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Make yourself at home. Put your feet up. Grab your favorite beverage and prepare to enjoy the reads.
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Wednesday

Desperate for Clean Water

When you're little, you put your whole body into it. Easy enough to grab the handle and push it up, but getting it back down, you had to jump, put all your weight on it to get it into down position, then lift as fast as you can to get the next one going down.Your best bet was to have a gallon of water handy to pour down inside the pump, in order to not kill yourself trying to pump the water. For my Dad or big brother, it seemed a miracle they could pump gallons and gallons of water into the cistern with one arm pumping. That's how it was with our sweet, pure well water. My how things have changed.

Today there's so much controversy about drinking water. Is my faucet water safe to drink? What about plastic bottled water and it's effect upon the environment. What's your plan of action? Got one? I didn't. Then one day while at the grocery store, I noticed that there were no special sales on bottled water. You know, those packs of 24 handy dandy, carry with you, clean, clear, mountain streams healthy, unpolluted water? That stuff. Since it wasn't on sale and I knew I would need at least the 24 bottles or more to get me through the week, I hesitated. Whoa! If I bought two packs that would be a pretty big chunk of cash.

I thought to save money by calling up the local bottled water company, one of those who bring it to your door in big jugs. You can by the special dispenser, only 80 to 100 bucks if you want the one that gives you instant hot and instant cold water. I got the plain dispenser, a crock and wooden stand, for under 50 bucks. Then there is the bottle deposit. Five dollars up front. Not bad as long as I keep returning the old bottles for the new ones. Then, I could expect the bottled water truck to come to my house and deliver five gallon jugs. Soon I was paying for 5 gallons of "fine" distilled or spring water (probably filtered tap) a month. Still, it was less expensive than buying a month's worth of 24 packs even on sale. Plus, I felt better about not adding to the growing problem of disposing of the empty bottles. Let us not go into the leaching of chemicals into those bottles according to some sources. Save that for another time, when I can get all the facts.

About a year later, I began to be a little haunted by my new set up. I'm sure you know what the water was delivered in? Plastic. Nice thick plastic that wouldn't crack if you dropped one on the sidewalk while unloading it from the truck. The truck driving all over the county with the heat piercing through the jugs of water.

Did you know, by the way, that one gallon of water weighs 8 pounds?  I don't know how much the plastic fiver weighed. It seemed light when empty. One of the hassles I ran into was I couldn't lift the 40 plus pounds up over my shoulder in order to turn it over into the dispenser. So, my options were to stay home and wait for the delivery guy to load one for me. Two problems with that: staying home all day until he showed up, and hopefully have an empty bottle sitting on top of my dispenser to trade in. My other option was to wait until the weekend when my Superman came to visit. Again this depended on whether or not the previous bottle was empty. Sometimes if not entirely, I would take enough out, and pour it into the aquarium, which seems to evaporate faster than I can drink water!

Superman said, it's less expensive to get the water ourselves from one of those water dispenser stores. So I discontinued the service, and we went to the local store and bought two five gallon, and one 3 gallon jugs. We've been going every weekend to refill and reload onto my water crock dispenser.

Now I question the wisdom in this. Wish I had some clear, pure water. Wish I had that pump in the backyard, that pump going deep underground into the well. I would jump up. I would push down. I would prime the pump. I could use the exercise.

3 comments:

  1. Could you use a filter jug? Although truth is they still involve waste as the filters are encased in .... plastic.

    I used to be really picky about water that wasn't filtered ... now I just drink it from the tap. And i fel none the worse for it. At my age it's probably not high on the list of things that are dangerous.

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  2. I don't mess with bottled water, unless I am just so thirsty I have to buy one while I'm out, but that doesn't happen often. We have good water where we live in New Mexico. I don't know what they do to it to make it so clear, cold and refreshing here but it is really good.

    The water where my boss lives is ok, some days though it tastes like pool water with too much chlorine in it and other days it's ok, not as good as the water at my house though.

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  3. Since where I live there is a great deal of agriculture surrounding my town, a lot of chemicals leach into the groundwater. Nitrates were notorious, for example. It can kill a baby who has been fed on formula made with this water. Fortunately, that is no longer the case, but I'm still concerned, not entirely convinced my faucet has a gift for me. But, will be researching this further, and let you know what I learn. I learned that my water comes from deep wells and safer than the farm run off water.

    ReplyDelete

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