Mayor Blum hopes bottled water will tap out

BY ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

The ubiquitous plastic bottle of water, long the nemesis of Santa Barbara city government, could become the target of a nationwide campaign of elimination from municipal use if approved by city leaders, Mayor Marty Blum among them, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ annual meeting this weekend.
Joining 13 other mayors from cities across the country — including San Francisco’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Michael Bloomberg — Mayor Blum will push for a resolution urging cities to phase out government use of bottled water and promote the importance of tap water.

“The idea is that plastic takes petroleum to produce and what we’re really buying is someone else’s water,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with the water that each municipality produces. It’s actually very good.”
Twisting off a bottled water cap hasn’t been permitted at city facilities or events for more than a year and while San Francisco often gets credit for leading the charge, Mayor Blum said Santa Barbara actually approved its ban three weeks earlier than the City by the Bay.
“Since we banned it, I’ve had more drinks of local water than ever before and I just love it,” she added.
The merits of bottled water — whether it is safer than tap water or not — have long been debated and most studies conclude there is not much of a difference.
“The truth is, while tap water and bottled water are regulated differently, both are generally safe, healthy choices,” according to a statement on American Water Works Association website.
While the Environmental Protection Agency strictly regulates tap water, the Food and Drug Administration handles bottled water and both have different systems of testing; the mayoral resolution notes the EPA has more stringent requirements.
A 1999 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental action group, titled “Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?” highlighted the results of a four-year study of the bottled water industry.
One-third of bottled waters tested contained synthetic organic chemicals or chemicals used in manufacturing plastic, but typically below state and federal standards, according to the study. Tests also found arsenic, nitrates and other inorganic contaminants at levels below standards, most not triggering health concerns.
The NRDC noted that in 1996, the EPA reported that about one-tenth of municipal water systems violated tap water treatment or contaminant standards, although the majority of the country’s tap water passes standards.
In addition, up to 40 percent of bottled water comes directly from municipal water systems — although a portion of that water receives further treatment.
Santa Barbara tap water, although occasionally having issues with mineral content, has consistently passed state and federal standards, city officials said.
“We’re really lucky to have such a pristine watershed,” Water Treatment Superintendent Susan Thomson said. “We have really good water here as far as contaminants go.”
But rather than seriously debating the safety of bottled water, Resolution 70, titled “Supporting Municipal Water Systems,” instead focuses largely on the environmental impact of plastic bottle waste.
In 2007, companies bottled nearly 32 billion liters of water, calculating out to more than 50 billion water bottles that used 40 million gallons of oil to produce, said Eric Lohela, an environmental specialist with the city of Santa Barbara.
“Less than 20 percent of those nationwide were recycled,” he said. “…They’re never really going to break down in a landfill.”
Many communities across the country don’t have solidly established recycling programs, Lohela added, pointing out 8 percent recycling levels in Dallas, 2 percent levels in Houston and no established recycling program in Detroit.
Santa Barbara waste recycling tops out between 60 and 70 percent, he said. So a resolution urging governments to stop using plastic bottles would set an important precedent for other municipalities.
“When the mayor makes that stance, it’s a big one because they aren’t capturing those bottles,” Lohela said.
While the resolution has the support of mayors from Austin, Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Miami, Chicago and other cities, a competing resolution, titled “Importance of Municipal Water and Sustainable Practices in Recycling,” has emerged.
That resolution takes a much less stringent approach, instead arguing that bottled water doesn’t burden public water infrastructure and makes up a small percentage of municipal water use.
Bottled water “is simply one of thousands of legitimate uses of public water and plastic water bottles are 100 percent recyclable and are among the most-recycled consumer products on the market,” according to the resolution, sponsored by Mayor Don L. Robart of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and Mayor Patrick McCrory of Charlotte, N.C.
The two mayors also argue that restricting bottled water use is among approaches that are “heavy on symbol but have trivial substantive impacts on water quality, quantity, or security” and “create the illusion that action is being taken to solve the problem, which undermines the hard work and coalition-building necessary to advance serious solutions.”
A nonprofit group known as Think Outside the Bottle, under the auspices of Corporate Accountability International, has argued that bottled water industry lobbyists are backing the competing resolution and threw its support behind Resolution 70.
“It’s just plain common sense for cities to stop padding the bottled water industry’s bottom line at taxpayer expense,” Gigi Kellett, national director of the campaign, said in a prepared statement. “This resolution will send the strong message that opting for tap over bottled water is what’s best for our environment, our pocketbooks and our long-term, equitable access to this most essential resource.”
Mayor Blum said although the resolution, if successfully passed through an environmental committee on Saturday and approved by the full conference on Monday, will not be an enforceable directive, simply raising awareness among other mayors is a laudable pursuit.
“They are already producing good water,” she said, pointing out the environmental impact of trucking in water from other areas. “It’s just not good government.”
A similar resolution she cosponsored last year didn’t make it through the approval process, Mayor Blum said, but this year she is confident, as more mayors have signed on.
“Now we have the bigger cities,” she said.
In addition to the bottled water resolution, Mayor Blum is also cosponsoring numerous resolutions on homelessness, including several specific to veterans and the 10-Year-Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. She also signed on to resolutions focused on alternative energy, eliminating nuclear weapons by 2020, and opposing military intervention in Iran.