Do You Know Where Your Water Comes From and More?

Chattahoochee River

I live in East Point, Georgia. At my home, my tap water does not magically appear in a glass. My filtered water comes from somewhere, piped from river to faucet. My water comes from the Chattahoochee River–actually starts further north–that feeds Sweetwater Creek in Austell, Georgia, which is about 20 minutes from Atlanta. The water moves by pump to the Ben Hill Reservoir, about five miles from creek. This liquid essential to life on earth is processed at the East Point Water Treatment. I press a button on my fridge and water from the Chattahoochee, so far away, flows into my cup for tea. I am grateful because people around the world do not have such easy access to clean water around the world.

I do my best to get my drinking water from the tap and not bottled water so I’m not adding plastic to the swelling landfills. You are probably drinking the same filtered water I do when you drink from the bottle. And there are chemicals in the plastic bottles that potentially threaten our health.

We are also facing drought around the world. Here in Georgia we have to live with cyclical drought. I was told a few years go that I might not get water piped into my home because of drought. Trust me: that was unnerving. Georgia seems unwilling to share their water from Lake Lanier with Florida and Alabama because of fears around drought. These issues over water rights will probably get worse as climate change continues to escalate across the globe.

To learn more got to EPA’s Drinking Water for kids and rent the the documentary Tapped.

So I ask you: where does your water come from? Learn the source of your water, and for that matter your food. Consider drinking tap rather than bottled. And heed the warnings about global warning, which is impacting access to good clean water in as far away as Africa and as close as Georgia.