New Haven Register - New Haven alderman would ban bottled water

 

February 07, 2011

 

NEW HAVEN – The city has a $32,000-a-year bottle habit, water bottles that is.

 

A new proposal by Alderman Justin Elicker seeks to ban the city from using public funds to buy bottled water for municipal and school district needs.

 

Elicker is getting help from a Yale University student group, Think Outside the Bottle, to garner support for the bottle ban as aldermen prepare to consider the proposal.

 

Supporters of the plan say the reasons to stop buying bottled water for schools and city offices are many, ranging from environmental to economic to health-related. Elicker argues that tap water is abundant and highly regulated.

 

“My opinion is if it’s good enough for 100,000 people who drink tap water out of their faucets at home in New Haven, it should be good enough for our municipal employees and our students to drink,” Elicker said.

 

Ten other aldermen have signed on in support of the proposal.

 

In the letter dated Jan. 25, Elicker makes the case that the city should set a good example by using its own municipal water, which is “tested hundreds of times a month.” The letter states that in 2009, the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority performed more than 110,000 tests on more than 10,000 water samples from the New Haven area. Those tests indicated “overwhelmingly high water quality standards which in many cases exceeded state and federal standards.” Further, the water purchased by the city comes from the municipal water supply in Worcester, Mass., where it is bottled and then trucked more than 100 miles to New Haven.

 

According to figures obtained by Elicker, the city went through 43,055 gallons of bottled water in fiscal year 2009-2010 and spent a total of $31,719. That water is provided for employees in the form of 5-gallon jugs placed in city offices. If the city had used tap water instead, it would have cost about $160, Elicker said. Also, the school district bought and sold almost 30,000 bottles of water in high school cafeterias last year and sells bottled water in most schools. Most of the cafeterias also have drinking water fountains.

 

Elicker said he recently visited Wilbur Cross High School and asked a couple of students if the cafeteria had water fountains. The students said ‘no’ but offered that the cafeteria sells bottled water. Elicker went to the cafeteria and found two water fountains that he drank from and found to be just fine.

 

“Kids need to understand that water from the tap is healthy. They shouldn’t think that they have to buy water for it to be healthy,” he said.

 

Supporters also point out that plastic bottles are bad for the environment, both in terms of pollution created in the manufacturing of the bottles and the waste created by people not recycling the bottles.

 

“Environmentally speaking, bottled water is an unsustainable commodity,” said Sam Bendinelli, chairman of Yale’s Think Outside the Bottle. “Fifty million barrels of oil is used annually in the U.S. to create bottled water that is only recycled 25 percent of the time.”

 

Bendinelli’s group has partnered with national nonprofit Corporate Accountability International to create a petition for supporters of the bottle ban to sign. So far, more than 160 people have signed the petition, mostly Yale students.

 

Elicker said there are also important health reasons for the city to quit its bottle habit. The jugs used to store water for city employees are made of plastic #7 polycarbonate, which contains bisphenol-A. Scientists say BPA is a known an endocrine disruptor that has been linked to increased cancer risk, birth defects and other health problems.