WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley This is the Cali Crossley Show. A year ago a massive rupture in a water main affected two million Boston residents. Sixty four million gallons of water were lost and the people of Boston were in a frenzy Deleon up to every bottled water aisle in town. It was a sobering reminder of how profoundly dependent we are on H2O every day we use 99 gallons of water to cook to wash clothes to bathe a drop in the bucket compared to the number of gallons used by power plants and factories from arid Las Vegas to the private sector to our own homes. The way we use and abuse water needs to change and our guest investigative journalist Charles Fishman knows something about this. In his new book The Big Thirst He says the golden age of water and water was clean cheap and abundant is coming to an end. Up next making waves. Charles Fishman on the Turbulent Future of Water. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi Singh. CIA

analysts are going through documents and other information taken from the raided compound in Pakistan where U.S. special operations team killed some of bin Laden. NPR's Rachel Martin says the data could give important clues about the state of the al Qaeda network. According to U.S. officials the Navy SEALs team took papers DVDs and hard drives away from the scene. The Obama administration's top counterterrorism official John Brennan says it's too early to tell how valuable the information is. But officials hope they may learn something about the whereabouts of al Qaeda's next in command Ayman al-Zawahiri Osama bin Laden was killed with two shots. One of them hitting above his left eye. The White House is still weighing whether to release a photo of the slain al Qaeda leader as proof of his death. Rachel Martin NPR News Washington. Look at that Monaco in Karachi protests over the death of bin Laden but the turnout was relatively small. It was a quieter scene in the capital where police apparently have not increased security despite concerns of terrorism attacks against anyone considered

to be part of bin Laden's downfall. British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledges there are a lot of questions about what Pakistan's intelligence and leadership knew with some of bin Laden's presence just 35 miles outside Islamabad. But as Larry Miller tells us from London Cameron says now is not the time for the West to turn its back on Pakistan. Cameron says he spoke with Pakistani president said Dari who insisted he staunchly opposes terrorism. Cameron says it remains in British self interest to back the Pakistani government. I see my role as making the big choice here for the country no. We could of course go down the route of having some messy of arguments messy Iraq with Pakistan and it is my very clear view that is in our interest to work with the government and people of Pakistan to combat terrorism to combat extremism rather than just throw up our hands in despair. Cameron says bin Laden's death won't necessarily mean a quicker exit from Afghanistan for foreign troops.

For NPR News I'm Larry Miller in London the British government reportedly is detaining five men who were arrested under the country's anti-terrorism laws. Police say the group was picked up near nuclear waste processing plant in North West England yesterday after officers stopped their car. Local media say the men are from London in their 20s and are of South Asian descent. The government would not confirm their nationalities under lup police can detain anyone they reasonably suspect of being a terrorist. The arrest comes as much of the world is on heightened alert for al Qaeda reprisal attacks for the death of bin Laden. At last check on Wall Street the Dow is down slightly at twelve thousand eight hundred seven Nasdaq also turning lower down twenty seven to twenty thirty eight. You're listening to NPR News. The U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York is suing a major mortgage lender claiming fraud. NPR's Tamara Keith reports a complaint relates to a decade of what the government describes as reckless lending practices. The

civil fraud suit is against Deutsche Bank and its subsidiary mortgage I.T. from 1900 to 2009. The government says mortgage I.T. made thirty nine thousand loans through the Federal Housing Administration insurance program. The complaint says mortgage bank endorsed loans that weren't eligible for FHA insurance and repeatedly lied to the government about quality control procedures. So far the complaint says the government has paid nearly 400 million dollars in insurance claims as a result of mortgage loans. Deutsche Bank says in a statement that it believes the claims are unreasonable and unfair and will defend against the suit vigorously. Tamara Keith NPR News Washington. Businesses are increasing factory orders with the manufacturing sector still one of the strongest of the U.S. economy. The Commerce Department reports a 3 percent jump in March it's the fifth straight month of gains with or without the volatile transportation sector. In all the increase in March pushed orders to nearly four hundred sixty three billion dollars

the gains in manufacturing are fueled in part by cheaper U.S. exports because of a weak dollar. Archer Daniels Midland is posting a 37 percent jump in its third quarter profit. The health of the company is a snapshot of agribusiness in general because it's involved as both buyer and seller of commodities earnings hit five hundred seventy eight million dollars in line with analysts expectations. I'm Lakshmi Singh NPR News. Support for NPR comes from Lending Tree providing multiple loan offers from a network of lenders. Learn more at Lending Tree or 800 5 5 5 tree. Good afternoon I'm Cally Crossley. This is the Calla Crossley Show last year a massive rupture in a water main affected two million Boston residents.

