settle a nettlesome lawsuit from a perfectly good meter reader who kept making them look foolish by pointing out inefficient and wasteful practices (oh the Horror!), but that's another story.

Borough Manager Ray Lopez reports the new meter reader is on-board and getting brought up to speed, so presumably things will settle out after a time. (Don't hold your breath waiting for a big refund check though. A credit for over-payment is about the best you can hope for.)

But missing from the big picture part of this little tale is that even at inflated prices, borough water is still hundreds if not thousands of times cheaper than the bottled water at the Giant, water whose price will continue to rise along with the price of the gas used to transport it.

Don't like the taste? OK, buy a water filter for the tap, or a Brita pitcher. It's still cheaper in the long run.

In my house, I once filled an empty spring water bottle with tap water and put it in the 'fridge. (Yes, we're having this battle in my house as well. So far, I'm losing. That's why I need your help people. The guilt is killing me!)

Sure enough, as you've no doubt guessed, nobody noticed the difference. And that was without a filter!


In addition to being cheaper for your household budget, it's also cheaper for society and the environment society must maintain to survive.

"Americans used 60 billion pint bottles of water last year," Nickels said. "That required one million tons of plastic and generated 2.5 million tons of greenhouse gases."

In Seattle, residents there used the equivalent of 354,000 pint bottles of water each day. That equals 41,000 barrels of oil, creating 5,400 tons of greenhouse gases.

Putting taxpayers money where his mouth is, Nickels directed the city to stop buying bottled water in March, saving taxpayers as much as $57,000 a year.

Pottstown's numbers may not be as impressive, but they are certainly similar in scope if not in scale.

Millions of human beings around the world are literally dying for lack of a water system like the one we love to complain about here in Pottstown. The ability to provide clean water to every household is yet another blessing that we are taking for granted.

Don Read, the treasurer of the Pottstown Borough Authority -- which produces water for folks in Pottstown, Upper Pottsgrove, West Pottsgrove, Lower Pottsgrove and North Coventry -- heads up the authority's marketing committee.

He and fellow authority member Doug Dilliplane are constantly looking for new water customers and talk about the need to talk up Pottstown's cheap potable water.

Perhaps one way would be a campaign of cost comparisons to point out to customers and potential customers how much less expensive their tap water is. How about a taste test?

Even when you add in the cost of a filter, either attached to the tap or resting coolly in your 'fridge, I'd be willing to bet a six-pack it would still be cheaper over the cost of a year if you eliminated all bottled water.

Sure, your water bill would go up, but your grocery bill would go down more.