Drinking Water: $10 a Gallon from Your Tap?

Could the price of water ever make it to $10 a gallon from your tap? For me that would be 2000 times the cost of drinking water I now pay, but if consumers are now willing to pay that for bottled water, I think we will see those sorts of increases at the tap in our lifetime due to the climate change affecting our planet.

Here are my top 3 natural environmental events that will be at play changing the cheapness of water in the not too distant future:

1. Flooding is already a major problem for municipalities in charge of treating your drinking water. Most treatment facilities have been designed either by digging holes in the ground not larger than a football field or above ground taller than 5–20 feet. This means that storm surges can inundate treatment facilities & infrastructure that were designed to handle storms in the every 50 to 100 year time frame. With rapid climate change (RCC) making storms stronger and more frequent, treatment facilities will have a hard time adequately treating drinking water and delivering it to you the customer.

The crux in the problem envolves the final stages of treatment. In the third stage of drinking water treatment, water has to spend a certain amount of time with a disinfectant to render the water safe.

When storm events inundate infrastructure, water treatment suffers by inadequate time with the disinfectant which allow microbes to proliferate in the unsterile distribution system. This means dirty water & higher costs to repair damaged infrastructure.

2. Drought is already a major problem for many states such as we have here in California but what this means is that you should expect to pay more for the water you drink. Most consumers rely on water from an aquifer or from snow melt. Aquifers are being depleted at an alarmimg rate and many cities have put moratoriums on drilling new wells so there is enough water for current populations. New residents will have to rely on city water which is more expensive than well water. With glaciers melting quickly, snow melt will not be able to supply the environmental needs and human needs for drinking water. Coastal communities will turn to desalination which is costly and more inland communities will spend more money on infrastructure to bring water to customers or employ further treatment of non-potable supplies. Either way RCC will cost you more money.

3. Heat waves are a byproduct of RCC due to the inability of the earth to cool itself. Heat not only increases snow melt but it also requires more water to keep up with agriculture due to transpiration of plants. When plants are hot they need more water to keep them from dying. With agriculture already using up to 70% of fresh water supplies, increased water use means higher prices for food and higher prices of water due to the smaller supply of drinking water.

Should you try to reduce your environmental footprint to help save the Earth? My answer is yes unless you don’t care about the cost of drinking water over the long run. So grab a cheap ice cold glass of water while you still can!