Is bottled water a “scam?” If so, we’re all suckers.

Scam is the word used by the Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson, who wrote Tuesday about the declining thirst for bottled water. The recession has sent water sales southward. Nestle, which owns Poland Spring here in Maine, has said its sales are off 5 percent

Jackson’s premise is that buying bottled water is akin to P.T. Barnum’s famous signs saying “This Way To The Egress,” which bamboozled gullible customers into believing they were heading toward some fanciful attraction. (Nope, just the exit.)

There are many valid criticisms of bottled water. Some bottlers have failed to disclose their water sources, which kept consumers from knowing the difference between Maine spring water, for example, and water sucked from municipal supplies. People should know what they’re buying.

Bottlers have also not done enough, until recently, to address the environmental effects of bottles; too many still end up landfilled. Addressing this problem, however, requires action by both bottlers and government, to promote recycling bottles before they become trash.

More than 90 percent of beverage containers in Maine are returned for a nickel deposit, for instance, which helps neutralize concerns about bottles just sitting in landfills for millennial as rubbish. If this system works here, it could work just as well in other states.

So there are solutions, and mitigations, to concerns about bottled water. Calling it a scam, though, runs against history. Water from Poland Spring was first sold commercially in 1859, after Hiram Ricker drank from it daily and declared himself cured of chronic indigestion.

That probably was a stretch. But bottled water still filled a niche, when public water systems were either nonexistent or flimsy, and lacking any of the rigorous cleanliness standards of today. Before passing judgment on the modern bottling industry, it should be remembered safe, potable water was — at one point — a rare commodity, which gave it value.

What’s happened since is public water, with the development of new filtration technology (such as the slick $7.7 million ultraviolet water filtering plant being built on Lake Auburn), now provides reliably safe water. It’s gotten so good, in fact, that municipal water is now being bottled and sold — the ultimate compliment.

This advent doesn’t now make all bottled water a scam. Instead, it makes it an option. Consumers buy bottles for practical reasons like convenience, portability and taste, or, admittedly, for questionable reasons like better health, a sentiment lingering since Ricker’s time. 

Whether these are the wisest choices, for the budget or the environment, are open for debate. The argument seems pretty simple: if you want bottled water, buy it. If you don’t, don’t.

Thankfully, unlike bygone days, we now have that choice.

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