Water, Water Everywhere

MiaEverybody’s concerned about Hurricane Sandy and you can’t go five seconds without being reminded on how to prepare — but one thing in particular has stuck in my craw: stocking up on water.

It’s true that having water on hand is a good idea, but it largely depends on where your water comes from. If you rely on a well that uses electricity then you could have a problem if the juice goes out. But many people with a municipal water supply — like in the town where I live — are unlikely to have any trouble.

Without getting into the nitty gritty, my water does not move around by electricity, but by the pressure created by a water tower. As long as they keep the tower filled we’ll have water pressure. They don’t need to pump it all over, just up the tower — and there are generators in case of power failure.

Unless we have a gravity failure, we’ll probably have water.

Are there things that can go wrong? Of course — but losing water is very unlikely. Just try explaining this at home. My wife kept asking over the weekend if we should buy water and I kept saying no — until I finally gave in and went to Price Chopper at 5:30 this morning.

In the parking lot I met a man with a cart full of water. Did you leave a few bottles for me?

“Yeah, there’s a little left. You know, I’m only here because my wife is driving me nuts about having bottled water in the house. She doesn’t understand where our water comes from!”

I relieved him of his shopping cart — most of the carts in the corral were tied up so they wouldn’t scoot off in the wind — and hit the water aisle.

I went up to the night cashier, a Russian man who’s always the cashier when I go in there at odd hours. He looked into my cart.  “You have a lot of water.” He pronounced it “vawter.”

“Yes. My wife. We won’t need it, but this will make her happy. And I won’t have to listen to her go on about the water.”

He thought about that for a second. “Then that is a small price you are paying.”

Agreed.

8 thoughts on “Water, Water Everywhere

  1. I can’t quite understand the logic of the water “panic” either. I too witnessed it yesterday, but the guy I saw at least also had a cart full of beer (hope he doesn’t mind drinking it warm). Here’s an idea, if the water from their faucet is good enough any other time, why don’t people just fill up clean 2 liter soda bottles, if it makes them feel better (they also can be put in the freezer to help extend the life of frozen foods). OK, I admit it, we drink too much diet soda, so we may have a larger supply of empty bottles than most, but that’s for another post.

    1. 1. Excuse me, but are you attempting to apply logic to the way people are behaving out there?

      2. I’ve quaffed warm beer in lesser emergencies than this!

    2. I’d gladly fill up bottles instead of buying them, but we don’t have any — when we empty a half-gallon milk jug, it goes in the recycling, and those are the only ones we ever have in the house. I hate buying bottles of water in an emergency, or any time at all, ’cause bottled water always tastes like bottle — but when you don’t have anything in the house to fill up (except a few small hiking bottles), you have to do it.

  2. I believe the water gathering comes from the contamination of the groundwater with rising tables. Often even municipal sources will get mixed with unknown foreign contaminants following storms. For us well folks, it is not only for drinking, but we need to have spare water for toilet flushing. Hell, I can drink vodka, but don’t want to go days without flushing!

  3. Given the millions of dollars spent ensuring safe, reliable, clean municipal water supplies around the country, I for one absolutely eschew all forms of bottled water. Only when I travel in foreign places of dubious sanitary standards do I partake of bottled water. In a pinch, I’m also more than happy with warm beer.

  4. My cat does the same thing as the cat in the picture, to the point where the phrase ‘Can someone tub Sam ?’ is code for ‘turn the water in the tub to a slow trickle so this friggin’ cat will stop meowing in my ear !’

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