Sixty four million gallons of water were lost and city dwellers scramble to get their hands on bottled water. It was in the scheme of things a minor inconvenience that reminded us how majorly dependent we are on H2O. Joining me to talk about our relationship with water here and around the world is investigative reporter Charles Fishman. His new book is The Big Thirst The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. Charles Fishman welcome. Thanks for having me. Listeners we want you to get in on this at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 8 7 7 3 0 1. Eighty nine seventy did last year's water main break serve as a wake up call. Did you realize how you use and possibly abuse water where an 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 and you can send us a tweet or write to our Facebook page. So Charles Fishman I just want to put this on the table first.

And that is the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority is filing are preparing a multimillion dollar lawsuit against several companies last year because of the water main break. We already said two million Boston area residents more than two days lots of freaking out already. Dear I can't tell you the run on bottled water and I know we'll get into that a little bit later but I just wanted to let our listeners know that the latest was that there is some action pertaining to that crisis last year. When you hear about something like the water main break. Put that in the context of what you have been writing about in your book and what it means really when we talk about prices. Well for me when there's a big water main break like that I mean the first thing you think is you know you know people are going to be OK and you hope that they can fix the problem relatively quickly or patch and repair things temporarily. You know there was one 18 months ago in

suburban Washington that put people at risk for their lives because the water main that broke was so large that the second thing I think is I hope people pay attention. Our water service is so reliable that it is literally invisible. It's remarkable that that the success of something like water service and most big cities in the US have only had good clean reliable water service for a hundred years which is you know in a in a in a community like Boston 100 years is only a quarter of the of the settled life of the town. The the very success of the water utilities in providing water silently quietly with absolute reliability and dependability literally undermines our support for the system. Then something breaks and people are like what happened Where's My Water why isn't the system working the way it should. My microwave oven has a built in indicator when there's been a power failure. Little

P F appears in the digital screen with the time normally appears so the microwave oven which cost you know forty nine fifty nine dollars expects there to be power failures often enough that it has an indicator. Most people never turn on their taps and don't find water and in fact in this case the water itself continued to flow it just wasn't reliably clean. But one of the points of writing the book was to try and get people to wake up and appreciate. How much work is required to get them in the water and how remarkably inexpensive water service is. The fact is what we pay for water doesn't doesn't actually cover the cost of getting us the water. Most water bills are half what the cable bill or the cell phone bill is. And when you have those bills 15 years ago so people get very itchy when something happens with their water service. Understandably people get very angry when the water bill goes up a few dollars a month. But I actually think this is an occasion to

take a step back and say wow 10 foot water main Well what's required to put that in the in the ground and keep it you know keep it in service. We asked the question here was it should it be a wake up call for people here in Boston and you mention the people outside of Washington D.C. where they had the water main break they were it was a problem it could have been life threatening. So when we talk about a wake up call in in terms of the shrinking water supply let's get to that with what we hear all the time there's a shrinking water supply. And certainly in underdeveloped countries that's what we hear and that you know here we have plentiful. So that's why maybe a water main break 10 foot or anything just doesn't excite us because we know it's going to get fixed eventually and will be the taps will be running and it will be fairly certain that what we're drinking is it's clean right. Well I would before we before we move off of this community you know I read recently Boston has about

a thousand miles of water mains a thousand thirty five miles of water mains and the city of Boston replaces 17 miles a year. So that's just about. And and. A 70 year replacement cycle. So we can expect more breaks then. Well we should maybe. Well you're always going to have some. But what's the replacement cycle for our cell phone. You know I have an iPhone 4. My wife has an iPhone 3G S. I traded in mine a month ago and I had the older version the original version in in the space of three years. Cell phone service which is a major infrastructure service as well has gone through three iterations of upgrade in Boston and most communities in the Boston metro area and most communities around the U.S. Our water system hasn't undergone any kind of upgrade in 50 or 80 years. Why should it. Well. Because there's all kinds of new technology that we take for granted everywhere else

in the world to help us detect leaks. Monitor water use help people use water more smartly and because even really robustly engineered systems like water pipes and water pumps need to be swapped out they wear out. They they they fill up on the inside from the deposits of water. And so. In fact it's clean water that is the basis of economic vibrancy everywhere that this town and every town in America would be nothing without good clean water service. Yeah good just take a moment to let our listeners know what 100 years ago blink of an eye without clean water before we instituted our system of clean water in this country. What was going on what can a person expect. Well the most important thing that a person could expect was that in 1900 the life expectancy of somebody born in that year in the United States was forty seven years. Born in 1900 you could expect to die by 1907 barely make it through World War 2 and that's linked to clean water clean water systems came into

place in the first 10 or 15 years of this century. Not this it's not the century of the last century between 100 and 115. Most of the major cities in the US latched on to the discovery that water could be cleaned relatively simply with sand filters and chlorination. And between 1500 and one thousand thirty the life expectancy of Americans went from forty seven years to 63 years. About half of that increase. So that was 16 years about eight years of that increase is is attributed just to getting clean water in cities the infant mortality rate in U.S. cities during that 30 years was cut in half the number of children who did not die before they reach the age of four or five was cut in half just because of brain clean water systems in clean water systems made cities from sort of noxious slightly unpleasant somewhat dangerous places.

