What’s wrong with Peterborough’s drinking water?
In a word, nothing. In fact, Peterborough public water quality is excellent. Then why is the town providing water in those big blue five-gallon jugs from Monadnock Mountain Spring Water at public meetings in the Select Board room? It makes no sense.
Those purchased jugs encourage more waste as people fill plastic drinking cups during meetings. They also arouse suspicion about our water quality in the first place, possibly discouraging our neighbors from frequenting Peterborough restaurants and other businesses, and encouraging the wasteful use of single-use plastic bottles.
My family has lived in town since 2004, drinking clear, great-tasting, town-supplied water right from our unfiltered tap. In fact, I make my own beer using water that comes out of our kitchen faucet. I wouldn’t use it if I didn’t think it was excellent.
The town tests water quality annually and posts results at the bottom of the Public Works “Water & Utilities” web page. Consistently, testing shows either no detection or better-than-acceptable levels of all contaminants outlined by federal and state health agencies thanks to our Department of Public Works.
Instead of providing plastic jugs of spring water, our town should install bottle-fillable bubblers at the Town House. Those jugs just make people wonder. Instead, let’s install a modern bubbler and encourage people to invest in steel water bottles they can refill at will.
Concerned residents of the towns of Peterborough and Sharon are taking action to reduce townwide plastic use by “rethinking plastic.” If you are interested and want to learn more about the group, please check out The Ten Towns Toolkit website, 10towns.org, and come view the documentary “Microplastic Madness” screening at the Peterborough Town Library on Nov. 15 at 5:30 p.m.
Jonathan Gourlay
Peterborough