VOA标准英语2008年-Is This Water or Ambrosia?

（单词翻译）

At the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting last month, the mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., asked a provocative¹ question: How would his citizens feel if the city bought thousands of ordinary writing pens – the kind that cost about $1 each in most stores – and paid $1,000 apiece for them? Or $10,000?

Chances are, Martin Chávez told his fellow mayors, he'd be thrown out of office or put in jail for misusing² public funds.

Yet, he pointed³ out, cities think nothing of paying similar markups on bottles of drinking water to give to staff and to pass out at events like running marathons. In his view, good-old cheap city tap water is perfectly⁴ tasty and safe. Not only are plastic bottles of treated or spring water exorbitantly⁵ priced, in Mayor Chávez's view, but piles of empties end up in city landfills, where they take who-knows how many years to degrade.

Naturally, those in the multi-billion-dollar bottled water business dissent⁶, vigorously. Not all tap water is pure or tastes good, they say. And it's certainly not always cold and convenient when one works up a thirst.

Millions of Americans have come to prefer bottled water for drinking, and are perfectly willing to pay plenty for it. A bottle of fancy water does indeed cost 1,000 or more times what it costs to pour a tall glass of tap water.

As the Washington Post noted⁷, the bottlers of water have even started to borrow some of the terminology⁸ used for fine wine. The president of Fiji-brand water told the newspaper that his product has a "smooth, silky mouthfeel."

That's a bit too pretentious⁹ to suit Mayor Chávez. If little kids can happily drink out of a garden hose, he says, his workers and those marathon runners will get along just fine drinking clean, filtered Albuquerque city water.