Precious Water...

"Water, Water, everywhere but not a drop to drink…"

Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

Ah water the thing that makes life possible, we've pretty much taken it for granted here in Florida. Can't beat a glass of ice water when you're really thirsty So we've pumped it out of the ground, polluted it, wasted it, allowed population density that tax it's capacity, paved the recharge areas and pretty much used up the good stuff.

I could rant on numerous water problems and probably will in the future, but today my ire is bottled water. Neat stuff, great to have a few flats of the stuff for emergencies like Hurricanes (sure beats the old fill up the tub before the storm ritual ).

I was sitting at Shands Medical Plaza yesterday, time for my quartly check-up and blood draw and I was watching all the people with bottles of designer water. Mind you I never saw anyone drink it, but they had one. Water was available in all the vending machines too, mind you Shands provides several drinking fountains on every floor that dispenses pure and clean GRU water drawn from deep Florida Aquifer wells. Okay it has some chlorine it. Truth is people unless you drink distilled water, all water has some chemicals in it.

Bottled water is a big business; many of the sources are Florida Aquifer Spring water. Of course some is just city water run through filters and bottled. Ship it all over the country and maybe off shore. That's a lot of water leaving Florida. They then sell it you for around a $1.25 a pint (thats $10 a gallon, makes gasoline look cheap) in a plastic bottle. What a racket when at the most they pay .10 a hundred gallons, if they pay for it at all.

Then there are those bottles, which may or may not be leaching chemicals that make chlorine look like pure water. Not to mention they end up filling up the landfill where they take thousands of years to break down.

What a waste of precious resources (and believe me water is precious). So folks get a life you, don't like the taste of chlorine, get a filter, get a re-useable water bottle. Don't be a part of the problem.