In health terms to centers of real creativity and economic vibrancy and and so clean water really is the foundation of a lot of economic development that we don't give clean water credit for because we take it so for granted. The problem is that in many cities. I'm from Philadelphia now. We have. But you're born in Boston born in Boston born in Boston stuff. I was I stuck in Philadelphia. Three thousand three hundred miles of water mains in Philadelphia and we were placed 20 miles a year. So that's one hundred and sixty year replacement cycle. Mr. Fishman would you like your water mains replaced in 2050 21:15 if that looks like a bad year we can take care of you in 20 135. My guest is Charles Fishman. His new book is The Big Thirst The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. And we're talking to him on the one year anniversary of the water main break here in Boston and the environs.

You know I think we think i do anyway casually OK water comes into my house through the tap that's it. But you make a point in your book that water is in trickle in our lives in ways that we may not be considering in our in our everyday households. Water is really. One of the fun things about reporting the book was was talking to folks all over in all kinds of professions. So I interviewed several astro physicists at Harvard about water. They study the creation of water in space. That's where all the water on Earth comes from. It was created in interstellar gas clouds and delivered here when the planet was formed. So there's a there's a spot in the constellation Orion where a space telescope has found an interstellar water factory that creates the amount of water on Earth three times an hour. So in that one spot in space enough water is being created every day to provide all the water on Earth

60 times a remarkable water factory in our own homes. A typical American uses about 99 gallons of water a day. In actual water for things like cooking bathing flushing the toilet is the number one use of people at home. But the electricity that we use just at home just in the United States for each person requires two hundred fifty gallons of water a day. In actual water used by electric generation plants. So just to keep our flat screen TVs running and our refrigerators and our computers at home 10 gallons of water an hour for each person every hour of every day. That's that's incredible. The space shuttle uses water to get off the pad. It's not about fire it's about noise the space shuttle launch pad is flooded with water to deaden the noise from the rockets that would otherwise damage the spaceship so it water shows up in all kinds of interesting places.

Two hundred fifty gallons a day that's average you're saying just for electricity for electricity just for just at home. Exactly that's pretty amazing. Wow. Listeners who want to get you want you to get in on this conversation we're talking about water. We're at 8 7 7 3 0 1. Eighty nine seventy eight 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 and our relationship to it and how the era of cheap and abundant water could be coming to an end. Get in on the conversation 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 now. Do you trust your tap water. Are you doing your part with water bottles and low flow toilets. And where do you see us abusing water. Is it happening under your own roof. We're at 8 7 7 3 0 1 18 970 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. We're back after this break. Support for WGBH comes from you and from the New England mobile book fair in

Newton. For 54 years. New England's independent bookstore. The New England mobile book fair. Find them online at an e-book fair dot com. That's an e-book fair dot com. And from Boston Private Bank and Trust Company. Committed to helping successful individuals and businesses accumulate preserve and grow their wealth. You can learn more at Boston private bank dot com. And from the 15000 WGBH sustainers who helped the station save thousands of dollars by having their contributions of 5 8 or $12 a month automatically renew. Learn more at WGBH dot org. On the next FRESH AIR we talk with Janny Scott author of the new book about Barack Obama's mother and Dunham called a singular woman she was a thoroughly unconventional person who dared to do things that many of us don't even try to do now. Join us this afternoon at two on eighty nine point seven.

WGBH. Jerry Robinson George Balanchine you couldn't get two choreographers as different Jonathan Macphee director and principal conductor of the Boston Ballet Orchestra on Balanchine Robbins. You've got Mr. Balanchine who's very elegant European. He switched to Gerry Robins. He's sort of the quintessential American when you support eighty nine point seven with a gift of one hundred twenty dollars WGBH will say thanks with two tickets to the Boston Belize Balanchine Robbins Saturday May 21st visit WGBH dot org slash box office. If that would be the hottest horns to the world he has he wouldn't. He's wrong and. He has good luck. Coming up at 3 o'clock on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. I'm Kalee Crossley This is the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just tuning in we're talking about

our dependence on water and what the future of water looks like. If you remember a year ago an IM r w a main break seemed to debilitate Boston and the environs with people in a panic about not having access to potable water. Joining me to talk about this event and what it says about our dependence on water and our misconception about water is investigative reporter Charles Fishman. His new book is The Big Thirst The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. Listeners were at 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Do you think twice before watering the lawn or washing your car. And have you changed your ways in order to save water. What will it take this is a big one to win you off your bottled water. 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 and we have a caller Brandon from New Hampshire Go ahead please you're on the callee Crossley Show. No we don't. Fine and you.

