To The Reader’s Forum:

I’m old enough to remember when the idea of paying for drinking water seemed absurd. Then came Desert Storm. Every news report showed a soldier with a bottle of Evian in his hand.

It wasn’t long before countless brands were available in supermarkets. My daughter’s then boyfriend pointed out that “Evian” spelled backwards is “Naive”. Apparently someone at the French bottling company had a sense of humor. It wasn’t long before Americans were spending billions of dollars for bottled water and throwing away 60 billion empty plastic bottles annually. Only 12% are recycled. Especially ironic is the fact that most bottled water is simply filtered municipal water in a fancy bottle.

In recent decades distrust of municipal and well water has increased greatly. Some feared chlorination and fluoridation were plots to poison the public. Lead water pipes. For many people the solution has been to buy bottled water. We have all seen shoppers, some frail and elderly, with grocery carts heavily loaded with water bottles or five gallon carboys. Some people even have water delivered to their homes.

Of course, you can’t “make” water – but you can purify municipal or well water inexpensively with an under sink reverse osmosis unit. These units are inexpensive and can be installed by a handy homeowner. Mine has five filter stages and will filter 75 gallons per day. A RO unit has a series of filters which remove dissolved solids such as lead, lime and iron. A RO unit also removes chemicals, bacteria and viruses as well as unpleasant odors and tastes. My $20 dissolved solids meter reads my well water at about 300 parts per million of dissolved solids, but the RO output is about 20ppm. RO units are sold online or at home improvement stores for as little as $228. These are not whole house units, they are used primarily for drinking and cooking. I replace the inexpensive filters every several years. Stop being “naive”, and save money and your back. Remember, water weighs 8 pounds per gallon!

Dennis Wilson

Forestville