Bottle Water or Filtered Tap Water?

I am not a big buyer of bottled water. I grew up on a  farm with wells that produced good water. When we moved to  the mountains, we enjoyed a well that also produced excellent drinking water with no chemicals. Still, I did not take water for granted.

I have read about the fights over water rights in the desert west. The  Colorado River is overused and demands continue to rage in California and other states over who should get water and who should not.

Just a few years ago, a confrontation arose in Georgia about the Flint River which runs through my hometown, Albany, GA. Lake Lanier became a focus of conflict as well.

As we do with so many things we are blessed to have at our fingertips, we think it will always be there. I learned the hard way, first when the well for my parents' home was tested and found to be contaminated. Filters were installed at the kitchen sink, but I often thought about the water in the bathrooms where people brushed their teeth. I avoided drinking or using the water from that well.

But about ten years after we bought our house in Hayesville, NC, our well went dry. What a  horror! We had no running water at all. That meant no using toilets, no ice maker, no drinking water and it meant I could not live in my house for two weeks because it took that long to have another well drilled. 

I was told that our well dried up because of the new houses built up above us on the mountain. I don't know if that is true, but I know other wells went dry in our area that year. You never know what you have until it is gone, and this experience made me even more concerned about our water in this country. 

While large corporations and businesses, farmers and others seem to constantly pollute our water sources with no repercussions, our government pays no attention. 
Over and over, I read about the communities where numbers of people die from cancer because their water has been ruined by a local company. What worries me is that often the big companies pay off the people in a settlement and make little to no effort to stop the damage done to rivers and creeks. 

It seems to me that the public reads about situations such as Flint Michigan and soon forgets it because it doesn't hit them personally. But those same issues are happening all over the United States. 

We are now urged to filter all water coming into our houses. 
I have a whole house filter and another filter for my  kitchen sink. The new well produces lots of trash in my water. Little black pellets fill up the house filter which I have to change often. Since I can't do these things myself, I ask friends or hire people to change them for me.

The article I reference above tells why we should use filters instead of buying bottled water. For one thing, it is much cheaper to  use our filtered tap water and in many cases safer. Some bottled water tests show that the bottles we purchase hold filtered tap water just as we can get at home.

This information is from the Environmental Workers Group, an organization that has proven over and over to look out for the consumer. It is not a government sponsored group and is not affiliated with any political party. Read the article and learn more about protecting yourself and your family.

www.EWG.org