This time it is not the ground underfoot, which has been disputed since the bloody partition of British India in 1947, but the water hurtling from mountain glaciers to parched farmers’ [...keep reading]]]> BANDIPORE, Kashmir — In this high Himalayan valley on the Indian-controlled side of Kashmir, the latest battle line between India and Pakistan has been drawn.

This time it is not the ground underfoot, which has been disputed since the bloody partition of British India in 1947, but the water hurtling from mountain glaciers to parched farmers’ fields in Pakistan’s agricultural heartland.

Indian workers here are racing to build an expensivehydroelectric dam in a remote valley near here, one of several India plans to build over the next decade to feed its rapidly growing but power-starved economy.

In Pakistan, the project raises fears that India, its archrival and the upriver nation, would have the power to manipulate the water flowing to its agriculture industry — a quarter of its economy and employer of half its population. In May it filed a case with the international arbitration court to stop it.

Water has become a growing source of tension in many parts of the world between nations striving for growth. Several African countries are arguing over water rights to the Nile. Israel and Jordan have competing claims to the Jordan River. Across the Himalayas, China’s own dam projects have piqued India, a rival for regional, and even global, power.

But the fight here is adding a new layer of volatility at a critical moment to one of the most fraught relationships anywhere, one between deeply distrustful, nuclear-armed nations who have already fought three wars.

The dispute threatens to upset delicate negotiations to renew peace talks, on hold since Pakistani militants killed at least 163 people in attacks in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. The United States has been particularly keen to ease tensions so that Pakistan can divert troops and matériel from its border with India to its frontier with Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents.

Anti-India nationalists and militant networks in Pakistan, already dangerously potent, have seized on the issue as a new source of rage to perpetuate 60 years of antagonism.

Jamaat-u-Dawa, the charity wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group behind the Mumbai attacks, has retooled its public relations effort around the water dispute, where it was once focused almost entirely on land claims to Kashmir. Hafiz Saeed, Jamaat’s leader, now uses the dispute in his Friday sermons to whip up fresh hatreds.

With their populations rapidly expanding, water is critical to both nations. Pakistan contains the world’s largest contiguous irrigation system, water experts say. It has also become an increasingly fertile recruiting ground for militant groups, who play on a lack of opportunity and abundant anti-India sentiment. The rivers that traverse Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province and the heart of its agriculture industry, are the country’s lifeline, and the dispute over their use goes to the heart of its fears about its larger, stronger neighbor.

For India, the hydroprojects are vital to harnessing Himalayan water to fill in the serious energy shortfalls that crimp its economy. About 40 percent of India’s population is off the power grid, and lack of electricity has hampered industry. The Kishenganga project is a crucial part of India’s plans to close that gap.

The Indian project has been on the drawing board for decades, and it falls under a 50-year-old treaty that divides the Indus River and its tributaries between both countries. “The treaty worked well in the past, mostly because the Indians weren’t building anything,” said John Briscoe, an expert on South Asia’s water issues at Harvard University. “This is a completely different ballgame. Now there’s a whole battery of these hydroprojects.”

The treaty, the result of a decade of painstaking negotiation that ended in 1960, gave Pakistan 80 percent of the waters in the Indus River system, a ratio that nationalists in Pakistan often forget. India, the upriver nation, is permitted to use some of the water for farming, drinking and power generation, as long as it does not store too much.

While the Kishenganga dam is allowed under the treaty, the dispute is over how it should be built and the timely release of water. Pakistan contends that having the drainage at the very base of the dam will allow India to manipulate the water flow when it wants, for example, during a crucial period of a planting season.

“It makes Pakistan very vulnerable,” said a lawyer who has worked on past water cases for Pakistan. “You can’t just tell us, ‘Hey, you should trust us.’ We don’t. That’s why we have a treaty.”