Good good. There's a question or something I've always observed when going in and I buy water I work outdoors local convenience stores and a lot of times sometimes I mean it's pretty close to the price of a gallon of gas. I mean or comparable right behind it and I wonder why that is and where that's going and I don't really have much more to add about it. All right well Brandon we'll get Charles Fishman I thank you very much for the call. What do you think Charles. Well well absolutely. Brandon knows he's going to need water I'm curious why Brandon wouldn't fill up a cooler at home with ice and and water from the refrigerator water from the tap or or water from one of the filters a bird a filter a pure filter water in that convenience store cooler is in fact close to the cost of a gallon of gas and when you think about the work necessary to get. Gasoline out of raw petroleum and how far that came. And when you think about the work

necessary to get the water from the from the spigot or the spring into the bottle into the convenience store. That seems kind of absurd. But you don't have to buy it so the price of that water reflects it's purely it's convenience. Water In A Bottle. Even an inexpensive bottle of water at a convenience store costs about 99 cents for a half liter. You can take that half liter bottle home and refill it every day for eight years before the tap water you have used 2000 times before the tap water you have used equals the cost of a dollar. So we actually are accustomed to paying a high price for water when we want the convenience and the temperature at that moment. But but it's you know in the big scheme of things it's not really a good use of resources. Well I would agree with you there I'm sitting here with a bottle of an old bottle that filled up a few times but it is the convenience factor for me and I'm sure it is for other people as well.

I do want you to just let us know in the shocking terms how much the bottled water business is worth every year in the U.S. we go through one and a quarter billion bottles of water a week. That's four bottles for every man woman and child in the country every week just of water. So if you didn't have your for this week somebody had a. And we spend 21 billion dollars a year just on bottled water. The remarkable comparison is we only spend twenty nine billion dollars a year maintaining the entire water infrastructure system of the country. All the pipes pumps and treatment plants for their maintenance and modernization 29 billion for the crushable plastic bottles of water 21 billion. So there's clearly money available to spend on the water system at the moment we're spending it on bottled water. OK. Can the car go ahead please you're on the Kelly Crossley Show. You can make a comment about the cost of water. Those of us who are

young to be you already have seen a really extreme rise in the cost of water. When I first bought my house about 20 years ago I was paying $60 every six months for water and I know that was artificially. It's artificially low but now I'm getting 32 hundred dollars a year for that same service. So we have seen a large increased the cost of water and also as a landlord in a two family home in the state we're not allowed to but the tenants have a separate water beater so and it's that will tend to wash their cars over and over again or waste water you know warming it leaving it running whatever. If they had to pay a bill for it to concede to conservation angle of that would really increase. But but that's kind of an outdated law that you think of all the two family three family small family homes in the state. Yeah. Now I cannot have a separate water bill if you're trying to. You're right.

That is a that is a very outdated law. In fact if it hurts it hurts not just you all it hurts the USA landlord it it actually hurts the tenants because they have no idea even if they want to pay attention how much water they're using they have no idea and it hurts the water system itself because the first step in managing your water use whether you're a you know a two bedroom apartment or a a huge computer chip factory is to actually understand how much water you're using. It may surprise you some of the biggest apartment complexes in New York City do not have individual water meters just really are a meter coming in at the front end. It's sort of a symbol of an era when water was so cheap that the water meter itself wasn't worth installing. I want you to address Ken's first point if you might and that when you were talking about the cost his his cost of water going up I'm going to assume that has to do with those repairs that are becoming increasingly needed in these water mains. Those that you know have to for example when you have and then when you have an emergency like that though the water

main break last year that gets passed on to us right. Right. Let me ask you a quick question Can is the is the the thirteen hundred dollars a year comes to about $100 a month. Does that include sewer services as well or that is just a water bill. Oh yeah. They charge you for the actually guts would be highly charged if your sewer is just how much water you consume and then they cease to charge on that right. But the hundred thirteen hundred only includes the water service not the sewer charge. No water in sewer right OK so the first thing to say to Kenny is he's not he's not paying $100 a month for water he's paying $200 a month for clean incoming water service and sewage service. So but just as compared to $60 every 6 months before the end if you are right it realized it had to be done I realized right. Are bred to be cleaned up. But OK I didn't want to be right or I right with all sympathy to the people of this community. I don't think $50 a month for clean water and $50 a month for a good

sewage treatment system is is an excessive charge that $10 a month was you know completely absurd as you say right. All right well thank you very much Ken for the call. OK. Steve in Boston go ahead please Unocal across the show. I just. Question A quick comment question is what it would take to separate wastewater from clean water so I think of it any time I flush it well it or something like that and the communism run throw good writer in Boston it's so quaint and I think it probably reservoir comes from what I've seen on TV in many other places where you're not supposed to. Well I advise you to find some great game. Bottom line right now is the really big thing is wastewater Xtreme your money I would take but it would take to change the system.

