The spring on the side of Route 79 near Lisle holds few similarities with the images of idyllic fountains pasted on the sides of Poland Springs and Arrowhead brand water bottles. Cold, clear water gushes from a PVC pipe that sticks out of the side of a mountain. Cigarettes and trash sit scattered on the ground below the pipe. The hundreds of people who visit the fountain every day believe it's better than what pours from their kitchen faucet. On a sunny Saturday morning in May, the spring remains crowded. Every few minutes a car pulls off the road, and its occupants hop out toting empty containers to be filled with spring water. A few children and dogs drink straight from the pipe. No one questions the safety or purity of the water, and no one asks if local officials test the water. If their neighbors have consumed it for 50 years, they figure it must be safe enough.
Consumption — be it soda or more noble drinks — relies on preference and taste. Those caveats also play a role in the use of water. John Beaulieu and his daughter Breanna arrive at the spring in a white Chevy Beretta with their dog, Brown. They drove from Whitney Point, a town a few miles down the road. Beaulieu says he's visited the spring every week for eight years. His family doesn't drink the water pumped from their 150-foot well at home — it reeks of sulfur and has a copper taste and color, he says. He collects all of their drinking and cooking water in milk containers before leaving.
The next two people who stop at the spring have municipal water in their homes. They come because they dislike the taste of the water from their taps. One man brought two dozen jugs from Endicott to replace his treated water. "It tastes better than water with all the chemicals in it," he says. "When I make coffee with it, it's like night and day." He first tasted the spring water 50 years ago with his brother and has been coming back for it every week since. Visitors travel miles from their homes to drink from a spring of unknown cleanliness, solely because it tastes better to them. For some New Yorkers, personal taste dictates whether they pay for municipal water or manage a well. As unpalatable as people find them, chlorine and other chemicals have revolutionized water in America to the point where most serious contaminates — and therefore diseases — can be avoided. Shortly after chlorination was first instituted in Philadelphia in 1913, other water treatment systems followed suit. It drastically changed our society. "Now, for the first time in human history, clean, potable water could be had by just about anybody in the United States," says Francis Chapelle in his book Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Water. "It was a triumph of American ingenuity and technology over the most pervasive problem in human history." More Americans will have to become accustomed to that chemical taste as population increases necessitate the pumping of municipal water to dry communities. Even though people care about the taste of their water, they may ultimately have to abandon it as a serious criterion of evaluation.
The next great concern for water experts and health officials, Hassett says, is synthetic chemicals in the water supply. These contaminates could seep into both surface and groundwater reservoirs. He cites the widespread use of the pesticide DDT and the industrial cooling fluid PCBs as two examples of commercially produced chemicals that made their way into the environment and are now identified as possible carcinogens. "Especially in groundwater, you have to be vigilant about keeping that sort of stuff from getting in there," Hassett says. Many regulations are now aimed at doing just that. "With things like PCBs and DDT, it's more about keeping them out of the environment, period." The next wave of possibly harmful chemicals is in the form of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and antibiotics. Scientific studies in the United States and Canada have already shown that synthetic and natural estrogen hormones are making their way into the waterways and altering the sex ratios of fish.
For the record, Hassett now drinks municipal water. "It's less of a hassle," he says. He thinks it is inevitable that everyone will eventually drink municipal water, regardless of whether it's more or less safe at the moment. What is happening now in towns like Bristol will happen someday to every town when the population reaches a tipping point. That snapshot of the future offers many implications — one of which brings us back to Simmons. If the number of wells in New York keeps decreasing, all drillers will be out of business one day.
When drillers strike water, it erupts up out of the hole like a geyser. Sometimes Simmons and his crew get so muddy they have to spray each other with a nearby garden hose to clean up. That doesn't happen as much as it used to. At the peak of his business, Simmons drilled 140 wells a year. Now, he's down to fewer than 50. The lighter schedule is only partly by choice. "It's not as busy now as it used to be," he says. "All those little country towns are hookin' up to municipal systems — more'n I can count. It cuts into our business." He takes off his glasses and wipes at the dirt. "I'm 64," he says. "I'm much too young to be this old."
On that humid day in Marcellus, there is no geyser. By late afternoon, Simmons calls it a day. The water, he figures, will be there tomorrow.
