Tap Water Gains New Snob Appeal

Posted May 9, 2007 in [Water]

Susan Lampert Smith, May 8, 2007, The Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal - Thank goodness trendy water has always been in style at The Curve cafe, 653 S. Park St.

The proof is right on the yellow vinyl countertop - a glass of Madison's finest tap water.

Kathy Tracy, the Curve's queen of the coffee pot, says The Curve never did serve water in the bottle and thus is ahead of the trend, dubbed by Slate as "the new snob appeal of tap water."

"I drink tap water at home, too," she said. "Why buy bottled water?"

Exactly. That's the point of a new environmental awareness campaign that aims to make drinking bottled water as ecologically unpopular as driving an SUV.

Global warming has led people to realize you have to burn a lot of fuel to pump that San Pellegrino out of the ground in Italy, bottle it, box it, and ship it across the ocean to the United States, where it's then trucked to your favorite restaurant. Then, of course, there are all those ugly bottles and boxes left over.

No wonder sustainable restaurants, from Chez Panisse in Berkeley to San Domenico in New York, are giving up on the bottles in the spirit of sustainability.

Of course, being fancy restaurants, they're injecting bubbles to create homemade seltzer or filtering the tap water through charcoal made from Japanese bamboo. The Wall Street Journal, which also recently reported on the gourmet tap water trend, actually sent tasters around the country to sip tap water at various restaurants.

At Restaurant Nora in Washington, D.C., tap water is filtered three times: through salt, carbon and paper. The result, according to the taster, is "nondescript, with no aftertaste and a medium mouth feel."

In other words, it tasted like water.

Before you laugh too hard, the same Wall Street Journal article reported some disturbing news from Madison.

L'Etoile co-owner Traci Miller said while her restaurant has always served filtered Madison tap water, she can't get rid of the bottles because so many of her customers are worried about Madison's water.

"I had to tell (The Wall Street Journal) there's been a huge increase in bottled water sales because of last year's issues with the water system," she said.

She compromises by offering Klarbrunn, which is only shipped about 40 miles from where it comes out of the well in Watertown, and thus more sustainable than products from farther away.

Ironically, Miller said a "water expert" who visited the restaurant asked the secret of what he proclaimed as "excellent" water.

"He wanted to know, 'What do you do to your tap water? It's amazingly good water,' " said Miller, who drinks the tap water herself.

Now, there is reason to be worried about the Madison Water Utility, which seems to be run by the Keystone Kops. Yes, there was the manganese problem on the West Side. And yes, there was really bad stuff in Well 3 on the East Side. Oh, and also the problems with adding too much or too little chlorine.

But overall, we still have pretty darn good water here in Madison. Maybe we're part of the problem, for taking the stuff that comes out of the tap for granted.

Maybe we need to make our water a Madison-style cause. I can envision support groups like "Friends of Well 16," water-tasting challenges and buttons that read, "Make Mine Tap Water." I bet if we installed one of those activist Madison grandmothers at every well, no one would forget to add the chlorine.

If we don't get behind our water, we'll be left behind with those who still think sipping Perrier out of a bottle is still cool.

In other words, Madison will be behind the curve. And also, behind The Curve.