Dr. Samantha Zuhlke gave a Science Café on drinking water usage across the United States and how that parallels with growing distrust in local government. Zuhlke’s book “The Profits of Distrust” looks into why people might buy bottled water or water from kiosks as opposed to drinking water from their municipal areas.
“It’s a rational response for people to buy commercial water if you have ever experienced problems with your drinking water,” Zuhlke said. “Water is a tangible thing, and the technical solutions to any issue with drinking water may take time to fix.”
Along with Co-authors Manuel P. Teodoro of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and David Switzer of the University of Missouri, the trio started tracking why there was a large number of people purchasing water either in bottles or from kiosks instead of their local water supplies.
Zuhlke said one of the things they found in their research of the water kiosks that started popping up in locations like parking lots in Texas, California, and other states, is that many of them were located in poorer socio-economic portions of the city. Furthermore, the charge per gallon of water at the kiosks is $0.25 per gallon, which is more expensive than many municipalities charge for access to the same amount of water.
These kiosks are run by privately owned companies in many of these states, and are one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States.
Bottled water accounted for more than $40 billion in sales of water, and more than half of all drinking water came from bottled water sales.
One of the issues Zuhlke and her researchers discovered is that it’s much harder to account for if the water offered by these kiosks is different than the water that comes from the taps or any safer than traditional water, yet was charged a much higher mark-up for access.
“When it comes to water from the tap, municipalities have to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Zuhlke said. “Those reports have to be filed and available to consumers.”
The Safe Drinking Water Act also requires that if there are tap water problems, like boil advisories or unsafe drinking conditions, consumers are notified.
The enforcement of regulations on these water kiosks varies from state to state. In California, they are treated the same as any other water source and have to provide the information required by the Safe Drinking Water Act. In other states or locales, however, the claims they make about the quality of their water compared to tap water could be a reason.
The drinking water instances at Flint, Mich., or Jackson, Miss., however, are ones that might push people to utilize other drinking water options.
“After instances like that, you see explosive water sales for a while, and then continued steady use for a portion of the population moving forward,” Zuhlke said.
Zuhlke said providing water as a common good has been a staple of governments all the way back to ancient Rome.
Zuhlke said that one of the ways that this switch from tap water to bottled water happens is when someone experiences a problem with their water and what their next step might be.
“Your choices at that point are to complain to your local government and hope it gets fixed, or choose to go with commercial water instead,” Zuhlke said.
Once citizens are no longer buying a resource like water or their distrust of local government increases, they lose the incentive to rely on their local government to fix issues.
Jane Carlson of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon unit of the Linn County League of Women Voters brought up an instance with Mount Vernon’s own drinking supply years ago. One of the drinking wells was contaminated with oil.
“The solution that was proposed was that the city dilute the contamination by mixing it with water from other wells,” Carlson said. “The League did not agree with that course of action and pushed for a new well to be established instead and that one closed.”
An attendee asked if it was as easy to track bottled water sales for a community as it is to track the use of kiosks. Zuhlke said that was much more difficult, due to the various brands sold and the locations they are sold at, but you can get monthly reports of sales for those products.
Zuhlke said that the ways to improve trust in local drinking water is to have the tap water be of excellent quality to begin with, the service has to be open and transparent with the community and the city has to have some stake in equity for all drinking procedures.
Attendees noted the need sometimes to bring their own water when going to campgrounds or outdoor recreation sites, noting some rivers and streams at campgrounds denote water being unsafe for drinking or recreation, and Zuhlke agreed there are instances like that bottled water is important.
One of the questions asked about bringing water from a tap and leaving it in a vehicle where temperatures can get to 100 degrees or more and how that can make water unsafe.
“Part of the thing with tap water is it has been treated with items like chlorine, which help cut down on any items like bacteria,” Zuhlke said.
Laura Krouse reminded those on private wells, the Iowa State University Extension services will conduct tests of that water for free. If there are contaminants that are found, it may be up to the homeowner to come up with a treatment plan for their water, but it lets them know what they are exposed to in drinking water.
She also shared an update on research conducted in her book. In Illinois, they noticed many of the water kiosks had been owned by a local dentist. When the researchers went back to looking at the locations on Google Maps in Illinois in the past year, many of those kiosks no longer exist. She chalks that up to Illinois changing the regulation of kiosks.