The City of London is absolutely right to fight back against the foolish fashion of bottled water. Bottled water is unnecessary in a country with safe municipal water – the greatest public health triumph of the last century. Bottled water erodes public support for preserving and extending that triumph. Bottled water makes huge corporations massive private profits, but dumps the disposal costs on municipalities. Bottled water is tough on the environment, causing litter, draining aquifers eating up landfill space and wasting fuel.
How can I say municipal water is safe, after Walkerton? Walkerton was an extreme example of a tiny municipal system that was badly run, in knowing defiance of every applicable law, for decades. It has nothing to do with how most Ontario municipal systems were run then, or how any of them are run now.
With any luck, bottled water will fall from fashion as quickly and as thoroughly as cigarettes did.