We need to change our thinking and appreciation of drinking water, in light of current trends and future availability of clean, good tasting, potable water.

One only needs to read a recent National Geographic article on worldwide supplies of potable water to assimilate the near term short-supply of good water, and the impact that the human population is having on overall supplies. We seem to be doing a pretty good job of living in our own waste products and wasting a large percentage of what good water we have left. When you consider that we both drink and wash our clothing and perform other utilities in our piped in water, and then the percentage of the total that we drink, it is a little staggering.

We drink water in various forms and solutions. Cola drinks are potable water with food coloring, sucrose and carbonation. Run water though a cow, and you get a biological suspension of butterfat, minerals and vitamins, colored white with calcium. Mix water with barley hops and sugars, ferment and you get beer. These are all value added products which are marketed in small and large bottles and sell for a price point around one dollar per pint, at the highest retail level.

For the longest time, there was a fad bottled water called Perrier, which now also sells for a buck a bottle. All the big American bottlers missed this market until someone woke up and started selling water out of the ground spring at Poland Springs, Maine. Now your supermarket is in on the act with its own label, which cuts the price in case lots to a more reasonable level. If you don't think this is a huge market, just check out the size of the bottled water section in the soda aisles at the supermarket.

Why are you willing to pay this premium for a drink of water? Several answers, but the main reason is it tastes better. Our municipal piped in water is increasingly treated more heavily for organic and chemical content. The aftertaste of chlorine is unpleasant to many. And horror stories of contaminated water are fodder for the media, which do an excellent job of terrorizing the public when this happens. So we have an underlying shift in perceptions of our drinking water which no one fully realizes.

There is no decrease in the total supply of water in the world, only a crisis shortage of easily cleaned up drinking water. Eventually, demand will support desalinization of ocean water, at some huge expense, under current technology parameters. And the inexorable system of supply and demand will make the price of drinking water make our current gasoline price increases look very minimal.

We probably will acknowledge the defacto need to segregate our utility water through pipes for utility and bathing uses, from drinking water out of bottling plants with access to pure water. Should you not buy into this scenario, consider the price comparisons in the closing paragraphs.

Because municipal water has always been considered an entitlement, and dirt cheap, it has always been sold on a per thousand gallon basis. You currently pay a range of $4 to $9 per thousand. So lets extrapolate the various types of water you buy now in pint bottles and gasoline to thousand gallon containers:

- XYZ Spring Water $1.15 per pint at Expressmart = $9.25 per gallon, $9,250 per thousand gallons

- Milk per pint $1 = $8 per gallon, $8,000 per thousand gallons

- Cola drink per pint $1.25 = $10 per gallon, $10,000 per thousand gallons

- Draft Beer per pint $3 = $24 per gallon, $24,000 per thousand gallons

- Gasoline any brand, $2.99 per gallon, $2,990 per thousand gallons

Do you think the prices will come down? Which do you prefer: bottles or piped in water?

William Dugan is former supervisor for the town of Ledyard