Bottle vs. tap: Water wars are heating up

In these scorching dog days of summer, icy cold tap water is hot hot hot.

From Boston to New York, from San Francisco to Salt Lake City, from upscale restaurants to city hall, momentum is building to ban the bottle in favor of promoting the municipal alternative.

Chic restaurants in San Francisco, Boston and New York have eliminated bottled water from their menus. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Ann Arbor, Mich., now prohibit the use of city funds for bottled water. New York City has launched an ad campaign to promote its fabled tap water, long considered the best-tasting in the country. And Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, who calls bottled water "the greatest marketing scam of all time," has asked all city employees to refrain from drinking it or at least to fill reusable water bottles with tap water.

Ever since Jack Nicholson sneaked a liter bottle of Evian into the no-beverages section of the Academy Awards 20 years ago, bottled water has had cachet, becoming the accessory of choice among young Hollywood starlets — and then to members of the public willing to pay as much as $2 for a bottle of something they could get for free.

Today, Americans drink more bottled water than anyone, 37 billion bottles' worth in 2005, according to Food and Water Watch, a Washington, D.C., environmental group that is launching a "Take Back the Tap" drive aimed at consumers and municipalities.

"Nearly 40 percent of bottled water is tap water that has been treated and bottled, and yet the federal government requires far more vigorous testing of municipal water than bottled water," said Jennifer Mueller, a spokeswoman for the group. She noted that an estimated 47 million gallons of oil are used to produce the bottles that Americans drink each year.

Perhaps understandably, representatives of the bottled water industry are taking exception to these claims. After San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom banned bottled water from city agencies, the International Bottled Water Association issued a press release arguing that water bottles are among the most recycled of all packaging, that a minimal amount of ground water is used to make the product, and that bottled water is fully regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

The tap water movement isn't just about health or the environment, though. The heavy use of nonfluoridated bottled water has cavities on the rise again, and cash-strapped cities see the banishment of bottles as a way to save money.