Steve are you are you asking what it would take to bring wastewater back to drinking water standards or to bring it back to a point where you could use it in the community for other purposes like lawn watering or maintaining parks or something like that where you've been in the community. And I'm a speck. Fully questioning always water right. Well Steve thank you for the call it's a big part of a child's book you talk about writing at the right. In fact the best water the most easily available water that most community have communities have is the water they've already got. New England is a water rich area. And so there hasn't been much movement toward reusing waste water but it's actually a great thing to do. It creates water consciousness. One of the great examples in the country is Orange County Florida which is the area that surrounds Orlando Florida. Twenty five years ago they created wastewater treatment plants just to be able to use the

water again outdoors. And they mandated that every home and every park school soccer field like that had to start using the reuse waste water as new homes subdivisions and parks were created today 25 years later. Orange County Florida provides exactly as much potable drinking water as it does recycled waste water. They've doubled the size of the community without having to add potable drinking water because half the water they use is used outside. And all of that water is cleaned and recycled waste water so they don't have to tap the aquifer under them. And there's a whole change in mindset which is really important which is it's absurd to use purified drinking water to water a soccer field or to water your azaleas. And yet as you point out in your book at our number is 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 if you want to get into the conversation with

Charles Fishman whose new book is The Big Thirst The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. People have a very emotional response to potter and what's in it and even if it seems that makes sense practically from what you've just described very practically much more reasonable from a cost basis. We have a thing your whole chapter is the yuck factor about taking waste water and change it into something else that we might use even even before we get to drinking. It's just. Right. Very well put. We do have a very powerful emotional relationship to water. We like water. We enjoy water. It's a source of play it's a source of relaxation just a hot shower a hot bath. And the idea of reusing waste water does make people edgy. It's really interesting because of course for 100 years we've taught people just what we talked about earlier in the hour which is the key to health. The foundation of

health is to have clean water. And that starts with separating the wastewater from the clean water. But you know we learn all kinds of new attitudes. We used to. I grew up in the era when you could not only smoke inside buildings at your desk you could smoke on airplanes. I grew up in the euro and no one thought about drinking and the impact of drinking and drinking and driving. Those are those arenas that have changed dramatically if somebody lights up a cigarette in the seat next to you on an airplane you you tackle them and summon the air marshal. So we can actually change how we think about all kinds of things water is one of those. The technology exists now to take water that is any level of dirtiness and clean it back to any level of cleanliness including routine municipal waste water back to drinking water. The question is what is our emotional response to that and so that you know I think in terms of educating people the key is to start the way a community like Orlando Florida started which is

to start using waste water in ways that that people are comfortable with and gradually educate people that it's OK. Las Vegas Nevada which people think of as a kind of absurd creation in the middle of the desert. And that may or may not be but no one made the decision to build it there it's an organic place. Las Vegas now cleans and recycles 94 percent of the water that hits a drain anywhere inside indoors any water that's used inside any building and goes down a drain. Ninety four percent of it is cleaned too to very high standards just below drinking water standards and return to the reservoir that Las Vegas relies on. So it's very possible to begin putting in place these kinds of practices. The question is whether you can get comfortable with it it's not all water we drink there's a there's a bottle of Poland Spring right here on the table in front of me. That water was dinosaur pee at some point whatever the dirtiest place you can imagine the water

being. It's been there because all the water on earth is all the water we've ever had and it cycles over and over and over again. So it's all recycled waste water it's just a question of how long ago it was wastewater and what was done to clean. I think here's the thing that makes us Americans always let's say we could go with what you just said All right. Practically you know financially it makes sense let's take this let's use it and you've given some great examples. But what makes a lot of us feel very uncomfortable is that some of the the stuff in the water could harm us you know that we'll walk away with something and I just want to remind you and ask you about this impact there was I think a big impact from a movie in 2000 that made us really conscious about water contamination and what it might do to us. This is from the 2000 film Erin Brockovich and it's based on the real life Erin Brockovich who singlehandedly brought down a California power company accused of polluting a city's water supply. And you say that this stuff this. Hexagram chromium.

Of course. Yeah. Well. Aaron. It's just got to be different than. Than what's in our water because ours is OK. The guys from from PG&E told me they sat in the kitchen and told me that it was it was fun. I mean. I know. But. The toxicologist that I've been talking to he gave me a list of problems that can come from hexavalent exposure. Everything I have is on that list. So. So here we have a situation and I know this is a part and parcel of just polar pollution in general. But you know you or I know that movie open up my house. Yeah you can't you can't get a book and you know by taste and we had to boil water here or we're told to while the water main break was happening right. Right and yet the water itself didn't look any different probably exactly different. You know somebody somebody. Said to me I thought this was wonderful we

we do not hesitate to use the silverware at the restaurant today that was used by someone else at breakfast or at lunch yesterday. We're not. We have no yuck factor about the sheets at the hotel or the towels at the hotel. Well some people but go it depends on the yeah yes maybe the spread on the bed. The the the the question is why. What's the difference. Well one of the reasons is we are completely familiar with how dishes and silverware cleaned and we have confidence in that process. We're completely familiar with doing laundry and how laundry is done and that the laundry doesn't up clean. Most of us have absolutely no idea how our water is cleaned. Now in fact routine water treatment before you drink the water doesn't take out the kind of chemicals that were that were the subject of Erin Brockovich is effort. But if you take waste water and clean it you're cleaning it in a way that is completely different in technological terms from the way you clean water coming from the Quabbin Reservoir.

