Now according to this article in the NY Times, we are part of the cognoscenti. Some interesting tidbits from the article that we have sometimes touted to our friends who mocked us.
But I think they do it for other reasons than we did.
The public water supply is much more stringently regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency than bottled water is by the Food and Drug Administration. The E.P.A. requires multiple daily tests for bacteria, for example, with the results available to the public; the F.D.A. requires weekly testing, which does not have to be reported to the agency, to the states or to the public.
“Serving our local water in reusable carafes makes more sense for the environment than manufacturing thousands of single-use glass bottles for someone to use once and throw away,” Incanto explains at its Web site.
But it is always about the bottom line, right?
For almost everyone else the idea is still in the talking stage, in part because there’s a big profit in bottled water, even though some of it comes out of a tap before it goes into the bottle. Restaurants buy it for $1 or $2 and sell it for as much as $8, or even more, giving it the highest markup of any item on the menu. Most restaurants making their own sparkling water are not charging for it.
Geoffrey Zakarian, the chef and an owner of Country in Manhattan, described the ban as “a worthy thing to do.” But he added, “You have to make a profit.”
What I think is funny is how so many people have been "conditioned" to think that tap water is not save to drink. When Mrs. Bubba and I were in Rome they have water fountains all over the city that just spout water. (This is true all over Italy, at least where we went.) Well, we would fill up our water bottles and drink at these water fountains. When we were at the Forum another American came up to us and said, "Is that water safe to drink?" We just said yes and drank it in front of her. I mean, these people invented piped in water. The US is not a 3rd world country, the water is safe.
