12. Time to Act! - Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Emergency and What We the People Can Do About It

12. TIME TO ACT!

Dr. Seuss’s classic children’s book The Lorax is a story about responsibility and the natural environment. The author said it was one of his personal favorites and that he had written it out of anger about what he saw as corporate greed ruining our natural world. We all know the famous quote, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Having read this to my granddaughters recently, I felt so much anger thinking about the drinking water crisis we find ourselves in today. Most of the people contacting me each day share these feelings of frustration. They see the devastation firsthand, knowing there’s been a breakdown in the regulations meant to protect them. Many have reached out to their local officials to no avail. Frankly, they don’t know what to do or where to turn.

I want to continue to offer my encouragement and motivation to stay strong in the face of uncertainty like we’ve never seen before. You’ve learned about the role of policy, the toxic chemicals, the laws, the regulatory agencies, the roles of local, state, and federal government, the scientific fraud, and the communities rising. This book did not cover in depth many other pressing water issues including water shortages (nearly every region of the U.S. has experienced shortages since 2008), increased flooding, and the growing problem of pipeline ruptures and explosions throughout the country that dump oil directly into our drinking water supplies, but these issues are also critically important.

“Is my water safe?” people ask. It’s a question I get asked at least a thousand times a day. It’s a question authorities and regulators struggle to answer when communities have concerns. Even after pollution has been discovered and drinking water issues get addressed, many people still refuse to drink their tap water because of possible or ongoing health concerns.

More than 60 million Americans have been exposed to unsafe drinking water more than once in the past decade, thanks to industrial dumping, farm pollution, and aging infrastructure. Problems with drinking water systems typically take up to two years to get resolved, while many water treatment plants simply can’t afford the equipment to filter out contaminants. Water system upgrades are desperately needed throughout the country, including replacing millions of lead service lines. We have a huge problem with the approximately four hundred coal-fired power plants that produce millions of pounds of toxic industrial pollution—including arsenic, lead, and mercury—which get dumped into rivers and streams throughout our country. Years of political strife, along with industry dollars influencing the regulatory process, have overwhelmed and stalled action from the EPA. Recent executive orders and proposed budget cuts are causing damage that could take decades to undo.

Millions of Americans have been exposed to chemicals like PFOA and PFOS, which most systems still do not regulate or regularly test for. These chemicals have been linked to cancer, thyroid disease, suppressed immunity, and many other health problems. When I began writing this book in 2016, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reported that 16 million Americans had been exposed to these fluorine-based chemicals, collectively referred to as PFAS. In May 2018, the EWG reported that more than 1,500 water systems may be contaminated with these chemicals, affecting up to 110 million people across the country. The EPA held a summit that same month to address PFAS chemicals. The agency mandated national testing for PFAS chemicals in public water systems from 2013 to 2015, but results from these taxpayer-funded assessments were hidden from the public for months. While the EPA did identify municipalities with the highest concentrations of contamination, the names of utilities with detectable levels of PFAS contamination below 90 ppt were not released, meaning millions of people are still not aware that their water supply is tainted. As I’m writing, more communities are discovering health problems connected to these chemicals in their water, including in Satellite Beach, Florida, where high rates of cancer among young alumni from the local high school caught the eye of Dr. Julie Clift Greenwalt, an oncologist and also a cancer survivor, who noticed an article about carcinogens that had been found in the water at nearby Patrick Air Force Base. After Dr. Greenwalt posted about it on her personal Facebook page, she got hundreds of messages from others who had been diagnosed with cancer and is now working to raise awareness, get further investigation about these chemicals in the drinking water, and save the next generation of students from this environmental exposure.

We cannot ignore these problems any longer. The biggest barrier to clean water in our country today is not chemical, physical, or financial, it’s political. Our political system has run amok and is taking down our most precious resource—water. This is not business as usual. We are at a turning point where we all need to fight before there’s not a drop of water left to drink. Our issues are about right versus wrong, not left versus right. From the crisis in Flint, Michigan, to the toxic waste discharges from Lake Okeechobee in Florida, the root cause is always a politically driven process. When the community and the consumers are actively involved and armed with the knowledge of what’s truly happening with their water and allowed to participate in the process, real change and progress can happen. More often than not, decisions are made by those who have the most to gain or the most to lose. The community that will ultimately be dumped on or the consumers who are forced to drink dangerous water are often not part of the process, cut out by powerful corporations and big lobby dollars. In almost all of these cases, facts get twisted and misinformation campaigns are launched. Yes, these issues are complicated, but all of us in the United States must take notice, become educated, and become engaged. We cannot wait around any longer while our government continues to pander to special interest groups. This is not a partisan issue, it’s a human rights issue.

