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February 19, 2008
Albuquerque councilor wants city to stop buying bottled water
By Erik Siemers
If tap water needed a spokesman, City Councilor Isaac Benton might be up for the job.
The council Wednesday is scheduled to hear a Benton-sponsored bill calling for Mayor Martin Chavez to ban the practice of using city money to buy individual-serving bottled water.
Benton says the city should set an example in drinking city tap water rather than wasting taxpayer money on environmentally unfriendly plastic containers.
"I've noticed in city government, at practically every meeting, whether you ask for it or not, somebody's placed one of those bottles in front of your spot," said Benton, who represents the Downtown area. "It's a very large amount of bottles being used in the city. I kind of think it sends the wrong message. We do have good municipal water."
Chavez, meanwhile, likes the idea. He likes it so much, in fact, that he claims to have done it already.
"I actually banned that six months ago," Chavez said Monday. "The only exceptions were for the guys out in the field, like surveyors, and even on that we decided they could get big jugs."
Regardless of who came up with the idea first, Benton and Chavez share similar reasons for banning plastic water bottles.
Benton cited the high petroleum use in transporting bottled water, as well as the paltry number of bottles being recycled compared to those that end up in landfills.
Of about 60 billion individual beverages sold in plastic bottles in 2006, just over 10 billion were recycled, according to data on the Container Recycling Institute Web site.
The city could also save money by not purchasing bottled water, though neither Benton nor Chavez could say how much.
Both argue against claims that bottled water has better taste or higher quality than tap water — despite the unsettling news of yeast being discovered in bottled samples of San Juan-Chama drinking water, which will be pumped into Albuquerque homes next fall.
Officials with the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority say the yeast found in promotional bottles was a result of the bottling process, and not a flaw within their water purification process.
"I think we have pretty darn good water here," Benton said. "Even when we'll use San Juan-Chama water, we'll find it's good quality."
http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2008/feb/19/albuquerque-councilor-wants-city-stop-buying-bottl/
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