India has rejected any suggestion that it has violated the treaty or tried to steal water. In a speech on June 13, India’s foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao, called such allegations “breast-beating propaganda,” adding “the myth of water theft does not stand the test of rational scrutiny or reason.”

Water experts concur, but say Pakistan does have a legitimate cause for concern. The real issue is timing. If India chooses to fill its dams at a crucial time for Pakistan, it has the potential to ruin a crop. Mr. Briscoe estimates that if India builds all its planned projects, it could have the capacity of holding up about a month’s worth of river flow during Pakistan’s critical dry season, enough to wreck an entire planting season.

Here in Bandipore, where engineers and laborers work long shifts to build the powerhouse and tunnel for the long-awaited dam, the work is not merely a matter of electricity. National pride is at stake, they said.

“This dam is a matter of our national prestige,” one of the engineers on the project said. “It is our right to build this dam, and our future depends on it.”

Pakistanis say they have reason to be worried. In 1948, a year after Pakistan and India were established as states, an administrator in India shut off the water supply to a number of canals in Pakistani Punjab. Indian authorities later said it was a bureaucratic mix-up, but in Pakistan, the memory lingers.

“Once you’ve had a gun put to your head and it’s been cocked, you don’t forget it,” said the Pakistani lawyer, who asked that his name not be used because he was not part of the current legal team.

A genuine water shortage in Pakistan, and the country’s inability to store large quantities of water, has only made matters worse, exposing it to any small variation in rainfall or river flow. Pakistan is about to slip into a category of country the United Nations defines as “water scarce.”

“They are confronting a very serious water issue,” said a senior American official in Islamabad. “There’s a high amount of anxiety, and it’s not misplaced.”

The design of the dam requires that much of the water in the Kishenganga River be diverted for much of the year. That will kill off fish and harm the livelihoods of the people living in the Pakistan-administered side of Kashmir, Pakistani officials say.

Kaiser Bengali, an economist, argues that Pakistan’s water crisis has little to do with India, and says that the real way to ease it is to introduce water conservation methods and modern farming techniques. In a country where summer temperatures reach 120 degrees, as much as 40 percent of Pakistan’s water is lost before even reaching the roots of the plants, experts say.

The water dispute would not be nearly as acute, experts said, if India and Pakistan talked and shared data on water. Instead, the distrust and antagonism is such that bureaucrats have hoarded information, and are secretly gunning to finish projects on either side of the line of control in order to be the first to have an established fact on the ground.

“It’s like a bad marriage in which we have proscribed roles,” the Pakistani lawyer said. “Would it be better if we were communicating openly? Yes. But in the present circumstances we are not.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi.

By LYDIA POLGREEN and SABRINA TAVERNISE

Poland Spring and the water district that serves Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Wells are close to striking a deal that would allow the company to draw water from one of the district’s underground springs, although a fledgling group of opponents hopes to delay the process.

The deal with the water district is the latest expansion proposal [...keep reading]]]> Staff Writer

Poland Spring and the water district that serves Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Wells are close to striking a deal that would allow the company to draw water from one of the district’s underground springs, although a fledgling group of opponents hopes to delay the process.

The deal with the water district is the latest expansion proposal in Maine from the iconic bottled-water company, which has seen sales rise from $407 million in 2000 to $878 million last year.

For the past year and a half, the water district and Poland Spring have discussed a contract that would give the bottler permission to drill into sandy soil on the north side of Branch Brook in Wells. The company would draw up to 250,000 gallons of water per day, although the exact quantity has not been established.

Poland Spring would pump the water through a mile-long pipe to a fill station that would be built on Route 109 inSanford, where the water would be loaded onto trucks and sent to the bottling plant in Hollis. In return, Poland Spring would pay the water district a per-gallon rate expected to total $250,000 per year to start. The amount could grow to as much as $750,000, depending on the quantity sold. Water district trustees will hold a public hearing on the proposal and vote on it June 25.

