Thousands of US Communities Large and Small Plagued by Bad Water Seek Recourse
Overland Park, Kan., November 30, 2018 — Cities and towns across America are increasingly confronted by bad, contaminated water as aging infrastructure brings lead, bacteria and other blights to the water flowing from household and commercial taps. While fixing these aging systems will require billions of dollars and years of labor, communities are desperate for immediate solutions.
A survey from Bluewater last November found the majority of Americans (56%) worry their drinking water contains harmful contaminants like lead, bacteria, carcinogens, and plastic, and another sixty percent actively take measures to help control what’s in their drinking water, such as using bottled water.*
“From Flint to Chicago, New York to Portland, and countless rural communities in between like Enterprise, La., Americans are waking to headlines that their drinking water is unsafe,” said Anders Jacobson, President of Bluewater. “Rather than address water treatment and infrastructure with urgency though, we defer necessary maintenance and rely on single-use plastic bottled water - but there are better near-term solutions.”
Bluewater makes residential and commercial water purifiers, provides public hydration stations and invests in water technology startups working to empower people and communities to understand what’s coming out of their tap and ensure it’s clean and safe to drink, wash and cook with.
“There’s absolutely no good reason to accept the current state of water contamination and failing water infrastructure in the U.S.,” added Jacobson. “There are solutions available today that don’t come with the compounding health problems of ingesting bad water or relying on plastic bottles.”
Additional findings from the Bluewater survey showed:
One-third (33%) of Americans worry about lead and toxic metals in their drinking water
29 percent worry about bacteria
16 percent worry about plastic particles; that’s 52 million Americans
16 million Americans say they personally have or know someone who has had a water issue in the last two years
The survey will be replicated for 2018-2019. Based on the number of reported water incidents across the country in the last several months, Bluewater anticipates the number of Americans reporting experiencing a water issue directly will have increased.
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*Survey methodology: One-time survey fielded to the general population in the United States on 11/16/2017 through 11/18/2017 via Google Consumer Surveys publisher network on behalf of Bluewater, receiving at least 1,701 responses.