“What can we do to help?” is easily the second-most-asked question I get and it’s what gives me hope for our future. People want to be part of the solution. My role has been to shine a spotlight on what’s happening with our water and to help educate, inform, and empower others with the truth. Facts are our best weapon in the fight for clean water.

To start, we need to ask the fundamental question: Who does our government work for? We cannot stand for elected officials who don’t respond to the facts or to the concerns of their constituents. I’ve been working to inspire action across America at the national and local levels so that our communities and leaders are armed with the strongest weapons in politics: truth, answers, and solutions. No more mayors on TV telling their constituents the water is safe to drink, just as former Flint, Michigan, mayor Dayne Walling did during the Flint water crisis; he also tweeted that he and his family were drinking the water every day. No more governors ignoring the crisis, just as former Florida governor Rick Scott did for years in Florida, causing toxic algae blooms to harm the water, the wildlife, and the people. It’s time to storm these local offices, flood them with calls, and fund more independent research and testing so that we can work toward solutions to these issues.

Our environmental policies have been seriously forgotten, rolled back, and de-prioritized during these disruptive political years. While this baffles me beyond belief, I feel that these times are teaching us something. We are waking up and realizing that the protections we thought were in place are not. The agencies we thought were looking out for us have been looking the other way. As we recognize more about the impacts on our water, our environment, and our health, we now have a window of opportunity to refocus our attention on the serious issues we face.

With more information and awareness, we can become more vigilant and outspoken about what is happening in our own backyards. As we begin to recognize the enormous cutbacks to the EPA and the tremendous burden of too many contaminated places, we must rise up town by town, city by city, and state by state. Together, we must speak out for the future and for change.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

The first step in solving this national crisis is admitting we have a problem. Just as we’ve seen the rise of #MeToo and Time’s Up, the pioneering anti-sexual-assault and women’s empowerment movements and the #NeverAgain movement to raise awareness and curb gun violence in schools, we need a powerful water movement too. You are more powerful than you think. I see pockets of people who care deeply about water throughout the country, and they are working to bring awareness about clean, safe water for everyone. I would love to see more people join them and harness the energy of citizen power. We’ve seen this kind of momentum before. In 1963, 250,000 people gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington to draw attention to the continued inequalities faced by African Americans. In 1982, close to 1 million people demonstrated in Central Park against nuclear arms and to ask for an end to the tensions created by the Cold War. Millions more have turned out for women’s issues in the last few years. These movements have shown us all that marches are only the beginning. Can we find enough passionate people to sustain a water movement that will address these systematic failures? I’m not just calling on young people or those living in communities already affected. I’m calling on heads of industry, mayors and senators, moms and dads, scientists, students, real estate agents, healthcare workers, water utility operators, veterans, and more. Ultimately, our community drinking water systems belong to us. We pay for the water and without us, these systems can’t continue. We need to step up and take an interest in our drinking water systems, our infrastructure, our government, and our regulatory agencies.

Just as better communication skills can help companies grow and individual relationships thrive, we need to develop effective ways to exchange information when it comes to issues with our water supply. Utility and treatment managers along with city officials need to learn how to properly address water contamination issues, listen to their constituents, and work to rebuild trust in communities. Corporations need to take responsibility for toxic dumping, create more robust testing and monitoring systems, and stop using chemicals known to have negative impacts on public health. Companies need to become leaders for environmental protection, focusing on innovation that does not harm people or the environment, and be better neighbors to the communities they reside in. Medical providers and health professionals need to understand and become informed about toxic chemicals and how exposure to them can affect their patients. Everyday people need to trust their instincts, speak up when they see environmental issues impacting their community, and know that their voices matter. Because when we know, we can rise.

Almost every week, a new community discovers that its drinking water is no longer safe. Clean water is something most of us have taken for granted, relying on it for drinking, cooking, bathing, irrigation, washing our vegetables, making coffee and tea, and more. Without much thought, we take showers, flush toilets, and fill up our glasses from the tap throughout the day. But the time has come to open our eyes and see what’s really happening with our water—and get involved. We have to put an end to this ever-growing crisis, step up our investment in vital infrastructure, and see greater enforcement of both the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. As I’ve said, we have good laws on the books, but we need stricter enforcement to keep our waterways safe for all.

