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Water Works

What flows from our taps is worth more than you think.

by Jordan Mackay
posted on April 01, 2007

Credits: Jennifer Martine

A few years ago, I experienced the water service at La Pergola, one of the best restaurants in Rome. With dozens of selections—and with each one’s mineral content described in detail—the water list was almost as long as its wine list. A party of eight, we all ended up ordering different waters; we each had our own ice bucket. I had reached the pinnacle of H2O absurdity.

America’s no less obsessed, however. The bottled-water industry was worth an estimated $11 billion in 2005, combined with the fact that, while a hike in the price of gas leads to moaning, people happily pay more per gallon for something that falls free from the sky. When we travel, my wife always drinks the tap water, as she says it adds to her sense of place. Except in certain parts of Mexico, I usually join her in doing this. Certainly, in San Francisco, there’s no reason not to drink the water. In fact, there are many reasons why you should gulp it in large quantities.

For one thing, it’s cheap. According to Tony Winnicker, director of communication for the SF Public Utilities, SF customers pay less than $2 per unit, which is utilities-speak for 748 gallons, which basically means a glass of water is way less than a penny. That much Fiji water (at $1.99 a liter at Bevmo) would cost $5662.98.

The quality issues that saddled SF with a much-publicized low ranking in a 2002 Natural Resources Defense Council study have been corrected, says Winnicker, and now SF rates with New York City, Portland and Seattle as having one of the purest and tastiest waters in the nation. “We’re the only city in California—and one of a few in the country—whose water does not have to be filtered,” Winnicker says. “It’s treated—all city water has to be—but it’s not filtered. That happens naturally.” The major source of our water is the spring snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada that seeps through a natural granite filtration system in the mountains and is collected in the scenic Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.

Concerned about safety? “Bottled water only has to be tested once a year,” says Winnicker. “Our water is tested more than 100,000 times per year.” As for taste, the City conducted a blind taste test on the Embarcadero in 2005, pitting Hetch Hetchy tap water versus two kinds of bottled water. Half the respondents preferred SF tap water, 25 percent preferred bottled water and the other quarter couldn’t tell the difference.

A third good reason to drink locally is environmental. The L.A. Times ran a story last year entitled “Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas,” about a phenomenon known as the Eastern Garbage Patch floating in the ocean halfway between San Francisco and Hawaii. It’s a collection of plastic and foam debris about twice the size of Texas. The more bottles we buy and throw away, the more chance of contributing to that outrage, not to mention the costs of manufacturing, packaging and transporting waters from places like Fiji or New Zealand—countries halfway around the world.

BUBBLY PERSONALITY

When it comes to fine dining, I prefer still water’s more rambunctious sibling: sparkling. It’s encouraging, then, to see that Noe Valley’s Incanto and Sausalito’s Poggio have both filter and carbonate tap water and offer it at no charge. On the home front, sign up to receive seltzer water from the Seltzer Sisters (seltzersisters.com). The company delivers it to your house in either plastic or antique glass spray bottles and takes away and reuses the empties. The seltzer water is so good that it’s a staple at SF establishments like Bourbon & Branch and the Slanted Door, and it’s even served between courses at Cyrus in Healdsburg.

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