Or, the more they change, the more they stay the same!

I never did fully grok the bottled water movement (the small plastic bottles, not the big jug bottles folks put in their homes).  I just reasonedd all those little water bottles add up to a big recycling and compost mess (and mostly, they do).

But, I would imagine the bottled water and soda company executives laughed all the way to the bank -- what's the profit margin on bottling H2O???  Sometimes I go to the movies and buy my girlfriend a bottle of water, and I pull out my wallet to pay the $2 or $3, and then I just laugh.

But you're absolutely right...it never really was free -- even if you had to walk down to the river and bail it with a bucket, it cost you the calories to get there.  

So on the larger water management front, I think we're going to see a lot more of these initiatives, especially in those areas of the world that are more dramatically impacted by drought.

When I was a kid, water was free. You could go anywhere, visit anyone, and get a glass of water. No problem. No questions.

Of course, it came out of the tap. Then some peopel got the idea that bottled water was better. Or filtered water. Whatever. They got people used to paying for water.

Of course, it never really was free, if you consider that someone was putting that safe-to-drink water into the pipes that led to your house. There was a lot of infrastructure. But for the masses, it was an expected commodity, something no one expected to pay for.

Times change, don't they?