And so part of it is understanding what kind of technology you're deploying explaining that over and over again so people understand it. And also having confidence in the people who are doing the explaining. OK. Nancy from Acton you're on the Calla Crossley Show and we're at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 a Go ahead please Nancy. Well I was going. And I'm sort of that they know it's my energy and I don't know if this is true. Getting back to bottled water is the thing regulations do not apply to bottled water is they actually do to our tap. I'm an actor and we had a very serious water pollution problem about 30 years ago where our water supply was limited and so we had a lot of testing and it's probably because of this additional testing extremely clean water and it's minor thing the tap water doesn't go through some I mean the water we buy bottles doesn't go through that same kind of testing and actually may not be as safe as what you could get from your tap. Well Nancy that's that's exactly right. That's not to say that there is

anything wrong with bottled water and I'm not suggesting that there is anything wrong with that particular bottle of bottled water but in fact he hears how it works. The rules are exactly the same the standards that drinking water and bottled water must meet are exactly the same. The enforcement is completely different. The EPA enforces drinking water standards and the FDA enforces bottled water standards. The EPA requires multiple tests a day on municipal water supplies every few hours the water is tested big systems test you know once an hour once every 90 minutes. And any variation any problem in municipal water systems must be immediately reported within 24 hours is the rule but. But typically immediately reported. The bottled water companies are only required to be inspected every five years and in fact a recent jail report from the federal government said the FDA does not actually maintain a list of bottled water companies. So we don't know whether they inspect them or

what percent of them they inspect because they don't even know where they are. Point one point two bottled water companies are not required to report any violations of the standards. They're simply required to record them so that when they are inspected those records can be produced. But they're only required to keep their records for two years. So the chance that you ever even learn about a bottled water company with a contamination problem is very very small. So while the standards are exactly the same the enforcement makes all the difference. That's not to suggest that the big bottled water companies Nestle Coca-Cola Pepsi Cola are responsible for something like a third to half of all bottled water in the country. Those folks take great care with the water they bottle and they have tremendous liability. So they're being careful. But there's there's literally hundreds of bottled water companies in the country. And you actually have no idea where your bottled water is coming from or or or what standard it's being held to.

Thanks very much for the call Nancy. I'm Kelly Crossley and we're marking the one year anniversary of the M-W are a water main break with Charles Fishman. He's an investigative reporter and his newest book is The Big Thirst The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. He'll be at the Harvard Coop tomorrow night at 7 o'clock. Listeners We're taking your calls at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 where do you see water conservation. Where do you see waste and what will it take to give you to give up your bottle of water weighs 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Be back after this break. Stay tuned to eighty nine point seven. Support for WGBH comes from you and from Merrimack Repertory Theatre

presenting a Picasso by Geoffrey Hatcher. A cat and mouse game full of suspense and sly humor. A Picasso through May 15th. For more information you can visit online at Merrimack rep dot org. And from frontline. Afghan militants loyal to Osama bin Laden even before his death we're preparing a new offensive against coalition forces. Watch. Fighting for bin Laden on Frontline tonight at 9:00 on WGBH too. Reaction to the killing of Osama bin varies across the Middle East. Israel applauds the operation the Palestinian Authority says it's good for peace and our Middle East correspondent is in with the latest from across the region. That's coming up next. Coming up at three o'clock here at eighty nine point seven.

From PR eyes the world on Tuesday night May 10th at 6 o'clock at the WGBH studio. I'm going to be hosting an evening devoted to folk singer and. In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month will be screening a song for ourselves. It's a documentary on the genius life by to morrow with an expert panel discussion. Admission is free but you do need to get details at WGBH dot org slash heritage from Japan to Libya to New England. We've got your town your state and your world at WGBH dot org. Find the latest news from the sources you trust NPR and WGBH Boston at WGBH. Where. Is the Baron. Just

without the walker. I'm Cally Crossley This is the Cali Crossley Show we're talking about water this hour with my guest Charles Fishman. He's an investigative reporter and author of the new book The Big Thirst The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. Listeners if you have questions for him call in at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 seventy 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Charles when I want to introduce you and our listeners to somebody that we're bringing on the line on this is Ken Callaway Jr. He's the founder and president of Pura Vida H2O and is a Randolph company a local company that specializes in supplying chilled filtered tap water from vending machines to customers who carry their own bottles. Ken how I like you know you know I think appreciate the opportunity. I was very intrigued by this because I have to tell you I think it's something I would do. I've been using the cell water bottle care in and around that no that's not what you want for your vending

