Bottlemania: Big Business, Local Springs, and the Battle over America's Drinking Water

United States pays the lowest tap-water rates, an average of $2.50 per thousand gallons.

Between 1990 and 1997, U.S. sales of bottled water shot from $115 million to $4 billion,

chlorine in 1920—one of the most important advances in public health—dealt a near-lethal blow to sales of spring and mineral water in this country, but it set the stage for their comeback, based largely on snob appeal, sixty years later.

Drinking too much water can, though, be dangerous. In January of 2007, a Sacramento County, California, woman trying to win a Nintendo Wii on a radio program drank almost two gallons of Crystal Geyser without a bathroom break. She left the radio station with a headache, didn’t win the Nintendo, and died that afternoon in her home.

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole,

In 2007, half the nation didn’t have access to clean water. Flash floods during the rainy season lead to outbreaks of typhoid, leptospirosis, and dengue fever. During these events, Fijians are advised to boil their water or drink from the bottle.

who controls what’s left of our freshwater—locals who depend on it for survival, or corporations that sell it for profit—matters a great deal,

(The word rival is from the Latin rivalis, meaning “one using the same stream as another.”)

The outrageous success of bottled water, in a country where more than 89 percent of tap water meets or exceeds federal health and safety regulations, regularly wins in blind taste tests against name-brand waters, and costs 240 to 10,000 times less than bottled water, is an unparalleled social phenomenon,