CAI LOOKS TO DRAW ATTENTION TO WASTEFUL SPENDING ON BOTTLED WATER, ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

Amid an international recession and increased environmental awareness, a nonprofit group is looking to crack down on a hazardous waste of taxpayer funds: Bottled water.

A report released Wednesday by Corporate Accountability International (CAI) found that just four Northeastern states — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Vermont — spend almost $2 million of taxpayer money every year on bottled water.

CAI Campaigns Director Patti Lynn told The Palmetto Scoop the expenditures are a misallocation of resources that send the wrong message and raise a number of concerns.

“There’s the economic impact — we’re in a recession and we can’t have national, state or local governments spending money on unnecessary line items, and this is certainly one of those,” said Lynn. “It is also an environmental concern. The environmental impact of the explosive growth of the bottled water industry over the last decade is really significant and something we need to scale back.”

The new report, which is part of CAI’s “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign, showed that the range of expenditures and allocations for surveyed states was $200,000 to $481,000 a year, or the equivalent of 260 to 630 water fountains equipped with glass fillers.

Not only are the bottled water allocations harmful to the environment and a complete waste of public money, but they draw away from shortfalls in funding for public water systems nationwide, the group says.

Worst of all, according to CAI, up to 40 percent of bottled water comes from the same source as tap water. In fact, tap water is more highly regulated than what comes in the bottle.

Lynn said that bottled water companies have played a large role in undermining confidence in public water systems, which has created funding gaps, and that taxpayer funding toward that end doesn’t help.

Congress is one of the worst offenders.

A U.S. House report listing line item administrative expenditures showed that the average amount spent by each Congressional office was in the hundreds of dollars during the third quarter.

Rep. Gresham Barrett, for example, bought $243.78 worth of bottled water using public funds. That’s nearly $1,000 per year for just one of the 435 House offices.

And that number doesn’t include the Senate or the rest of the federal government. As you can guess, the total is likely into the tens of millions of dollars annually.

The “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign is a national effort to promote, protect and ensure public funding for public water systems.

Lynn said there was a $24 billion annual shortfall in that funding for those systems, and that “in order to really do it right and close the gap around what’s needed, we would need to spend more money on public water systems than we’re currently spending on bottled water.”

“There’s no silver bullet, but if we don’t fill this gap soon the cost to our public’s health and economic well-being will be unacceptably high,” said Lynn. “When thinking about stimulus and infrastructure renewal, there may be no better place for these dollars than in public water – where every investment pays significant dividends for the economy at large.

“A U.S. Conference of Mayors study reports that for every additional $1 spent locally in public water, economic activity increases as much as $2.62 and that adding one job in water can lead to 3.68 jobs in the national economy to support that job,” she said.

According to the CAI, only New York State has issued formal requirements to scale back bottled water spending. More than 100 local municipalities have taken some measures to reduce the expenditures.