It is contaminated from sewage, industrial chemicals, and bacteria. The government doesn't have the resources or the expertise to create the infrastructure necessary to make the water safe and easily attainable.

In the United States, we Americans take for granted that water will be cheap and clean.

On the east coast, especially, we have more clean water than we know what to do with. The availability of drinkable water can be linked to the affluence most of us our surrounded by. Many of us have pools, hot tubs, and sprinklers to have greener lawns. Nations with vast sums of water have a resource that is necessary for human survival. As Americans we need to conserve the resource that is both necessary and profitable.

Being in Asia has forced me to recognize that I don't ever want to live in a country where I can only drink out of a water bottle.

Water bottles are plastic. They both deplete our reserves of oil and contribute to pollution when they are created and when they are disposed of (even recycling uses a tremendous amount of energy).

Plastic isn't great for human health either. Water, being the universal solvent, often breaks down some of the plastic while in storage.

That means that when drinking bottled water, one is also drinking a little bit of plastic -- a known carcinogen.

If you have tap water, be happy, be proud, and be humbled. You will probably live a longer and healthier life than most of the people in the world.

Next time you buy a bottle of water, remember that you probably could have just brought one from home. We need to plan ahead. When you bring a bottle of water from home, you are planning for the short term and the long term. You are saving a couple of dollars while simultaneously slowing down the accumulation of C02 in the atmosphere.

We all have to do our own part in making the world a better place.

Simple awareness can make a big difference. Water, being essential to human survival, seems like a good place to start.