NPR I have in front of me a market conundrum in the form of two glasses.

Both look pretty much identical but they come with two very different prices.

One cost about a dollar thirty, the other costs less than a

penny. You may have guessed it but I'm talking about bottled water versus tap water.

We've done a lot of stories on the economics of water and how tap water

is surprisingly cheap. At the same time, water utilities often don't have enough revenue to patch up their aging infrastructure.

So if customers are willing to spend so much on bottled water and water providers need more cash,

why don't they just charge more? This is the indicator from Planet Money, I'm Darren Woods.

And joining us today to answer that very question is Stephen Bassaha from the Gulf States

Newsroom.

Hey thanks for having me and yes we're a family of public radio stations in Alabama, Louisiana,

and Mississippi and today we talk about why it's so hard to raise rates

while still making sure everyone has access to what's considered an essential

human right, clean drinking water. We also hear about how a plan to solve that in Mississippi led to a threat to cut off hundreds

of thousands of people from food stamps. Wait, wait, don't tell me.

Fresh Air. Up first.

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