There's been a lot of media attention on whether bottled water is really safer than tap water.

I grew up in Auburn. Over the years I lived in other parts of the country, including California. Because of the reports that were coming out in the '90s about the hazards of tap drinking water in that state, I decided to return to this area.

We are truly fortunate to live in the Finger Lakes Region because our lakes are among the largest spring-fed lakes in the world. Despite the phosphate dumping by the Town of Groton into our own Owasco Lake, we're still in the top 5 percent of the “cleanest lakes in the nation.”

Recently local citizens got the attention of Senator Nozzolio because of what was happening. He apparently is getting involved in enforcing regulations which he has known about since 1991. This was the year that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said New York state was “one of the states failing to adequately enforce existing drinking water regulations.”

The safety of our drinking water also depends a lot on the amount of chlorine being added to the water.

According to the U.S. Council of Environmental Quality, “Cancer risk among people drinking chlorinated water is 93 percent higher than among those whose water does not contain chlorine.”

In 1991, the July 9 issue of U.S. News and World Report said that, “Scientists discovered that chlorine reacted with organic material in water to produce hundreds of chemical byproducts, several of which have proved in animal studies to be carcinogenic.”

Fixing our drinking water must now become a No. 1 priority by the senator, not just for health safety's sake but because the ordinary citizen has a right under the “Clean Water Act” to “safe drinking water.”

Joyce Hackett Smith

Moravia