Tell Speaker Boehner: DC Lawmakers Should Drink From the Tap, Too

The new Speaker of the House John Boehner made waves last week with his intention to cut $35 million of bloated spending from the U.S. House of Representatives' budget.

News reports noted a prime example of that waste: In the first quarter of 2010 alone, the House spent $190,000 taxpayer dollars on bottled water. That's a lot of money—equivalent to paying about 4 teachers' salaries—so that our elected officials can sip on water that's bad for the planet to boot.

Luckily, Boehner has plenty of support if he wants to cut back on bottled water spending. On Friday, George S. Hawkins, general manager of the area water utility DC Water, wrote Boehner a letter offering to supply each member of Congress with his or her own reusable water bottles (for free!).

I'm a DC resident, and I do know that many people complain about the taste of DC tap water. In my house, we solve that with a simple water filter. Hawkins also offered free water quality testing in the building to assuage concerns from lawmakers who aren't keen on the idea.

"Water is a resource that is essentially free at the tap," he writes, mentioning that his agency provides drinking water to more than 600,000 residents and 16.6 million annual visitors a year. He also notes that tap water treads far lighter on the environment, avoiding the harms of petroleum-based plastic bottles and added waste to landfills. What's more our nation's crumbling water infrastructure needs all the support it can get—most especially from Congress.

You can read Food & Water Watch's debunking of common bottled water myths here. What it comes down to is that bottled water is not safer or healthier than tap water, and increasingly comes from tap water anyway. It is 1,000 times more expensive, and the energy needed to produce the plastic was enough to fuel about 1.5 million cars in 2007. Nearly 2.5 million tons of plastic bottles and jars were thrown away in 2008, ending up in landfills, lakes and streams.

Already, many states and cities are phasing out their bottled water purchases in this era of environmental and fiscal responsibility. The Congress of the United States should do the same.

Tell Rep. Boehner to make good on his promise to cut wasteful spending, and eliminate bottled water purchases from the House budget. Sign the petition to the new speaker here.

GOT A TIP FOR US? Is there a story or campaign in your area that we'd want to know about? E-mail us at environmenttips@change.org. Please also follow Change.org's Environment page on Facebook and Twitter.