Bristol offers more bed-and-breakfasts than seems necessary for a town its size and boasts manicured fields ripe for spur-of-the-moment baseball games. It also serves as the perfect example of how drinking water can alter the balance of power and money in a community. Set in the hills southeast of Rochester, Bristol supports a population of about 2,400. Almost a decade ago, many residents started clamoring for access to municipal water and carping about the quality and quantity of their well water — for good reason. Town supervisor Wayne Houseman said standard lab tests on many of the wells showed elevated levels of coliform, a bacterial indicator of more harmful germs, and E. coli, a bacteria that signals the presence of feces.

Many sources caused Bristol's water trouble. The city's shallow "dug wells" proved particularly susceptible to bacteria, and the town's steady population increase prompted greater individual water usage. A pocket of groundwater that can produce plenty of water for a family of four may prove inadequate when that same family demands water for showers, washing machines, dishwashers, and garden hoses. To illustrate the problem, Don Siegel, a hydrogeologist at Syracuse University, likens this common situation to a giant sponge filled with malted milk. "You have all these straws in it and all these kids sucking from it," Siegel says. "And one kid can suck on it for a long time and have a nice satisfying drink, but if you have a whole bunch of them and you tell them the straws can't go any deeper, then you drop the level down."

The town government lacked funds to pay the more than $2.1 million bill for the equipment to pipe water from the nearest supplier — the city of Canandaigua — so the project to link Bristol to a municipal source stalled. Residents who could afford it paid for home chlorination and filtration systems to clean their water. Others subsisted on bottled water from Wegmans grocery stores. When drought set in two years ago, people hauled tanks of water in on pickup trucks from surrounding towns. Then, last year, Bristol received a $1.2 million state grant to cover part of the cost. Before 1988, both federal and state governments allocated considerable budgets (about $4.7 billion annually) to support loans and grants to help communities finance municipal water systems. But legislators have tightened their belts since then. Only communities that show "sufficient need" for city water earn government support. Victims of natural disasters or industrial pollution earn prime spots on the request list. It took Bristol 10 years to qualify.

Even so, the new construction lacks universal enthusiasm. The system serves only a small area of Bristol — the "most needful" — and any of the 87 people in that section of town face a tough choice: hook up and pay $840 per year for 35 years (plus the cost of water and equipment installation), or reject the line, pay a new fee for extra fire protection, and depend on well water only. Suddenly, water becomes an expensive commodity. "It's like in the old Westerns at the cowhand saloons," Houseman says. "It's more money for a glass of water than for a glass of whiskey." The heavy expenses involved in the construction of the partial municipal system make many wonder why the government doesn't subsidize the cost of individual household water filtration systems instead. A 1,200-gallon carbon filtration system &mdash which can be hooked up to an existing well &mdash costs less than $500, with annual filter upkeep less than $100. That's far less than the bill Bristol paid for miles of pipes and labor (it would be quicker, too).

The city offers residents a choice between municipal water and the status quo. Those who can join the new system, will, Houseman says. That includes him. The newly created Canandaigua-Bristol Water District means a steady paycheck from Bristol to Canandaigua, which owns the water, but it also means new revenue in water taxes for the town. The municipal system will never replace all of the rural wells, Houseman predicts, because the water can be pumped only so far before water pressure loses out to hilly terrain. Maria Redzinski of the Ontario Planning Department says the municipal pipes may already be overextended. "For a somewhat rural county, we've got water lines up and down these hills," she says. "It's extremely expensive to extend water service on a per capita basis."

Redzinski suspects some people will tolerate the high (and many say unnecessary) cost of going municipal because of the added convenience. They prefer to let the government handle the water worries. Amy Galford, water specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension, says that in the absence of money concerns, every home would choose municipal water. "In an ideal world, you want to use water that has gone through a water treatment plant that is under EPA and DEC regulation," she says. "But people in the city are not willing to help pay for water in rural areas." So the economic burden falls largely on the small-town citizens. As a result, some communities will have to go without a municipal water supply for the time being.