machine but if it were out somewhere and they look just like soft drink vending machines they vary in their various styles but they look essentially like that and you just put your canteen in there and fill it up. That's exactly right you know we'll make sure we get you know if you can. It will take Harriet but yeah that's exactly right they look very similar to a vending machine. The difference of course is that we're trying to eliminate carbon footprint reduce waste so you don't vent any kind of a plastic bottle or can you bring your own. And we go through a multi-stage water purification process right a point of purchase. So when you put your money in you press the event button and it delivers fresh chilled water right at point of purchase for your own canteen. So it cost like what 50 cents or 75 cents depending where it's going to be or what. That's exactly right so 16 ounces is 50 cents in our model and for 24 ounces it's 75 cents so we're trying to make sure we're very affordable and certainly more cost effective than existing bottled water options today.

Well Charles Fishman and I have been talking about how huge the bottled water industry is. And I just want to put one other stat out there for our listeners. Half of all of the like soda drinks all of the whole market is bottled water. So I mean there's a lot of people who really want water all the time as they're moving about their daily lives. That's exactly right and you know our numbers tell us about 60 million bottles a day just us alone that went to landfill process. And so there's a lot of waste associated with that model right now and what we decided to do is introduce a brand new model so that people have a third option to choose or to choose bottled water or now choose to water. Charles what do you think about this in a way I mean part of your book is trying to look toward new technology. I mean I think this is a this is a great solution. There are there are lots of variations on this. The water utility in a couple of U.S. cities San Francisco is doing this and actually in cities in Italy are doing the same kind of thing that Pura Vida is doing which is there are establishing

kiosks where the where the water is really filtered and people can bring their own container the water utilities actually tend not to charge at all so that's puts Mr. Calloway at a competitive disadvantage but this is exactly the kind of thing the kind of imagination that hasn't come to water to the to the world of water very much. And so you know it's a great option and inexpensive and you don't have to worry about who's been at the water fountain the way people seem to now when they go to a water fountain in a public place. Yes. My associate producer will tell me about looking at a water fountain outside and noticing that someone let their dog drink out of it so you know. I think Mr. Galloway you might have some customers. Yeah we think you know I think he knows a lot of contagious so share with you if they want to phone me. The younger generations are probably more educated due to their availability get access to information on the Internet what have you than we may have been in our generation so people have migrate away from the conventional want to. We think we've got a great alternative form.

All right I can you tell us when we can begin to see some of these I know you've sold some of the machines and where generally do you think they might be placed. Sure so we have been working a year on the project to get the manufacturing down packed and we have three contract manufacturers out the west coast which we're looking at bringing potentially one of the product lines here in Massachusetts to manufacture but we've just completed our first hundred fifty machines and production will start installing here locally we've got a few in right in the Boston area that we've just recently installed were over a clear conscious cafe. Right. And best avenue and we've probably got about 20 of them in the sculpture area that we're placing as we speak. We've both already installed equipment in California Florida Ohio Georgia Connecticut and quite a few other states. So we're moving very quickly and the demand as people learn about us is growing rapidly. If people see that you know we're in a sustainable era right now people want to return. So we're moving quick. All right well had this been a year ago I think you would have had some new customers when the water main break Advent Yeah.

Well we think we can help with that as well the machines although we have to work closely with the key but they are designed to get rid of all those impurities. Right event of a water main break that will take that out of the process. Well thank you so much for calling in that's Ken Callaway Jr. He's the founder and president of Pura Vida H2O and it's a Randolph based company. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right we have a caller Jane from Providence Go ahead please you're on the Calla Crossley Show. Right I think you're right. Maybe you've covered it but I think in our area it would be more back in the parade we waste water going green water. If my older neighbor down south were all right let's let me have Charles Fishman my guest respond to that. Yeah that's a that is definitely an old style system and it does make sense and we go back one step one thing Mr. Calloway said I want to take issue with before we answer Jane's question. There is no contagion. In fact associated with water phones classic water

phones there's contagion associated in our own brains. But you do not get sick by using a water fountain. I grew up in the era of water fountains and parks water fountains and all kinds of public places. They are not in fact a source of disease whether you're comfortable drinking from them is a different question but they're not in fact a source of contagion. It is stormwater is in fact in many ways a completely different kind of quote unquote product than waste water and old old cities especially before the burden of the wastewater increased with the size of the city and the burden of the storm water increased with the extent of the paved area often merge them. In general it's a good idea to keep them separate because they can be treated separately stormwater In fact in many places is is a real resource if you collect it the right way you can clean it very simply in in was in wetlands artificial ones are real well and obviously wastewater from homes and businesses requires a different kind of cleaning to be re-used. The

