Bottled Water

Several environmental and other groups are teaming up Wednesday to ask that Independence National Historical Park, along with several other iconic national parks, stop selling bottled water. If they succeed, visitors will be left with a situation - an absurd one, critics say - where they can buy sodas, juice, and other drinks in plastic bottles. But visitors who want water will have to buy a reusable bottle and fill it at a water station with Philadelphia tap water. The effort is being led by Corporate Accountability International, a nonprofit whose Think Outside the Bottle campaign promotes public water systems.

Remember the days when water merely soothed your body and quenched your thirst? Then came flavored water, vitamin water, diet water, caffeinated water, even glacier water - and with it a drenching wave of blame about the environmental impact of manufacturing, delivering, and trashing plastic bottles. Bottled-water lovers can now counter that criticism with H2O that does good - philanthropic water. There's the Give water brand: Give Hope to benefit a breast cancer organization; Give Love for environmental causes; Give Strength to "fight muscular disorders"; or Give Life to help children.

TOKYO - Nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts, distribution problems, and contamination fears prompted by a leaking, tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have left shelves stripped bare of some basic necessities in stores across Tokyo. Some people are even turning to the city's ubiquitous vending machines to find increasingly scarce bottles of water. At the source of the anxiety - the overheated, radiation-leaking nuclear plant - there was yet another setback Thursday as two workers were injured when they stepped into radiation-contaminated water.

Most people choose bottled spring water for its purity and taste. But that clear plastic container with the cool, bubbly scenes on the front can have a little-known downside inside: no fluoride, the chemical credited with causing a dramatic drop in cavities in the United States over the last half-century, especially among children. Who knew? As sales of nonfluoridated bottled water continue to climb, more dentists are urging parents and patients to seek out the few brands that have added fluoride.

It's water with a twist. No, not a twist of lemon or lime - a twist of your wrist. Flip a quarter into a vending machine, fill the container you brought, and walk away with a gallon of filtered water. If you're a water purist, but hate paying 69 cents to $1 or more for bottled water, you might consider joining the growing number of Philadelphians who are getting their H2O from a machine. It works like this: You bring your container to the vending machine, often set up near the door of a supermarket.

For a moment, just a year, maybe two ago, it seemed that a tipping point had been reached: Bottled water wasn't cool anymore; it was uncool. The plastic bottles had taken on the aspect of handheld SUVs - oil hogs to manufacture, to haul (from Fiji, for Pete's sake!), to get rid of. They weren't vessels of glacial purity; they were agents of glaciers' demise. More than that, the soda companies - Coke and Pepsi, who'd seen soft-drink sales soften - had implicitly demonized perfectly safe public tap water that they were then shamed into admitting (in city after city, including Philadelphia)

Health officials in Montgomery County are warning owners of private wells to drink boiled or bottled water until they can be certain wells are free of bacteria that may have washed in from floodwaters. The county sent out an alert Monday from its Norristown office aimed at those among the 35,000 owners whose wells are in low-lying areas or next to flooded waterways. "Due to the recent heavy rains from Hurricane Irene, wells inundated by floodwater may be contaminated and should not be used until tested," the alert read.

Not because of its clean, fresh taste; the well water at their Lower Salford home is just fine in that department. The family gave up their own water in late September, however, on the advice of the Environmental Protection Agency, which found in July that the Kenyons' well and 41 others in the area were contaminated with boron, a trace element commonly found in laundry detergent. Boron doesn't cause cancer, the EPA says, but has caused "severe testicular atrophy and spermatic cessations" in dogs given a high dosage.

TOKYO - Nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts, distribution problems and contamination fears prompted by a leaking, tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have left shelves stripped bare of some basic necessities in stores across Tokyo. Some people are even turning to the city's ubiquitous vending machines to find increasingly scarce bottles of water. At the source of the anxiety - the overheated, radiation-leaking nuclear plant - there was yet another setback yesterday as two workers were injured when they stepped into radiation-contaminated water.

Independence National Historical Park should embrace the virtues of another priceless public asset with Philadelphia roots: tap water. Last week, the group Corporate Accountability International began urging prominent national parks to stop sales of bottled water within their boundaries on the grounds that "one national treasure (our parks) shouldn't be used to sell another (our water). " The National Park Service lets each of its parks decide whether to ban bottled water, and several have done so. While a few more parks wouldn't make much of a dent in the behemoth bottled-water industry, they could lead the way in encouraging the public to drink the water we already own. Independence National Park is in the right place to promote public water and its accompanying benefits.

Idling Guard staff risks readiness The Pentagon's decision to impose budget-driven furloughs on some 53,000 National Guard full-time uniformed staffers - including more than 1,800 in Pennsylvania - threatens Guard training and readiness. Just like regular military personnel, these critical Guard members should be exempt from furloughs, as proposed by U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo (R., Miss.), Congress' only concurrently serving enlisted member of the National Guard. Even though the Defense Department has reduced the number of furlough days to 14, that's not good enough.