Norm Labbe, superintendent of the Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Wells Water District, said the utility could sell that much water and still have ample reserves to meet the needs of residents. Although a quarter-million gallons per day sounds like a sizable number, Labbe said it actually is small compared with the district’s daily usage.

The district, which serves up to 75,000 people during busy summer months, uses 7 million gallons per day at times of peak demand. In the past few years, the district has found additional groundwater sources on utility-owned land with the capacity to provide 3 million gallons per day, more than 10 times the quantity Poland Spring wants to buy, Labbe said.

He said the 30-year deal with Poland Spring would allow the nonprofit utility to develop additional water reserves and control rates for customers.

Some residents, however, say it’s a bad deal and that they’ll urge the water district to delay its vote. Jamilla El-Shafei of Kennebunk said Friday that more than 100 residents plan to attend a meeting on the proposal beginning at 6 p.m. on June 22. The group has reserved space at the Unitarian church in Kennebunk, but hopes to get permission to use Kennebunk Town Hall in case the turnout is much larger.

El-Shafei said members think the proposed deal is a bad one financially, and they worry that it could affect the local water supply in the long run. She said Labbe will be invited to the meeting to answer residents’ questions.

The deal also would involve Poland Spring buying 150 acres in the vicinity of Branch Brook, protecting an important piece of the local watershed, Labbe said.

”It’s a sizable increase in revenue,” he said. ”I feel it’s in the best interest of Branch Brook and the customers.”

PURSUING NEW WATER SOURCES

The bottling company is a subsidiary of Nestle Waters North America, but still maintains its headquarters in Poland Spring, a village in the Androscoggin County town of Poland. Its natural resource manager, Mark Dubois, said the company approached the water district about the potential deal because Poland Spring continues to look for additional sources of water to meet the company’s projected growth in the next few years.

Dubois said the spring in Wells is attractive because of its proximity to the bottling plant and because the sandy aquifer in Wells creates a ”taste profile” similar to that of water found in Hollis.

”The taste is there,” he said.

In the past few years, Poland Spring has looked for new sources of water throughout southern and western Maine to supply its bottling plants in Hollis and Poland Spring. A third bottling plant in Kingfield is set to open at the end of the year.

The company examines more than 100 potential new sources of water each year, but rarely does it get to the stage where it seeks to develop one, Dubois said. Poland Spring currently has two contracts to buy water in Maine — with the state for water drawn from Range Pond State Park in Poland, and with Pure Mountain Spring in Fryeburg.

Dubois said the company is growing about 10 percent a year, although as the industry matures in coming years, the rate is expected to be in single digits.

The $878 million in domestic sales last year, according to Beverage Marketing Corp., rank Poland Spring as the third-leading brand of bottled water in the country, behind PepsiCo’s Aquafina and Coca Cola Co.’s Dasani. Poland Spring took 700 million gallons of water from the ground last year, compared with 500 million gallons in 2005. Its work force has grown from about 600 in 2006 to more than 800 this year, Dubois said.

WATER PLANS MEET RESISTANCE

Poland Spring’s search for new water supplies has sometimes generated strong reactions from residents, especially in the Fryeburg area, where people are concerned about their water supply and the addition of heavy truck traffic on local roads.

A citizens group concerned about the environmental impacts of Poland Spring operations recently proposed a 19-cents-per-gallon tax on large water bottlers. The 2005 initiative failed to collect enough valid signatures to place the issue before voters.

Organizers of the effort dropped a second attempt last year after they collaborated with Poland Spring on a bill that was signed by Gov. John Baldacci. The legislation requires a more thorough process, with greater transparency for the public, in reviewing water extraction applications. It also sets sustainability standards for extraction.

The company approached the town of Shapleigh this spring to explore buying water from an aquifer on town-owned property. The town has yet to vote on whether to pursue negotiations, but at public meetings earlier this year many residents voiced concerns about trucks and the adequacy of the water supply.

