My friend Alia Pan is concerned about the dwindling number of public drinking fountains in Honolulu’s parks. She regularly walks with her friends from their home in Kaimuki to Waikiki and back.

You’re training for races and don’t want to lug water bottles around with you.

“We were dependent on drinking water fountains, which no longer exist. Now we drink water from the showers,” she said.

This may sound like a trivial problem given the current state of the world, but the increasing number of broken and missing drinking fountains is an example of something larger. It is the loss of public amenities that people once expected, like clean, functioning public toilets and drinking water that we didn’t have to buy in plastic bottles at the supermarket.

So I decided to do my own informal on-site investigation. I walked from my house in the Diamond Head/Black Point area along the coast through Waikiki and then returned home, walking along the Ala Wai Canal.

On this approximately 6 mile walk, I came across only three public drinking fountains that worked.

One is used by many runners at Kuilei Cliffs Beach Park on Diamond Head Road. It provided a steady but weak stream of water.

When I arrived at Kapiolani Park, I found two more near the Waikiki Aquarium: one on the ocean side and the other on Kalakaua Avenue. I also saw a broken beach shower and a broken drinking fountain on Queen’s Beach, both fixtures encased in black plastic.

All of the water dispensers at Kuhio Beach Park were gone, except for one that wasn’t working. It was also covered with a black plastic cover and secured with yellow tape.

“Most of the fountains in Kuhio Beach Park have been removed over time because they easily became clogged with sand, especially those near the beach,” Nathan Serota, parks department spokesman, explained in an email. “We have a similar problem with ironwood needles in Kapi’olani Park, but most of them are still working.”

On the way home along the Ala Wai Canal, I found a drinking fountain that was still standing, but it was missing the handle and spout.

I asked the city if there are fewer drinking fountains in the parks.

“No, they are not,” city spokesman Ian Scheuring wrote in an email. “There is no substitute for fresh water, and it is necessary for life as we know it. Ola i ka wai.”

In a subsequent phone call on Friday, I asked for more information about the drinking fountains removed from Kuhio Beach Park and told Scheuring:

“I can’t say they will never be repaired or replaced, but given the city’s limited financial and human resources, drinking fountains are not a high priority.”

He said the city is instead focusing on repairing toilets, public washrooms and beach showers.

If the city does install new drinking fountains, Scheuring said, they will likely include many of the water bottle filling stations the state has installed at the airport and in 15 state parks.

The Division of State Parks began installing water bottle filling stations on Oahu and many state parks on the neighboring islands in 2018 after receiving a $100,396 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help reduce marine pollution from single-use plastic water bottles.

“People seem to value water bottle filling stations more than traditional drinking fountains,” says Scheuring.

Drinking fountains, once found in public parks nationwide, began to lose favor with the public for a number of reasons, including the rise in sales of single-use plastic bottles in the 1990s, the Journal of Science Policy and Governance reports.

Due to vandalism and a lack of government investment in infrastructure and maintenance, people considered the wells dirty.

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, public skepticism about public drinking fountains grew even more because of the false belief that the disease was transmitted through touch.

Although we now know that Covid-19 is spread through droplets in the air and not usually through touching surfaces, many people still avoid water coolers, Scheuring said.

Despite all the caution, there are good reasons to respect and demand access to free public drinking water and to push for more resources to be invested in the maintenance of fountains, be they old-fashioned models or bottle-filling stations.

First, water in public spaces should not be monetized.

In a world that is getting hotter, staying hydrated is even more important for health. Easily accessible, free water can prevent dehydration and related health problems.

Homeless people should have access to free public water to prevent severe dehydration, which forces many of them to seek expensive treatment in hospital emergency rooms.

Honolulu’s building code requires the availability of free public water in enclosed private and public buildings such as auditoriums, prisons, libraries, and schools.

Curtis Lum, spokesman for the city’s Planning and Permitting Department, said the minimum required ratio is generally one drinking fountain per 100 people in each building.

However, the city stated that there is no specific number of drinking fountains required in public outdoor parks.

Public schools are required by federal law to provide water to their students.

Kimi Takazawa, spokeswoman for the Hawaii Department of Education, said in an email that the department has met all building code requirements for the required number of drinking fountains in the state’s 258 public schools and 37 charter schools.

The Energy Department is testing all drinking water stations for lead and replacing affected stations with the help of a grant from the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, a joint project with the Department of Health and Human Services, Takazawa wrote.

The Energy Department is almost finished testing nearly 10,500 drinking stations and upgrading about 1,500 affected stations in public elementary schools, she said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded the Hawaiian Department of Energy $1.4 million to clean up problematic drinking water sources.

School children learn and play better when they have an adequate supply of clean water, and of course this also applies to adults.

Make free drinking water more accessible to reduce the use of plastic bottles, keep homeless people out of hospital emergency rooms, and ensure all residents are adequately hydrated.

By changing government policy, it is possible to give greater priority to the maintenance and modernization of existing drinking fountains, to install water bottle filling stations everywhere and to better inform people about the importance of these measures.

As the city says: “Ola i ka wai. Water is life.” For everyone, not just a few.