Bruce Wilson takes his water seriously.
Wilson is the chief operator of the International Falls Water Treatment Plant and wants people to know that not only is the city’s water safe and good tasting, it is plentiful.
Wilson recently replaced the failing water fountain at the plant with a new, innovative fountain, manufactured by Elkay and sold locally by Corrin’s Plumbing and Heating, that provides the traditional fountain, but also includes a bottle-filling station.
“We have very high quality drinking water, but it’s under used,” he said from the plant, located on Highway 11 East.
He encourages public and private entities to consider installing this kind of fountain to offer people a way to use tap water for their water-drinking needs instead of spending money on bottled water, which he said creates additional garbage.
He filled a reusable stainless steel bottle from the fountain, which includes an innovative counter that indicates how many plastic bottles have been kept out of a landfill.
“I am going to be promoting the city to install them where they can, places like at Kerry Park, city hall, the larger areas,” he said.
He’ll also ask the leaders of places like schools, colleges, and fitness centers — “where people are going to be drinking water” — to consider replacing old drinking fountains with a fountain that includes a bottle-filling station.
Wilson said the city’s water is a valuable resource. And using it, he said, is economical, healthy and environmentally friendly.
“We want people to use it, it’s nearly free,” he said. “You’re already paying for it.”
Koochiching County’s garbage and recyclables are transported outside the community to another site for disposal and handling.
“It costs money to do that,” he said. By reducing the number of disposable bottles added to the waste stream, the county would have less garbage to pay to be hauled and handled, he said.
Wilson said he’s heard that an estimated 70 percent of plastic water bottles are not recycled and end up in the trash. “It’s millions of bottles a day,” he said.
“I hope to get a reusable bottle with the city logo on it to give away when we have tours and other events to get more active in promoting our tap water,” he said.
Wilson said he first saw the innovative fountain at the College of Saint Benedict near St. Cloud. The college has banned manufactured bottled water from its campus, he said.
“They figure water is a human right and they don’t like the plastic and the profits,” he said. “They want to be ecologically aware.”
Wilson said the city’s water supply is flush.
“Just on the Rainy Lake watershed, if we had 1 inch of rain, how many water bottles would that be? It’s like 1.3 trillion water bottles from one rainfall. We’re not going to run out. We’ve got a lot of water here. It’s not like a lot of places in the world. We’re lucky here. We have water and should enjoy it.”
The city’s water quality is as good as it gets, he said.
“We’ve been in taste tests around the state and done as well as second,” he said. “And we’re always striving to do better. We always try to make better water today than we did yesterday. I will put my water, or our water, up against any body’s.”
The best drinking water is the freshest, he said. To get that water he suggests that city water users run their tap for a minute or two to get cold water.
“You don’t want to be drinking water that’s been sitting in the pipes all night or all day or all weekend,” he said.
Wilson acknowledged that recent work on area water lines may have impacted the look and taste of the water coming from a household’s tap, but he again said running the water for a couple minutes should eliminate the problem.
People considering installing the new type of fountain can contact Wilson at the treatment plant for more information.
Wilson noted the following statistics:
• The recommended eight glasses of water a day, at U.S. tap rates equals about 49 cents per year; that same amount of bottled water is about $1,400.
• In the United States, water utilities monitor for more than 100 contaminants and must meet close to 90 regulations for water safety and quality. Those water standards are among the world’s most stringent. States may also require utilities to meet additional standards.
• Community water supplies are tested every day. Tap water undergoes far more frequent testing than bottled water. Some people believe bottled water is safer than the community water supply, just because it’s in a bottle. That is not necessarily true.
• According to Food & Water Watch, more than 17 million barrels of oil — enough to fuel one million cars for a year — are needed to produce the plastic water bottles sold in the United States annually. Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles in 2006. The recycling rate for plastic is only 23 percent, which means 38 billion water bottles go into landfills each year — more than $1 billion worth of plastic.