DISTRICT’S TRUSTEES TO DECIDE

Joan Mooney, a member of the Wells Board of Selectmen, said she has not heard similar concerns from local residents regarding the proposed deal with Poland Spring.

In this case, the decision on entering into a deal is in the hands of the water district’s elected trustees, who verbally supported it at their meeting last month. If the trustees vote for the contract, the district will have to apply to the state Department of Environmental Protection for a permit to sell the water.

In Sanford, where Poland Spring proposes building a pumping station, Town Manager Mark Green said he has seen no specific plans for the project. But he said the town would welcome the tax revenue and he remains cautiously supportive.

”I guess we’re supportive of anything that brings some commerce and some jobs that are environmentally friendly,” he said.

Green said the pumping station would be well-situated near Sanford airport because there are no residential abutters and it is a part of town where Sanford seeks to attract industry.

If Poland Spring were to pump 250,000 gallons a day in Wells, moving the water would require an additional 31 daily truck trips along routes 109 and 4 between Sanford and Hollis. Green said he didn’t believe that would pose a problem because the two roads already are major trucking routes.

If the Poland Spring plan works out, Dubois said it would be at least 2010 before the company placed any water from Wells in its signature clear-plastic bottles with the green label. By federal law, he said, Poland Spring would be required to note on each bottle the location of the spring from which the water is drawn.

Staff Writer Trevor Maxwell contributed to this report.

Staff Writer Seth Harkness can be contacted at 282-8225 or at:

sharkness@pressherald.com

CONCORD, Mass. — Henry David Thoreau was jailed here 164 years ago for refusing to pay taxes while living at Walden Pond. Now the town has Jean Hill to contend with.

Mrs. Hill, an octogenarian previously best known for her blueberry jam, proposed banning the sale of bottled water here at a town [...keep reading]]]>

CONCORD, Mass. — Henry David Thoreau was jailed here 164 years ago for refusing to pay taxes while living at Walden Pond. Now the town has Jean Hill to contend with.

Mrs. Hill, an octogenarian previously best known for her blueberry jam, proposed banning the sale of bottled water here at a town meeting this spring. Voters approved, with the intent of making Concord the first town in the nation to strip Aquafina, Poland Spring and the like from its stores.

In orchestrating an outright ban, Mrs. Hill, 82, has achieved something that powerful environmental groups have not even tried. The bottled water industry is not pleased; it has threatened to sue if the ban takes effect as planned on Jan. 1. Officials here have hinted that they might not strictly enforce it, but Mrs. Hill, who described herself as obsessed, said that would only deepen her resolve.

“I’m going to work until I drop on this,” she said. “If you believe in something, you have to persist and you have to have a thick skin.”

Tom Lauria, a spokesman for theInternational Bottled Water Association, questioned why Mrs. Hill would single out bottled water when there are so many other things packaged in plastic. “Some people in the industry kind of respect her because of her age and her vision,” he said, “but we believe that vision is distorted. There are far worse products to pick on than water.”

Mrs. Hill’s crusade began a few years ago when her grandson, then 10, told her about the so-called Pacific garbage patch, a vortex of plastic and other debris floating between California and Hawaii, thought to be twice the size of Texas.

She researched and homed in on bottled water, finding that millions of plastic bottles were disposed of daily and that most were not recycled. While most opponents of bottled water have sought piecemeal change, like getting government agencies to stop buying it, Mrs. Hill wanted her affluent, erudite town to take a bolder step.

“The bottled water companies are draining our aquifers and selling it back to us,” she said, repeating her pitch from the town meeting in April. “We’re trashing our planet, all because of greed.”

Mrs. Hill’s presentation compelled some 300 voters to support the ban. But days later, town officials said the ban appeared unenforceable. They have asked the state attorney general’s office for guidance.

“It’s our responsibility to carry out the wishes of town meeting, but we’re struggling a little with how to do that,” said Christopher Whelan, the town manager. “It’s still up in the air what will happen on Jan. 1.”

