- More than 80% of recyclable plastic bottles end up in landfills
- Many leading bottled water brands source their water from public water systems
- Bottled at plants around the country, often traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to reach your grocery store shelves
SWSC Tap Water…
- Comes from the 22 billion gallon Cobble Mountain Reservoir, located in Blandford and Granville, MA
- Reservoir is surrounded by 14,000 acres of protected forestland
- 30-40 million gallons per day is filtered and treated at the West Parish Filters Water Treatment Plant – making it clean and safe to drink and use!
- Treated water flows 15 miles by gravity from the plant to your home or school faucet
- Over 50,000 water quality samples are analyzed each year at the SWSC laboratory to ensure safety and quality
Cobble Mountain Reservoir, the Commission’s primary water source.
Typical bottled water is about $1 per gallon – a gallon of SWSC tap water: less than a penny! And delivered directly to your home.
The average person uses about bout 64 gallons of water every day – for drinking, bathing, handwashing, and more – for Commission customers that costs about 83 cents per day – less than that one gallon of store-bought water.
- Public drinking water utilities, like the Springfield Water and Sewer Commission are heavily regulated and must follow strict standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. In Massachusetts drinking water is also regulated by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
- Public drinking water is sampled and tested each and every day to ensure that it is safe to use and drink.
- Because of these strict standards and daily water quality monitoring the United States has one of the safest public drinking water systems in the world. So safe that many bottled water brands rely on public systems to source the water that is then packaged and sold at stores.
Commission personnel conduct sampling of streams that feed into Cobble Mountain Reservoir
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/aquafina-source-tap-water/story?id=3428260
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/why-tap-water-is-better
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/28/do-you-drink-bottled-water-read-this
https://green.harvard.edu/tools-resources/green-tip/reasons-avoid-bottled-water
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/bottled-water-10-shockers-they-dont-want-you-to-know/11/