You might be feeling overwhelmed by these issues—the cover-ups, the mishaps, the lack of regulations, the shady politics—and that’s why I’m so passionate about waking everyone up to this idea that we need to be the ones to save ourselves. You can become your own superhero simply by waking up the hero within you. Yes, the situation is huge and overwhelming, but you can’t eat a whole apple at once. You need to take it bite by bite.

SEVEN STEPS CITIZENS CAN TAKE IN A WATER CRISIS

Think your drinking water might be toxic? Let’s review your action plan to address it.

Step 1: Get Curious

Have you noticed a change in your water in color, smell, or pressure? Request a copy of your water quality report, also called a Consumer Confidence Report. Once you’ve got it, look for any contaminants that have exceeded legal limits or any other warnings about chemicals in your water. If you have recently read an article about a contaminant of concern that might be in your water supply, skip ahead to step 2.

Step 2: Separate Fact from Fiction (and Deception)

Talk to your water treatment operators and utility managers and show up to meetings with your public officials to voice your concerns. Take photographs, write observational notes, use news reports or whatever evidence you can gather that will support your case. Let both sides talk to discuss the issue(s) and create steps to move forward.

Step 3: Speak the Truth and Publicize It

Rally support in your community to get changes enacted. Many times, this step begins by hosting a town meeting and/or starting a Facebook group. Find allies such as scientists, lawyers, public relations firms, nonprofit groups, and other changemakers who can help lend credibility to your case.

Step 4: Put the Pressure On

If you are not getting a response from those in charge, then kick your efforts into high gear. Start a petition, engage your local media, make signs, and keep garnering support for the cause.

Step 5: Shield Yourself

Protect your family while you are working on solutions. Don’t drink contaminated water. Request (or purchase) home water filters or bottled water in the interim until the problem is resolved.

Step 6: No More Nos

Keep going, continue to press elected officials to be honest and keep the lines of communication open, keep asking questions, and take on a never-give-up attitude.

Step 7: Celebrate!

No matter what happens or how long it takes to enact change, honor your journey and the courage and effort it takes to speak up and work to make a difference in your community. Keep putting attention on the message of clean water and remember how many people will benefit from your continued effort.

NATIONAL PRIORITIES

Clean water is a national priority that virtually no one is working on—not Congress, not corporations, not many local or state agencies. But as Americans, we deserve a water supply that we can trust. We need to demand vital updates to our infrastructure that will sustain us for years to come. In a 2016 article investigative reporter T. Christian Miller wrote about the safety of our drinking water, commenting, “Perhaps, what is needed are crowd-sourced water projects—an army of citizen water sleuths rising across the country to document the safety of water from the tap.” I love this idea! Whether you like the term “water sleuth,” “water warrior,” or “waterkeeper,” people like you can and need to get involved. Let’s become a collective energy that’s so strong, we can make real changes with our water and in our world. It’s a human need we cannot live without. You have the facts, so now the question becomes “What are you going to do about it?”

One of the most powerful tools I’ve developed over the years is RAM, which stands for Realization, Assessment, and Motivation. It’s a process I teach to help individuals, companies, and cities to get empowered, check their instincts, and take action.

R: Realization is the epiphany and the response.

It’s easy to blame others, but the moment of realization comes when you decide to get honest and take responsibility for your actions. On a personal level it means taking ownership or looking at how you have impacted a situation. Admitting there’s a problem is the first step and it’s shocking how many people are unwilling to begin. When it comes to communities, it may look like hosting a press conference or creating a task force to study a problem. Don’t wait for your health and well-being and even your survival to be on the line. Begin now. Open your eyes and take an honest look at the drinking water in your community.

A: Assessment is taking stock and being accountable to yourself.

Assess your skills, your attitudes, your beliefs, and if you don’t like what you see, don’t be afraid to remodel. Tear things down and start over if you need to. Give yourself an appraisal and allow yourself to see who you are—and then trust who you are. To apply this principle to a city, officials might need to seek outside consultants or call on experts to find out the source of the problems. We need more systems in place to evaluate safety plans and contamination levels, and to stay on top of the issues at hand. Once a system has been assessed, you’re ready to move to the next step.

M: Motivation and mindfulness are what keep you going.

