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IN DEFENSE OF SMALL POLICIES, BOTTLED OR NOT.
Small issues matter. Dana Milbank has a particularly snarky column today criticizing Rep. Bart Stupak for holding a panel yesterday on regulation of bottled water.
He quips:
There must be something in the water in this town. The nation is entangled in two wars, a deep recession and a flu pandemic, and the people's representatives are hard at work investigating the menace of . . . bottled water?
He concludes that the hearing went poorly for Stupak’s misguided healthy water quest, with witnesses testifying that bottled water wasn’t actually any dirtier than tap water. But Milbank got it wrong. While thinking of fun water-related puns, he seems to have missed the recently released GAO study on bottled water, which found that it is not subject to the same regulations and disclosure requirements as tap water. Because of gaps in authority (the EPA regulates tap water, the FDA bottled water) the public does not have access to information about the source or safety of the bottled stuff. In fact, most bottled water drinkers say they drink it because it is cleaner than tap water, though this is rarely the case - and the environmental impacts of bottled water are well known.
Congress can close the regulatory gap and require the proper labeling of a product that is 2,000 times more expensive to produce (really) and no healthier for anyone than tap water. That sounds like exactly the kind of thing the people’s representatives should be doing.
Yet Milbank’s column is a reminder of the difficulty of pursuing effective, generally agreeable small policies. As Tim reminds us, even painting roofs white to slow global warming is controversial. It’s an unfortunate trend, because good, small policies have the potential to affect change while requiring minimal sacrifice.
Despite their frustrations, Congress has the attention span to focus on more than one issue at a time. So here’s to small policies, which deserve more focus than we tend to give them.
--Christopher Sopher
Christopher Sopher is a Prospect summer 2009 intern.
COMMENTS (10)
Bart Stupak's district, or a neighboring one (I can't quite recall), is also home to a gigantic Nestle bottling plant that is decimating Michigan's groundwater supply and even affecting water levels in the Great Lakes. It's a huge issue for Michigan and absolutely one that Rep. Stupak should be spending time on. Milbank is such a twat. Has he ever left DC?
Posted by: alli | July 9, 2009 5:03 PM
This is what the Villagers do because they're too lazy to bother to try to understand policy issues, large or small: they laugh at the things they don't understand. Remember how well Obama's suggestion about keeping one's tires inflated went over?
F*¢& Milbank with a rusty rebar.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | July 9, 2009 5:09 PM
The bottling plant I was referring to is actually in MI-4, Camp's district. Nevertheless - Stupak's district has more shoreline than any other district save AK-AL, and he's one of the only people in Congress who cares at all about the Great Lakes.
Posted by: alli | July 9, 2009 5:14 PM
I long for the day Milbank gets caught up in the next round of WaPo layoffs.
Posted by: Lee Gibson | July 9, 2009 6:04 PM
Isn't this basically just a case of Congress assuming that the masses aren't capable of looking out for themselves?
This just reeks of a case for potential regulatory capture.
Let the states do this if it's so important.
Posted by: Tim Yuskavage | July 9, 2009 6:29 PM
Dana Milbank may as well be reporting for the Washington Times; he has ceased to function as a journalist. And as we can see, he is not an adequate commentator, either.
Posted by: David Mercanus | July 9, 2009 7:17 PM
David, you are far to complimentary.
Chris, I feel for you. Looks as thought you got rookie hazing in having to follow milblank.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/09/australians-ban-bottled-w_n_228678.html
Waaaa... but what do we do about China and India
Posted by: red | July 9, 2009 7:41 PM
"There must be something in the water in this town. The nation is entangled in two wars, a deep recession and a flu pandemic, and..." a columnist at Washington, D.C.'s premier newspaper is writing a column about "...the menace of . . . bottled water?"
Re: Tim Yuskavage's comment. The FDA has federal jurisdiction over bottled water (which is legally considered a "food") but some states also regulate the product. Each state, of course, has slightly different regulations, a situation that manufacturers probably don't like.
One of the GAO's findings was that consumers are unable to learn what is in their bottled water because manufacturers do not readily provide the information (info which is easily accessible for municipal water). One of GAO's recommendations was that labels provide a way for the consumer to obtain test results and other key information about the water, e.g. provide a useful web site, a phone number. GAO tried to get such info and was rarely successful.
Posted by: meander | July 10, 2009 2:31 AM
Let the states do this if it's so important.
Yes, because individual states are the best place to regulate interstate commerce.
Funny that economists waste their time trying to provide information so that producers who make things people want (e.g., clean, bottled water) make more profit than the charlatans who free-ride on the image of the former but cut corners on quality control, etc., to reduce production costs. Obviously, consumers like Mr. Yuskavage are indifferent to quality, and even safety.
And it's not exactly as if state legislatures are models of purity when it comes to regulatory capture. How many states even have newspapers that aggressively root out this type of corruption?
Posted by: Walt French | July 13, 2009 5:26 PM
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