problem Jane is that separating them now when the systems have already been installed ends up being a very large undertaking retrofitting an entire city that has merged systems and so the only way to do that is to start as new construction begins or as systems need to be replaced to start separating them. To go dig up every street and install a second set of pipes to divert the storm water and being way too expensive compared to managing the system the way it's been installed. All right thank you very much for the call Jane. Steve from Lynn go ahead please you're on the callee Crossley Show. I you know I have three thing the first thing is I'm a large shoes of snow lots of actually change from what the previous caller said you are allowed to bill your tenants as long as it's on separate PETERS That was the new thing a couple years back. OK well we'll well we'll put that out there for people and you know all right. Second thing is I am told I knew we have a three family

home and the old one the low flow toilet and fixed one dripping off and our water sewer bill changed $100 in the flat bill which is billed every three months which I thought was. Legally significant. And the last thing I'm going to say which I'll probably want to address and I'm sure I'm not the only one of them for a little bit crazy the reason I drink bottled water is because I don't trust the additives that are put into water from then chlorine and fluoride which I know are two extremely deadly poisons. The human that is all. All right thanks very much Steve. I got to respond to Steve myself and say Ugh the Wiener guy appeared at my door I lived in Cambridge. I live in Cambridge and said Do you have people living with you and I said excuse me I said and I said what does that matter to you and he said well cause your water bill is just shot through the roof and I had a dripping toilet. I was about to like have to hock my whole life to pay for this. Think

toilet. So that makes a huge difference I want to put that out there. Absolutely Steve. The point of the point Steve has made are great that first of all to underscore the idea that that people who have multiple multi-family homes can in fact install separate water meters these days that would very much be worth your while. And of course just changing your water use habits a little bit when your water bill is $100 a month your water and sewer bills a hundred dollars a month makes a huge difference. A leaking toilet is costing you the water for the money but you're also charged the outgoing sewer charge even though that the water doesn't actually at that point need any treatment. So it it really does pay we've done the same thing in our house. We also don't flush the toilet every time we use it depending on how we use the toilet and that actually has made a huge difference when you've got three or four or five people living in your home. The question of of chlorine and what the by products of chlorine are and the question of fluoride. Those are are complicated and also very

emotionally charged issues that to be fair I did not dive into in any depth in this book my. My goal was to understand water problems around the world. So I went to Australia and India but I did not go sit down with the fluoride experts. I know that there is some dispute about about fluoride in particular chlorine has been a vital disinfectant in water systems. There are chlorine by products and they are one of the things water systems report. One of the reasons to make sure your water system has the resources it needs is that there are many new ways of disinfecting water ozone is one ultraviolet light is another. So for communities that really have difficulty with the chlorine there are ways of changing out the disinfection system without. Changing the quality of the water delivered and those new systems are not that costly. Just in closing I wonder I know your book emphasizes that we got to move to some new technology and

to start working on it. Share that with our listeners. Well in water pressed areas in WA in areas where there is water scarcity and you never know when that's going to happen. Atlanta is a is a is a water rich area that most of the time feels much like New England. But Atlanta came within 80 days of running out of water two years ago. In places like that you need to measure the amount of water you use give people information especially big water users they discover that they they use water essentially cavalierly because it's so inexpensive. There's all kinds of new technology coming on in terms of the cost for instance of desalinization desalination which has the cost of which has been cut in half. And then in half again in a community like Boston desalination isn't a real issue but that helps make. Water affordable in water pressed communities and because of climate change the number of communities that find themselves

without the water they are used to is going to rise dramatically in the next 20 years. And that's part of what I tried to understand and explain which is when you are used to a certain amount of water and the available water drops off dramatically What do you do. Technology is one way of helping you out of that problem. Managing your own consumption is another way of course. And of course we can't let you go with it with seconds to go without saying how many bottled water bottles are in your house. I want to know that if there are any. Well I we have dramatically reduced the amount of bottled water we use. We keep one of those remarkable 24 packs in our house. But I would say it lasts three or four months. So we don't go through more than a bottle or two of water a week for four people so not too many day. They do tend to rattle around inside the minivan and and pile up. And we now empty the half full bottles of water in the dog bowl so we don't pour them down the drain anymore in the plants or in the dog bowl. No bottled water gets thrown away.

OK water investigative reporter you're healing yourself. Very good. Thank you very much. Charles Fishman we've been talking about water with Charles Fishman an investigative reporter and author of the new book The Big Thirst The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. You can catch him at the Harvard Coop tomorrow night at 7:00. Today Show was engineered by Jane pick and produced by Chelsea Mertz will Rose live and Abbie Ruzicka where production of WGBH radio Boston's NPR station for news and culture. To a.