Mr. Lauria said the bottled water association would consider suing if the attorney general’s office signs off on the ban. “It’s a completely legal commodity, and to ban it runs afoul of interstate commerce considerations,” he said.

As for Mrs. Hill, Mr. Whelan said she belonged to a long tradition of town residents channeling Thoreau and other big-thinking forbears.

“She’s the classic Concordian who conceives of an idea and doesn’t take no for an answer,” he said. “She’s a strong-willed citizen who is very committed to the environment, so in a lot of ways she’s typical of this place.”

Mrs. Hill said she developed an activist streak as a teenager during World War II, when she spent a summer working in a New York City parachute factory. She discovered that employees got no paid vacation, and tried to stir a revolt.

“I went to a local union office,” she said. “Here I was, only 16, and they said, ‘Get lost, kid.’ ”

After that, she stopped agitating but read a book a night and honed her research skills as a clerk at Life magazine. She got married and raised four children here, returning to activism only about 15 years ago when she fought a plan to build a visitors center in a historic meadow.

Mrs. Hill’s current battle is lonely, despite the overwhelming support of voters who attended the April meeting. She reached out to Corporate Accountability International, an advocacy group in Boston that gave Mrs. Hill a PowerPoint presentation to help make her case. But most of her work — researching online, passing out pamphlets at church — has been solitary.

She recently organized a screening of “Tapped,” a documentary about abuses in the bottled water industry. A representative from Senator John Kerry’s office came — Mrs. Hill had threatened not to vote for him otherwise — but the crowd she had hoped for did not.

She has critics, including some who dismiss her as a retiree with too much time on her hands.

“Oh, I know,” she huffed, “this little old lady in tennis shoes butting into everyone’s business. It’s annoying and it’s not true. I’m not meddling; I’m trying to accomplish a legitimate goal.”

Mrs. Hill attributes the popularity of bottled water to the widespread belief that everyone needs eight glasses worth a day.

“People thought, ‘Oh God, got to have my water,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “If you did that, you’d spend the whole day in the bathroom!”

She does not drink enough water herself, she allowed; orange juice, milk and Scotch are higher on her list. For those who do sip water all day, she has some characteristically blunt advice.

“Get yourself a nice Thermos,” she said. “I’ll give you one if you want.”

Mrs. Hill made a point of finding out how many public water fountains Concord has — 11 — and sharing their whereabouts in a letter to the local newspaper, The Concord Journal. She also approached a local merchant to suggest selling Thermoses instead of bottled water.

“He was not impressed by that at all,” she said. “The stores aren’t happy about it.”

Her movement suffered a blowback last month, when a water main break forced a boil-water order in the Boston area for several days. The pursuant clamor for bottled water gave some in Concord, which was not affected, second thoughts about a ban.

Mrs. Hill never flinched.

“People got hysterical,” she said. “All they had to do was boil their water for one full minute and that would be fine.”

In a crisis — or whenever they wanted — the people of Concord could always get bottled water elsewhere, Mrs. Hill said. Nor could the ban stop them from stockpiling water from big-box stores, a loophole that does not vex her for now.

“I’m not prepared to take on Costco at this point,” she said. “Maybe when I get a rest, I will.”

original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/us/23water.html

The Cabazon Water District has shut off the water supply to the Nestle Waters North America bottling plant in Cabazon. However a spokesman for the company said it will not affect business at the facility “at all.” Larry Lawrence, Natural Resource regional manager for Nestle [...keep reading]]]> Traci Kratzer
Record Gazette Staff Writer | original article

The Cabazon Water District has shut off the water supply to the Nestle Waters North America bottling plant in Cabazon.