You can probably think of at least one or two people in your life who have plenty of talent but aren’t successful. And vice versa: you probably know plenty of people who aren’t all that talented but are exceptionally successful. In this case, success is defined by being able to fix the problem and create something better. The key to finding success is to find your motivation. Your motivation is the fuel that will keep you going. Most public utilities should be motivated by the sheer fact that their job is to deliver safe, clean drinking water to the residents of the area. But as you can see in many places, this motivation has not been effective. That’s where you come in. You need to make sure that those in charge can see your faces, hear your problems, and know that you care. We’ve forgotten how much power we really have. It’s time to use it. We also need to take time away from our screens to stop and reconnect with the planet. There’s so much chatter these days that it becomes hard to hear your own voice and even harder to tune in to what’s happening around you. Are the streams looking more polluted or cloudy? How does the air smell? What does the water look like when you fill up your tub? Keep observing the world around you and be mindful of the details, and particularly when conditions change. You are your own best ally.

REBUILDING TRUST

All water treatment systems have choices and no single test is available to determine whether or not the water is safe to drink. Before deciding on the method of treatment, our water operators must know the quality of the source water and continue to monitor it for changes. If they receive complaints from consumers, they need to LISTEN, just as our colleague Randy Alstadt did in Poughkeepsie.

When the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, found itself in a water crisis, the initial response from officials was silence—followed by claims that the drinking water met all state and federal standards. That statement was true on a technicality as GenX, the toxic chemical of concern found in the drinking water, was not covered under any regulations. Researchers found that DuPont/Chemours was discharging GenX into the Cape Fear River just a hundred miles upstream from Wilmington. The local water utilities couldn’t filter it out of the river, which hundreds of thousands of people were depending on as their water source. I’d like to use this community to offer lessons and recommendations for each stakeholder in how to handle such situations.

Utilities

Thanks to mounting pressure from consumers, the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority and Brunswick County Utilities started testing their raw and treated drinking water for GenX and similar compounds. Both utilities have started taking bids and working toward implementing additional treatment protections, one with a new granular-activated-carbon system and the other with a reverse osmosis system. Both utilities are also pursuing legal action against Chemours in hopes that the company, not consumers, will pick up the bill for these million-dollar projects.

One approach that Wilmington and other municipalities can consider for future use is text alerts. Text messages have a 99 percent open rate and about 90 percent get read within three minutes of receipt. You can use this technology to send helpful alerts and notifications and provide status updates, advisories, and more, helping provide information to residents in a way that people are already using to communicate. Instead of saying nothing or insisting that the water meets all guidelines, cities can improve their communication plans so that citizens are not stirred into a frenzy. In the case of Wilmington, most people learned about the contamination from their local paper, but the research was public knowledge. We need more treatment facilities staying up-to-date with new contaminants of concern and paying attention to other risks to their drinking water sources. It’s not about maintaining the status quo but about becoming watchdogs and leaders for the health and well-being of their customers.

Public utilities should be aware of new research from the University of Missouri. Scientists there conducted a nationwide survey and found that members of the public are willing to pay for improved water quality.

“People in different areas of the country have different priorities, and that’s hard to coordinate at a national level,” Francisco Aguilar, one of the survey’s authors and associate professor of forestry in the university’s School of Natural Resources, said in a statement. “Still, people from around the nation consistently seem to be willing to pay for water quality improvements.”

Business

Chemours representatives were quick to meet with town officials in Wilmington after news broke about GenX, vowing to work with local, state, and federal officials on next steps. Yet, they did not stop producing the compound and received three notices of violations along with lawsuits by residents, even after the bad press. Once the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issued a sixty-day notice in April 2018 threatening to revoke the company’s air permit, they announced plans to stop all emissions by 2020 (including dumping GenX into the water supply) and invest $100 million to do it.

My message to industry is simple: The truth always comes out. Start with ethical business practices and then you don’t have to deal with legal or regulatory repercussions. Become a leader in your field and be a good neighbor in your community. You can be the ones to stop this legacy of pollution and corruption.

Let me give you another example from my work. Rocketdyne was a rocket engine design and production company, originally located not far from my home in a suburb of Los Angeles. It was part of Rockwell International from 1967 through 1996, and eventually became Aerojet Rocketdyne. For years, the company launched rocket engine tests over the area, which generated many questions about violating air pollution regulations and created concerns about spills of toxic materials into nearby communities. Two class-action lawsuits were filed against the company, and my former boss Ed Masry led one of them. I still have the documents related to the case: in one, a former employee testified that he tried to discuss his uncertainties about the company’s practices with management. The response to him was “It doesn’t matter if we kill a few people with our testing, because Rockwell has a large legal staff that can take care of that kind of thing.” Sadly, this attitude is still rampant in big business. To Rockwell and others, don’t forget that people who have suffered with illnesses or lost relatives due to this kind of pollution and corporate misdeeds have more tenacity than you think. Why not trim the budget of your legal defense fund and spend more money on innovation that is good for all of us?

