In these scorching dog days of summer, icy cold tap water is hot hot hot.

	Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette Click on illustration for larger image.

From Boston to New York, from San Francisco to Salt Lake City, from upscale restaurants to city hall, momentum is building to ban the bottle -- upscale, environmentally incorrect, landfill-clogging, carbon-footprint enlarging bottled water, that is -- in favor of promoting the municipal alternative.

Chic restaurants in San Francisco, Boston and New York have eliminated bottled water from their menus. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Ann Arbor, Mich., now prohibit the use of city funds for bottled water. New York City has launched an ad campaign to promote its fabled tap water, long considered the best-tasting in the country. And Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, who calls bottled water "the greatest marketing scam of all time," has asked all city employees to refrain from drinking it, or at least to fill reusable water bottles with tap water.

And in Pittsburgh?

Well, we're a bit behind the curve.

The issue hasn't really come across Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's desk, said Joanna Doven, his spokeswoman, although she hastened to add that he is a "green" mayor who supports environmentally friendly initiatives. The mayor was out of town yesterday and unable to comment.

State Rep. Don Walko, D-North Side, who also chairs the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, thinks it would be a good thing to follow New York City's lead and promote the city's tap water, but he balked at the notion of banishing bottled water from city buildings.

"I think that would be a hard sell," said Mr. Walko. "I just think we need to be positive about the tap water we have."

Ten years ago the water and sewer authority did attempt to promote its tap water, Mr. Walko said -- but by bottling it and calling it "PGH20."

"But I guess that's not what we're talking about here," he said.

Ever since Jack Nicholson sneaked a liter bottle of Evian into the no-beverages section of the Academy Awards 20 years ago, bottled water has had cachet, becoming the accessory of choice among young Hollywood starlets -- and then to members of the public willing to pay as much as $2 for a bottle of something they could get for free.

Today, Americans drink more bottled water than anyone, 37 billion bottles' worth in 2005, according to Food and Water Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental group that is launching a "Take Back the Tap" drive aimed at consumers and municipalities.

"Nearly 40 percent of bottled water is tap water that has been treated and bottled, and yet the federal government requires far more vigorous testing of municipal water than bottled water," said Jennifer Mueller, a spokeswoman for the group. She noted that an estimated 47 million gallons of oil are used to produce the bottles that Americans drink each year.

Perhaps understandably, representatives of the bottled water industry are taking exception to these claims. After San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom banned bottled water from city agencies, the International Bottled Water Association issued a press release arguing that water bottles are among the most recycled of all packaging, that a minimal amount of ground water is used to make the product, and that bottled water is fully regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

The tap water movement isn't just about health or the environment, though. The heavy use of non-fluoridated bottled water has cavities on the rise again, and cash-strapped cities see the banishment of bottles as a way to save money. San Francisco spent a half million dollars a year on bottled water for its employees, despite the fact that its tap water comes from a pristine, city-owned reservoir in the Sierra Nevada, producing some of the country's best-tasting water.

Pittsburgh hasn't spent nearly that much, says Doug Shields, president of City Council -- about $20,000 over the past 10 years. While Mr. Shields drinks tap water at home, he also has a reverse osmosis filtering system because of his concern about old pipes.

At the office, however, he's not taking any chances: he gladly buys bottled water for his employees with money out of his own pocket.

"I'm standing here in a food service area," he said during a phone interview, "and I've just turned on the tap. The water is brown."

A similar complaint surfaced among city employees in San Francisco, prompting the city to install new filtration systems in its buildings. If Pittsburgh's plumbing problems could be resolved, Mr. Shields would be happy to switch to tap water, he says, but "I don't know what's crawling around in my pipes in the City-County Building."

Nonetheless, in some cities, the tap water -- properly filtered -- has become a selling point, as several restaurateurs in San Francisco discovered after last year when they banned bottled water, citing its costs to the environment. The media took notice after Alice Waters, leader of the organic, sustainably and locally grown food movement, followed suit at her landmark restaurant Chez Panisse and started making her own sparkling water on the premises. Mario Batali's ultra-pricey Del Posto in New York was next -- with etchings on water glasses that explain why bottled water is no longer available.

Can Pittsburgh's upscale restaurants be far behind? Probably not, say their owners, who stock San Pellegrino or Evian or other designer waters in response to consumer demand -- although they also get a nice markup, from $1 or $2 to as much as $5 or $6.

That hefty price tag may be why many Pittsburghers, who don't think twice about plunking down $2 for Fiji water, don't ask for bottled water in restaurants, says Toni Pais, chef and owner of Cafe Zao, Downtown, and Cafe Zinho, Shadyside

"About 90 percent of my customers drink tap water," he said.

Kevin Joyce, owner of The Carlton Restaurant, Downtown, agreed. "On a Saturday night you'll only see one or two tables with bottled water on them. I'm a big tap water guy, myself, and I think the water here tastes great."

"I love Pittsburgh water," added Bill Fuller, corporate chef of big Burrito Restaurant Group, which owns Eleven, Casbah and several other trendy eateries. "Water from other places can taste musty or sulfurous, but not Pittsburgh's, which is my baseline water when it comes to taste. But our customers want to have a selection of all kinds of water."

Just outside the city in Bellevue, Sam DiBattista, owner of the upscale restaurant Vivo, sells only two kinds of Italian water, Panna and San Pellegrino, which about half of his customers order. His local tap water, which comes from the West View Water Authority, isn't bad, although occasionally it seems to have a chemical flavor.

Still, he wonders what would happen if every restaurant started using plastic water filters -- which would end up in landfills, too.

"If our government is really serious about this, they should upgrade our water systems at the source and get it right," he said.

Perhaps it's no surprise that the lone local voice in favor of tap water comes from Richard Piacentini, the executive director of the Phipps Conservatory, whose new addition is the first LEED-certified, environmentally sustainable building of its kind in the world.

Mr. Piacentini would have liked to ban bottled water from the conservatory's cafe, which is operated by big Burrito, but realizing that was perhaps unrealistic, he settled instead for selling only locally bottled water -- Aquafina and Saratoga -- along with the cafe's shade-grown coffee and cuisine made from locally and sustainably grown ingredients.

"If you're going to drink bottled water, at least do it locally," he said. "What's the point of shipping water in from the other side of the world? Think of all the energy that went into making those bottles. It seems ridiculous to me."

For a report on the environmental costs of bottled water, see: www.fwwatch.org/water/bottled.