Clean New York City Water

(Note: This essay was originally posted on NYCTourGuy.com, a blog I managed when I lived in New York City. That blog will be taken down soon, and I’ll be moving all of that content here, dated as of its original posting.)

I only get a half hour for lunch, so it’s usually spent in the breakroom in order to make sure I’m back on time. Yesterday, though, there was some I.T. guy sitting in the only seat at the only table back there, so I decided to eat at nearby City Hall Park. Also, fuck’em if I’m late.

I sat at a bench across from a water fountain, which reminded me of Evi. She’s always telling me how good NYC tap water is; whenever I’m at her apartment, she gives me a glass right from the kitchen faucet. It’s admittedly not bad, though I’ve had better. I think Evi’s simply been subject to the city’s propaganda about its tap water. The local government is trying to reduce plastic bottle waste by getting everyone to use refillable bottles and city water. What better way to do that than constantly brag about how good it is?

My roommate John thinks otherwise. He’s an interesting sort. He drinks probably five Mexican Cokes a day, smokes an obscene amount of weed, but fuck you if you ever try to give him anything but purified bottled water. “You don’t even want to know what’s really in our tap water,” he said, after I told him about drinking it at Evi’s. “That shit is disgusting.”

Two completely different opinions about a subject I really don’t care much about. Whatever. I bought a Brita.

“OH DISGUSTING!” Exclaimed a young mother near the entrance to the park, startling me. She was holding her son’s arm, looking at his hand. “Go wipe it off in the grass!” He started walking towards the grass across from me.  I have no idea what the kid did, but he looked like a six-year-old boy so it’s obviously gross. I went back to my lunch.

I think the whole bottled water thing is kind of stupid. I remember being locked out of the house as a kid, forced to play outside, and if I wanted a drink, I turned on the spigot and drank from a garden hose. And while the tap water I drank from my sister’s old house up in the mountains of North Carolina was better, NYC’s tap water is pretty darn good, so there’s absolutely no reason I shouldn’t be able to drink from the faucet, the “refill stations”, and even the water fountains all around town.

“WHAT DID YOU DO?” Yelled the mother, directly across from me at the water fountain, startling me a second time. “I said wipe it on the grass! That’s the mouth part! People drink from that!” She pulled his hand away from fountain.

Okay, maybe bottled water isn’t such a bad idea.