The Cabazon Water District has shut off the water supply to the Nestle Waters North America bottling plant in Cabazon.
However a spokesman for the company said it will not affect business at the facility “at all.”
Larry Lawrence, Natural Resource regional manager for Nestle Waters North America, said the bottling plant has already switched to an alternative water source.
“I am a little surprise by all the attention since we negotiated a plan termination date as of three weeks ago,” Lawrence said.
“We were prepared for this. This is not going to cause a shut down of the plant.”
The water supplied by the district is used to operate the plant and not for bottling.
The shut-off took place Wednesday morning.
Cabazon Water District officials said the action, involving a company best known for its production of Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water products, is a result of an impasse involving negotiations with Nestle Water to extend water service outside the boundaries of its district to the bottling plant.
Despite Lawrences’ comments, Calvin Louie, general manager of the Cabazon Water District, said terms of an agreement were set forth and the company was given until June 15 to reach an agreement with the district. Louie said he received a call from Lawrence on the night of June 15 expressing his regret that an agreement could not be reached.
The district has been providing the plant, on average, with 2.4 million gallons of water a month, Louie said.
“We’ve been serving the plant without a (written) agreement since 2001,’’ said Louie.
Although the terms of the agreement were not divulged, officials said it involved “reasonable rates” and some “reimbursement” back to the community on terms or issues the company promised nine years ago when the district began to serve the plant.
The Arrowhead water bottling facility was built in 2003 at a cost of $26 million on the Morongo Indian Reservation.
The venture, developed through a partnership with the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, initially involved the sale of spring water to Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water.
Then handled through the Perrier Group of America, the product was distributed throughout California, Arizona, Nevada, the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest.
The facility, the largest water bottling plant in the United States, employs an estimated 260 workers.

The Cabazon Water District on Wednesday has threatened to shut off the water supply Wednesday to Nestle Waters North America bottling plant in Cabazon, the general manager for the utility announced late Tuesday.

The action involving a company best known for [...keep reading]]]> DEBRA GRUSZECKI • THE DESERT SUN • JUNE 15, 2010

The Cabazon Water District on Wednesday has threatened to shut off the water supply Wednesday to Nestle Waters North America bottling plant in Cabazon, the general manager for the utility announced late Tuesday.

The action involving a company best known for its production of Arrowhead Mountain Springwater products could be taken at 10 a.m,. as a result of an impasse involving negotiations with Nestle Water to extend water service outside the boundaries of its district to the bottling plant. “We’ve been serving the plant without a (written) agreement since 2001,” said Calvin Louie, general manager of the Cabazon Water District. Louie declined to divulge terms, saying only that it involved “reasonable rates” and some “reimbursement” back to the community on terms or issues that the company promised nine years ago when the district began to serve the bottling plant. The Arrowhead water bottling facility was built in 2003 at a cost of $26 million on the Morongo Indian Reservation. The venture, developed through a partnership with the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, initiailly involved the sale of spring water to Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water. Then handled through the Perrier Group of America, product was distributed throughout California, Arizona, Nevada, the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. “The Arrowhead bottling plant, as far as we know is a stand-alone business which happens to be on tribal land,” Louie said. Attempts to contact a spokesman for the Nestle Water plant or the tribe were unsuccessful.

Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection is recommending that bisphenol-A, or BPA, be banned from use in reusable food and beverage containers such as baby bottles and water bottles sold [...keep reading]]]> The state may ban some uses of a controversial plastic additive as its first “priority chemical” under a new toxic chemical control law.

Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection is recommending that bisphenol-A, or BPA, be banned from use in reusable food and beverage containers such as baby bottles and water bottles sold in the state. It also wants to designate BPA as the state’s first priority chemical, which would require all manufacturers to notify the state if BPA is in their products and if it may come into contact with children.

Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection, which oversees the new chemical rules, voted today to hold a public hearing on the proposal on Aug 19. Written comments will be accepted through Aug. 30.

Bisphenol-A is used to make polycarbonate plastic and is used in the epoxy resins that line food cans, including many infant formula cans, according to the Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine. BPA exposure has been linked to a number of health problems, such as ADHD, breast and prostate cancer, reproductive damage, diabetes, and obesity, according to the group.

by John Richardson original article here

ATLANTIC CITY – Atlantic City High School students lined up to drink water Thursday to see whether they could tell the difference between bottled water and tap water from the school fountains.

