In February of 2017, the Pacific Institute released a white paper entitled Drinking Fountains and Public Health: Improving National Infrastructure to Rebuild Trust and Ensure Access, which highlighted the limited evidence of a link between illness and disease outbreaks and drinking fountains. The report found that most problems could be traced to contamination from poor cleaning and maintenance or old water infrastructure in buildings, and called for comprehensive testing of drinking fountains, implementation of standard protocols for fountain maintenance, and a nationwide effort to replace old water infrastructure, which can be the source of lead and other contaminants. One aspect of efforts to expand access to fountains is to take a look at current drinking fountain technology and identify features that can help ensure their quality, convenience, and reliability. Ultimately, these features can help increase public confidence and access to high quality and affordable tap water. A gallon of tap water from typical municipal water systems costs about half a cent, making drinking fountains the cheapest hydration source available in public spaces (and of course, almost all public fountains are completely free to the user). This cost may increase somewhat depending on the purchase, installation, and maintenance costs for each drinking fountain, but it remains far cheaper than the cost of bottled water, which typically ranges from $1 to $5 per gallon, or about 200 to 1,000 times more than tap water. (High-end bottled waters can be even far more costly.) These costs do not include the environmental costs of the bottled water industry. With many useful features that increase water quality and convenience, drinking fountains need no longer be the forgotten relics of the past. Cities, park districts, schools, hospitals, and other entities managing public spaces can offer fountains with many available options, including vandal resistance, freeze resistance, refrigeration, bottle filling, and filtration. Josselyn Ivanov provides a useful infographic of drinking fountain typologies, some of which are described below. Drinking fountains located outside will need to include features to help weather the elements, such as exposed aggregate finishes to prevent corrosion. Extremely durable cast iron fountains can withstand harsh weather, but are not appropriate for beach settings as they are prone to rusting when exposed to a constant high-moisture environment. Stainless steel fountains are more suitable in such cases; in fact, they are one of the most popular fountain types due to minimal maintenance needs and low cost. Vandal-resistant fountains are a great fit for high-traffic areas as they are equipped with heavy-duty parts such as galvanized frames and steel cabinets, which protect against damage and wear. In cold regions, a freeze-resistant feature allows fountains to continue to function by preventing damage from pipe freezing and breakage. (These units must be connected to waterlines buried below the frost line in order to prevent the incoming water from freezing.) Photo: Peter Gleick, London, UK Other fountain features can be added to cater to users’…