The Return of the Drinking Fountain

In the late nineteenth century, public drinking fountains were a common sight in the city of Tarrington. Many were paid for by wealthy families or temperance societies, who hoped that free clean water would persuade working men to drink less beer. By the 1970s, however, most had stopped working. Bottled water and soft drinks were widely available, repairs were expensive, and the council gradually disconnected fountains rather than fix them.

The revival began almost by accident. In 2016 a history student named Oren Vasquez compiled a map of every fountain that had ever existed in the city. He found records of 214, of which only nine still produced water. He posted the map online, and within a month it had been viewed by tens of thousands of people. A local newspaper then asked its readers why the fountains had disappeared, and the response persuaded the council to try an experiment.

In 2018, twenty modern fountains were installed in parks, shopping streets and outside the main bus station. Unlike the old stone fountains, the new ones had two outlets: a spout for drinking directly and a tap for refilling bottles. Each was fitted with a small meter so that the council could record how much water was used. The results surprised officials. The bus station fountain alone supplied the equivalent of 1,800 half-litre bottles in its first summer, and the refill taps were used far more than the drinking spouts.

Not every location was successful. Fountains in two quiet parks were used so rarely that the water in the pipes began to go stale, and they had to be flushed every day, which the council considered wasteful. They were later moved to a sports ground and a hospital entrance, where use increased sharply.

Cleanliness was the main worry expressed in surveys. Many residents said they were reluctant to drink from a public fountain because they imagined it was dirty. To address this, the council began testing the water at every fountain each month and publishing the results on a small sign attached to it. According to a follow-up survey, the proportion of residents willing to use a fountain rose from 38 to 61 per cent after the signs appeared.

Local shops had their own concerns. Some owners of cafés and newsagents feared that free water would reduce their sales of bottled drinks. The council has not published any sales figures, but the city's chamber of commerce reports that none of its members has made a formal complaint.

Tarrington now plans to install forty more fountains by 2027. Vasquez, who now works for the council's parks department, says the aim is that no one in the city centre should ever be more than five minutes' walk from free water.