This just seems plain stupid to me. How can a government not provide one of the most basic, most essential services that we even see as the first thing to provi

This just seems plain stupid to me. How can a government not provide one of the most basic, most essential services that we even see as the first thing to provide to third world drought-ridden places? There are a ton of NGO's in the USA that (so they say) make wells and clean water available in Africa, but when it comes to tap water at home it is so bad that people turn away from it and away from the scientific backing on how tap water should be. It always amazes me that in some countries (or areas within those) you still can't expect safe tap water, and still have a large 'bottled water' industry and consumption. It doesn't help anyone and it doesn't align with the idea of setting up a specialised entity and supply them with resources to do it (a.k.a. water supply company and governing instances). We expect normal, clean water that is just water and not added with anything for 'our benefit' out of the tap, and that's what we get. It's tested, and there are multiple different grids with individual sources and individual filters. It's not hard to do, it's what we have here; it costs almost nothing, and doesn't fail. Strangely enough, one neighbouring country (France) doesn't have this uniformly (don't drink water in Paris...) but in another (Germany) the water is just fine again. You'd think that a civilised country that sets up organisations and systems to deal with basic needs at scale would be able to accomplish their designated tasks.