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Tap water here in New York City was recently declared to be pure enough that special filtration techniques won't be needed for at least another 10 years:

Federal environmental officials announced recently that New York's drinking water was so pure that it would not need to be filtered for 10 years if the city maintains its efforts to protect the water supply. The announcement means that New York can avoid paying an estimated $8 billion to build an enormous plant to filter nearly one billion gallons of water a day from its Catskill Mountain reservoirs.

The editorial page of the NY Times weighs in:

For years we've been pitching the virtues of New York City tap water. Now it's official. The Environmental Protection Agency has pronounced New York tap water so pure that it does not need filtration.

The decision came after years of careful study and analysis of how New York has managed its supply from the upstate Catskills watershed and how it plans to protect it.

The declaration keeps New York in a rare club of large cities whose citizens enjoy unfiltered water - including San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and Portland, Oregon. And if the city does what it's promised to do in terms of further protecting its watershed, the decision will also save New York a great deal of money, $8 billion altogether, representing the cost of building and running a filtration plant to process more than one billion gallons of water every day.

No need to buy any of that bottled water, that's for sure...

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