Water fountains on Canadian campuses: where have they gone?

For Immediate Release, September 3, 2009 - Water fountains are disappearing on university and college campuses across Canada according to a new Polaris Institute report [1], Campus Water Fountains: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.

The report uncovers a series of disturbing trends related to public drinking water access at Canadian universities and colleges:

The Good – looks at what kind of reinvestment in public tap water infrastructure is happening on campus.

The Bad – presents cases where water fountains have blatantly been excluded from new buildings.

The Ugly – explains the forces on and off campus that make it is possible for university and college planners to design and construct new buildings without water fountains.

The report’s findings show a disturbing trend of some institutions decommissioning water fountains in older buildings and excluding water fountains in new buildings. In these cases students, staff and faculty are left to either bring water from home, drink from bathroom sinks or purchase socially and environmentally damaging bottled water products.

“Easy access to publicly delivered tap water in the form of water fountains is a crucial piece of every publicly funded institution in this country,” says Tony Clarke, director of the Polaris Institute, “it is objectionable that university planning committees are omitting water fountains from their building plans in order to save money.”

The elimination or exclusion of water fountains is considered alongside the converging trends of rising bottled water consumption and increases in beverage exclusivity contracts. This culminates results in a form of privatized water delivery on campus.

“Provincial building codes should require buildings to be constructed with drinking water fountains,” says Richard Girard, Polaris Institute Research Coordinator and author of the report, “as it stands now a number of large buildings on Canadian campuses have been constructed without water fountains, forcing students, staff and faculty to rely on private for profit bottled water to stay hydrated.”

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The full report is available online: http://www.polarisinstitute.org/files/WATERfountains.pdf [1]

For more information contact:
Richard Girard, Polaris Institute – 613 237-1717 (105)
Joe Cressy, Polaris Institute – 613 668-5542