Students had difficulty doing so, and the test reinforced the intended message that tap [...keep reading]]]> By DIANE D’AMICO Education Writer (original article here )

ATLANTIC CITY – Atlantic City High School students lined up to drink water Thursday to see whether they could tell the difference between bottled water and tap water from the school fountains.

Students had difficulty doing so, and the test reinforced the intended message that tap water is the better choice.

“(Drinking tap water) saves money and helps the environment,” said senior Samuel Goldberg, 18, of Ventnor. “Some bottled water is just tap water.”

The taste test was organized by students in Regina Banner’s Advanced Placement environment class after they watched a documentary called “Flow” about global water availability. Banner researched watchdog organization Corporate Accountability International, as well as a “tap water challenge” the students decided to try. They bought Poland Spring and Dasani bottled water, and got water from the school fountains to pour into tiny paper cups. For good measure, they blindfolded participating students.

Then, wearing hand-painted T-shirts that read, “Think outside the bottle” and “Think globally, drink locally,” they set up two tables in the school cafeteria and invited students to drink up. They even offered a few prizes, including reusable water bottles.

The overall sentiment among students was that they could not taste a difference between bottled and tap.

Junior Lorenzo Smith, 17, of Atlantic City, drank his first tiny cup of water, then the second cup and the third.

“They all taste the same,” he said. “You have to really work at it to notice any difference.”

When pressed to pick one, he chose Dasani, not his usual water of choice.

“I usually drink Poland Spring because that’s what we have at home,” he said.

“It’s just a habit now to carry a bottle of water,” said Brianna Husta, 17, a junior from Brigantine.

“But I am seeing more students carrying refillable bottles,” said junior Nasir Khan, 17, of Atlantic City. “Water is so overpriced in the vending machines. If you carry a bottle, you can refill it in the water fountain.”

Students posted a huge “Use Me” sign over the water fountain in the cafeteria.

By the end of lunch, 280 students had taken the taste test. Students in Joe Costello’s Advanced Placement statistics class tallied the results and found 37 percent chose the tap water as their favorite, followed by 34 percent for Poland Spring and 29 percent for Dasani. They concluded that students favored tap water, but not significantly.

The students plan to make a chart showing their results to post in the cafeteria. Banner said next year she may add “no difference” to the choices since so many students had a hard time picking one type of water they preferred.

Neil Goldfine, executive director of the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority, said the one major advantage of bottled water is that it has the large marketing budget of huge parent corporations such as Coca-Cola.

He said water-research group American Water Works has an “Only Tap Delivers” campaign but cannot match the advertising budgets of corporations.

“Tap water does need a marketing campaign,” he said.

He said the tap-water industry is far more regulated than that of bottled water, so the public should not assume that bottled water is safer.

“It’s just about convenience,” he said.

Atlantic City’s tap water has placed in the annual Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting Awards, taking the gold medal in 1992 and 1993, and placing fifth in 2001. The city’s water also has been credited for contributing to the distinctive taste and texture of city-baked bread.

Contact Diane D’Amico:

609-272-7241

DDamico@pressofac.com

Climate meetings are taking place in Bonn Germany this week and next week.  They are preparing for the next major round of negotiations in Cancun this fall.   So far water is not even being discussed in climate negotiations.  Negotiators need to hear from us that water is key to protecting [...keep reading]]]> Hello readers,

Climate meetings are taking place in Bonn Germany this week and next week.  They are preparing for the next major round of negotiations in Cancun this fall.   So far water is not even being discussed in climate negotiations.  Negotiators need to hear from us that water is key to protecting our earth from climate change. Please sign the petition to the negotiators to make this a top priority issue!

SIGN THE PETITION – CLICK HERE