Business can and must become a force for good in the world. One option is to join the ranks of companies like Kickstarter, Ben & Jerry’s, Cascade Engineering (a plastics manufacturer), New Belgium Brewing, Natura (the largest cosmetics maker in Latin America), and Eileen Fischer, which have become certified B Corporations. These businesses meet the highest standards of third-party-verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. They are measured on everything from carbon emissions to diversity and agree to share the results. The private sector has more resources than government agencies and can easily take the lead on reducing waste, increasing efficiency, and helping to solve environmental problems rather than create them.

Science & Health Experts

Science is such a critical part of the equation in environmental cases. When GenX first became an issue, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) set a health goal of 71,000 ppt. But experts quickly lowered the level to 140 ppt, after gaining access to additional studies, having consultations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other national health organizations, and considering the health impacts of similar compounds.

We need more information about all the chemicals found in the marketplace today, and we need more scientists and experts to take a bolder stand. Let’s not make humans into guinea pigs but instead take a more cautionary approach about releasing these toxins into the environment. I’ve seen it time and again that once the science is in, the health goals get lowered. We need to increase budgets for science and health advisory boards so that they can keep up their important public health work.

Regulators

Many contaminants found in our drinking water, including pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals, are not regulated. How do so many unregulated chemicals get into our water? Chemicals in this country are considered safe until they have been proven to be toxic. It’s time to turn that around. We need to assume a chemical may be harmful until it is proven to be safe. In Europe, a regulation was enacted in 2007 to help improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks posed by chemicals; it’s called REACH, which stands for Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals. The regulation puts the burden of proof on companies, which have to register their substances, then identify and manage the risks of the chemicals they manufacture and market in the European Union and communicate any risk-management measures to users. If risks can’t be managed, officials can restrict or ban the use of those substances. If our friends across the pond can enact this commonsense legislation, surely we can too.

GenX was such a mysterious chemical that no one knew who was responsible for regulating it. Local regulatory agencies felt unable to act because the EPA stated it didn’t have regulations for the compound. It essentially left Chemours to evaluate the toxicity of its own product, a standard practice. Regulatory agencies need peer-reviewed toxicological information in order to provide public health advisories, but the process of obtaining that data can take time, partially because funding for these kinds of studies is in short supply. The EPA has been unable to adopt a single new standard in the last twenty years.

In addition, we need to find advanced and inventive ways to regulate industry that don’t allow loopholes and that enforce steeper fines for those who cheat regulations. We need to make sure that regulators are not former employees of the industry being regulated.

Lawmakers

Often, contamination cases quickly turn political. People point fingers at the other side of the table, but clean water is not a Democrat or Republican issue. Lawmakers can play a vital role in protecting the people and environment when toxins are discovered in the water supply. We need support from our lawmakers to increase and approve budgets for water infrastructure, strengthen safeguards, and enforce regulations, regardless of your (or their) political affiliations. Oftentimes, citizens suffer while policymakers disagree on how to best handle the situation.

During Wilmington’s crisis, Democratic governor Roy Cooper attempted to establish a Water Health and Safety Division to continue monitoring levels of GenX and add staff to the DEQ, but his requests were denied by a Republican-led General Assembly. The case quickly became divided as Republicans proposed a bill that would put more money into research and testing on GenX. Both the state house and the state senate have established special committees on GenX, but real action has been stalled, as lawmakers continue to propose bills that don’t pass. The 2018–19 state budget did not provide additional funding for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services’ water health safety unit. Without proper resources, how can state agencies handle their regular workload and help when environmental tragedies strike?

At the local level, none of Wilmington’s local officeholders attended a public forum in August 2017 hosted by a community group called Wilmington Stop GenX in Our Water Supply. The online version of this group had about ten thousand members. Local legislators can do better by listening and engaging with citizens and finding ways to communicate about how to move forward during a contamination crisis.

