Don’t like the taste of your drinking water? Well, you could buy bottled water at an outrageous price. What, spend all that money for water? Well, grab some plastic gallon milk bottles and head for the nearest roadside spring. They’re all over the place. The water is free and some say it’s the best water you can get.

Mark Carmon, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, had this to say. “A lot of these springs you see by the side of the road are little more than a pipe that somebody stuck into a rock. The trouble is that no one is monitoring these springs, to see if the water is safe to drink or not.” Carmon continues, “You really don’t know where the water comes from. The source could be miles away, and the water could be running through a cemetery, or somebody’s septic system, or a mine pool. I wouldn’t wash my car with it, let alone drink it.”

Dan Miller, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said people could suffer from serious health problems from springs that contain bacteria or other harmful microorganisms.

Well, that kind of puts a damper on springs so I guess it’s back to bottled water. Or is it?

Marylynn Yates, microbiologist and chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of California, Irvine, said, “In some cases, bottled water is more contaminated than tap water.” Yates, who previously worked as a researcher with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) went on to say “An appealing name and fancy label don’t guarantee purity.”

While municipal tap water is subjected to enforceable standards established by the EPA, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has much less stringent guidelines regarding water purity and monitoring.

In fact, the FDA exempts bottled water packaged and sold within the same state, which accounts for about 60 to 70 percent of bottled industry sales. It also subjects carbonated and seltzer water to more lax “sanitation” guidelines as opposed to contamination regulations.

Well, I see where this is headed. It’s back to tap water. If your tap water is bad, what can you do? Did you ever hear of the Carbon County Groundwater Guardians?