THIS IS A letter in response to the editorial "Liquid Assets: A bottled-water ban has merit, but it's not crystal clear. " I sincerely congratulate the Daily News for having published an article which so articulately elucidates the problems of allowing national parks to continue to sell bottled water. As the article states, when discussing the issue of the sale of bottled water, there inevitably gets asked the question of whether water should be seen and treated federally as a human right.

Independence National Historical Park should embrace the virtues of another priceless public asset with Philadelphia roots: tap water. Last week, the group Corporate Accountability International began urging prominent national parks to stop sales of bottled water within their boundaries on the grounds that "one national treasure (our parks) shouldn't be used to sell another (our water). " The National Park Service lets each of its parks decide whether to ban bottled water, and several have done so. While a few more parks wouldn't make much of a dent in the behemoth bottled-water industry, they could lead the way in encouraging the public to drink the water we already own. Independence National Park is in the right place to promote public water and its accompanying benefits.

SHOULD the National Park Service stop selling bottled water at Independence Park? At first glance, the question may strike some as the height of annoying nanny-state interference - like the citywide ban on foie gras or, even worse, New York Mayor Bloomberg's attempt to ban oversize drinks with sugar in them. (Not to mention Mayor Nutter's failed attempt to impose a tax on sugary drinks that went down the drain a few years ago.) Given the concerns over the health impacts of sugary drinks, banning bottled water might be seen as the action of an evil nanny, one who wants to keep you fat. But a campaign to ban bottled water comes at the behest of environmental and other groups to bring attention to a variety of global water problems and corporate big-footing, and although it's a complex issue, it's worth noting.

Several environmental and other groups are teaming up Wednesday to ask that Independence National Historical Park, along with several other iconic national parks, stop selling bottled water. If they succeed, visitors will be left with a situation - an absurd one, critics say - where they can buy sodas, juice, and other drinks in plastic bottles. But visitors who want water will have to buy a reusable bottle and fill it at a water station with Philadelphia tap water. The effort is being led by Corporate Accountability International, a nonprofit whose Think Outside the Bottle campaign promotes public water systems.

Forbes has compiled a list of "America's 20 Dirtiest Cities" and there's the Philadelphia metropolitan area, ranked No. 3, behind Fresno and Bakersfield, two California areas with fewer than a million residents apiece. But don't think "Philthadelphia," with trash-strewn streets or vacant lots - or foul-mouthed sports fans. Pollution is Forbes' main focus. Air and water quality. As with most such lists, the accuracy can be questioned. Last year, when Philly finished first, the list was dubbed "Most Toxic," prompting the likes of fairwarning.com to suggest, "Americans seeking healthy cities to call home should avoid Philadelphia like a toxic waste dump.

IF AAKASH MATHUR, 25, of South Philadelphia, has his way, the bottled-water industry could become obsolete. He's chief executive of Hydros Bottle, which manufactures and sells a water bottle that uses a "fast-flo" technology to filter water in 20 seconds. Mathur, a Wharton graduate, and co-founders Jay Parekh and Winston Ibrahim started Hydros, which is headquartered on the ground floor of Marketplace Design Center at 23rd and Market, in 2009 in the basement of a University of Pennsylvania study hall.

BEACH HAVEN, N.J. - Nancy and Mike Davis were more afraid to leave than to stay. Nancy's grandfather had built this home in 1929, and it had prevailed against hurricanes in 1944 and 1962. She felt confident - foolishly or not - that it would survive Hurricane Sandy. She loved her home, and her town. At 68, and a member of the town council, "I just felt I should stay. " As the hurricane hit, the dunes in front of her block eroded badly, but they held. Instead, the rising ocean gushed through openings between the dunes, turning her street into a rushing river.

Her hand on his shoulder, their heads nearly touching, Gail Lusk prayed earnestly with and for Alex Munro, a two-time loser in the Hurricane Sandy lottery of bad luck and near-misses. Munro lives in Levittown, where he has no power, and owns another home on Simpson Avenue in Ocean City, N.J., that took on 14 inches of water. Neither home is livable. "The devastation is so great that we just offer a prayer," said Lusk, whose home in Mays Landing escaped unscathed. Saturday was a day of prayer, perseverance, and powerful emotions in Ocean City as the sad reality and hard work of cleaning up, rebuilding, or, perhaps, moving on, settled in. Mountains of trash bags grew on the street as homes were emptied of soggy sofas, stinking carpets, and warped dressers, all ruined by the water that moved from ocean to bay through the barrier-island town.

RESIDENTS of a northeastern Pennsylvania town who say that their well water was poisoned by a gas driller are nearing a settlement of their long-running and highly contentious federal lawsuit. Court documents filed this week indicate that residents in the tiny community of Dimock Township have agreed to a confidential settlement with Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. Dimock became a flashpoint in the national debate over gas drilling and a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, after residents claimed in 2009 that Cabot polluted their water supply with methane gas and toxic chemicals and made some of them violently ill. Cabot denied responsibility.