Here are some good questions for local leaders to ask themselves:

• What can we do to be more transparent?
• How can we better protect our water sources from contamination in the first place?
• How can we work to restore confidence with our constituents?
• What can we learn from other communities that have seen similar problems and how can we implement changes faster?

People

No one asks for pollution in their water. When you find out your tap is tainted, it’s natural to have questions and concerns. Part of why I’ve hosted hundreds of town hall meetings throughout the country is to offer facts and information to the people. Usually, my presence in a small town drums up interest and local media will cover the issue. I show up so that people can become informed and educated about how to come together and take action to clean up the water. I want to remind you it’s okay to ask questions when it comes to your drinking water. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise or put you off. When I was in town to discuss the water situation in Wilmington, we handed out index cards to the hundreds of people who attended the town hall meeting. They had great questions for the panel of experts we assembled, including these:

• Why can’t we make companies prove something is safe before they can dump it?
• Is there any reason our elected officials did not stop this earlier? Is there no accountability?
• Is GenX in our air and if so, is it toxic to us?
• What’s the best way to approach our schools about ensuring our children have safe drinking water?
• Is showering and bathing in the water harmful?
• When will the water be safe to drink again?
• How do we empower our wastewater treatment operators who are on the front lines of defense?
• Is there any hope of the CFPUA [Cape Fear Public Utility Authority] being able to install equipment to effectively remove all concerning PFCs for a reasonable cost in a reasonable time frame?
• When will politicians have the courage and creativity to develop processes to incentivize business to bring jobs to states like North Carolina but also demand that public health be priority #1?

Officials might try to underestimate you, but in every community I’ve visited people ask good questions and are extremely well versed in their understanding that something’s gone wrong with the water. When communities come together, they have all the passion, fortitude, and smarts to create positive solutions. Don’t stand for anything less than the truth of what’s really happening. It’s your backyard, it’s your tap, it’s your children. You can protect yourselves by keeping your elected officials accountable and staying conversant on these issues. My best advice is don’t give up. Keep the energy building and find more allies who can support you in making changes. With enough people, you can truly make a difference.

IS BOTTLED WATER A SOLUTION?

I’d like to talk about the double-edged sword of the bottled water industry. Yes, it can be a lifesaver in an immediate crisis, and it has been a lifeline for many communities with undrinkable water, but you need to know what you are drinking. Americans tend to think that bottled water is cleaner and safer than what’s coming out of the tap. In some communities, that’s very true, but bottled water labels can be confusing. They portray an illusion of virtue, with images and messages printed on the bottles saying they are filled with water from pure mountain springs, while many of these bottles contain tap water in a fancy-looking to-go package.

The bottled water industry began to take off when beverage giants like Coca-Cola and Pepsi launched the product as a means to maintain profits when soda sales began declining in the early 2000s. Bottled water outsold soda in 2016 and is now the largest beverage category by volume.

“When Perrier first entered the country in the 1970s, few would have predicted the heights to which bottled water would eventually climb,” Michael Bellas, chairman and CEO of Beverage Marketing Corp., said in a statement. “Where once it would have been unimaginable to see Americans walking down the street carrying plastic bottles of water or driving around with them in their cars’ cup holders, now that’s the norm.”

Today, Americans spend about $16 billion a year on bottled water. The biggest brands in the industry are Nestlé Pure Life, Coca-Cola-owned Dasani, and PepsiCo’s Aquafina, according to Beverage Digest. Water municipalities can’t possibly compete with these companies when it comes to advertising, so it’s no surprise why bottled water sales have taken off. Both Pepsi and Coca-Cola’s bottled water is water from public sources (tap water) that is then filtered.

Bottled water is not regulated by the EPA, which is responsible for the quality of water that comes out of your tap. Instead, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for the safety of bottled water sold nationally. States regulate water that is packaged and sold within their state lines, which is most of the market.

If you are in a situation where you need to buy bottled water, always read the fine print on the label and look for brands that treat the water with reverse osmosis, distillation, granular activated carbon, micron filtration, or water sourced from pure spring water, which the EPA defines as groundwater collected “at the point where water flows naturally to the earth’s surface or from a borehole that taps into the underground source.” If the label says from “a municipal source” or “from a community water system,” that means tap water.

Bottled water is also a lot more expensive than tap. At first glance it might seem like paying $1 to $3 for a bottle isn’t so bad, but about 4,787 bottles of water can be filled with tap water for $2.10. Each bottle of water you buy costs more than two thousand times what you would pay for fresh tap water.

Here’s the breakdown: