Dying of Thirst?

I've heard it said that water is the most fundamental element of life on this planet, and that is true.

It is so fundamental that sometimes we joke about it. We treat water as if it is our right to have fresh drinking water yet we give little thought to whether we actually do have fresh, clean water to drink.

But the integrity of the water supply is no laughing matter.

Did you ever see "Dr. Strangelove?" Do you remember the crazy general who orders a nuclear strike because of his paranoid perception of a plot against "our precious bodily fluids," which could be seen in, among other things, the fluoridation of the water supply?

I remember hearing the adults argue about that — along with their debates about "new" math — when I was a child. No one needed to tell me how serious a threat to the water supply could be.

Long before health–conscious Americans began paying attention to how much — or, rather, how little — water they were consuming, I discovered the value of water.

I grew up in central Arkansas, where it was hot and humid every summer — and for sizable chunks of the spring and fall, too — and cold drinks were always popular. If a drink had some kind of flavor, I guess that was my first preference, but water was always a reliable alternative.

I never developed a taste for tea, though, which put me at odds with most people in this part of the country.

At an early age, I found that, when I was really hot and thirsty, nothing tasted as sweet as fresh, cold drinking water.

Also at an early age, I learned that fresh drinking water was perhaps the easiest thing for me to get, whether I was at my own home or someone else's. I usually didn't even have to go inside. All I had to do was find a garden hose or the outdoor spigot to which such a hose could be attached, and I could have water.

Because of the findings of an Environmental Working Group study, water may not be tasting quite so sweet.

Those findings may be particularly hard to swallow in Norman, Okla., where I lived for four years in the 1990s.

The EWG's findings put Norman at the top of its chart of cities that were found to have extremely high levels of hexavalent chromium in the water supply.

Now, I was never very good in science when I was in school. Fact is, I never took chemistry. I've always been one of those people whose eyes will glaze over when a multi–syllabic chemistry term is mentioned in any conversation.

But you might recognize hexavalent chromium by the name of chromium–6. A decade ago, Julia Roberts brought it to the public's attention via her film portrayal of Erin Brockovich, who was responsible for exposing the coverup of the industrial poisoning of a California town's water supply with chromium–6 in the 1990s.

The Norman Transcript appears to pooh pooh the report, saying "the amount is slight and measured in parts per billion," but it concedes that "an independent lab test ... places the level of hexavalent chromium, or chromium–6, among the highest of 35 selected U.S. cities tested this year."

That list of cities includes several of the nation's largest (far larger than Norman) and/or the most historically notorious polluters.

Clean drinking water is something no one can take for granted.