Still can’t understand the problem with clean water…

I remain perplexed about why the water supply here cannot be made clean and drinkable. Amnon recently got a hot water bottle to use when he has a back cramp. I include the wrapper for the bottle below. It indicates that you need to use filtered water in order to preserve the longevity of the rubber hot water bottle. I shake my head to think that the water from the tap can cause the rubber to disintegrate….what does it do to people’s stomachs, if they drink it unfiltered?

I have heard a number of explanations and hypotheses as to why this problem is intractable. I include a few of them here:

• When workers for various utilities dig up the streets to resolve some underground problem, there is no tracking about whether there are (say) fuel lines at a particular point. And if something gets punctured, there is no reporting structure, and so the pollutants end up running rampant and polluting the water supply.
• Water is not constantly available; it is delivered to a drum near your house only for a couple of hours a day, when the city releases water. The stagnant water in the drum then has all sorts of debris and particles. I asked why they can’t instead have a water supply that is flowing and constantly available. I was told that there was not sufficient water for a system like that given India’s population.
• Another theory: Building additional dams and reservoirs will consume space and resources of certain states; they will feel “put upon” and refuse to allow their state to bear the brunt so that other states benefit.
• And a final hypothesis I have heard: The purified water industry is now big business, selling purifiers, and bottled water, and they are a powerful lobby not to change the current system.

By the way....during my recent trip to NY, I was looking forward to drinking water from random water fountains and faucets once again. I came to my home base office in Yorktown Heights for meetings. And given the heavy snows, the note below was posted on the water fountains and coffee machines. What irony!