What do you mean I can't drink the water?!

Come July, Eric and I will be moving to San Angelo, TX. It's basically smack in the middle of the state. The thing is, you cannot drink the water there. It's not like some people are just water snobs--you literally cannot drink a whole glass of this stuff. For one thing, it's apparently salty as heck.

San Angelo gets a whopping 20 inches of rain per year. This makes for stagnant, foul smelling, silty tap water. I'm not very excited about even showering in this stuff. Most homes in the area have installed expensive tap water treatment systems. So instead of investing in municipal water treatment, these people are forced to install these things just so that they can shower.

This kind of thing is only supposed to happen in third world countries. Coming from a family who has lived in either NY or VA for most of their lives, this problem is new to me. I'm pretty sure Aquafina, Deer Park and other bottling companies actually take a lot of their water from VA.

Some of the water quality problems are caused by over draining area aquifers, which causes higher density salt water to enter those spaces. In my opinion, municipalities have the responsibility to supply useable water to their residents. We should not have to rely on having individually operated water purification systems. They're wasteful and more expensive than if they would just invest in municipal water treatment.

Obviously, there's not a lot of water to be had in this area. However, that has not stopped other areas of the world from providing drinkable water to their residents. For example, the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean do not get enough rain to cover their water needs, so they also use desalination of sea water. While this method requires a large initial investment, at least it guarantees usable, healthy water to everyone with a tap. While their water bills are higher than the $20/month a lot of us spend on this precious resource, this method is still more efficient than the alternative. The cost of a usable glass of water in the Cayman Islands is still going to run less than if you were to use home water purification.

What this does is encourages residents in dry areas to use municipal water for it's most important uses, like cooking, drinking and bathing. People get creative and develop solutions for keeping plants alive in these areas. Since there is no large scale farming in the San Angelo area, individuals should be responsible for developing sustainable landscapes by using drought tolerant plants and storing rain water on their property. When one can't even bathe in municipal water, people have no business planting non-indigenous plants that require 400% more water than local species.

As an avid gardener, I'm not saying your yard should be a pile of dirt. What I am saying is that municipal water should be of decent quality and its use should be prioritized. If one wants to use water for non-essential purposes, then they should be responsible for either paying the higher price or gathering and storing it themselves.

Better to have smaller quantities of good water than larger quantities of totally unusable water.