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My friend Alia Pan is concerned that public drinking fountains are becoming harder to find in Honolulu parks. She regularly runs with her friends from her home in Kaimuki to Waikiki and back.

They are training for races, and not keen on hauling bottles of water on the route.

“We depended on the drinking fountains that are not there anymore. Now we drink water out of the showers,” she said.

It might sound like a trivial problem considering all that is going on in the world, but the increasingly busted and missing drinking fountains are an example of something larger. That’s the loss of public amenities people once expected such as clean, functional public bathrooms and potable water we didn’t have to buy in plastic bottles from convenience stores.

So I decided to do my own informal on-the-ground survey. I walked from my house in the Diamond Head/Black Point area along the coastline through Waikiki, then returned home, walking the length of the Ala Wai Canal.

On that walk of approximately 6 miles, 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 offered a steady but weak stream of water.

When I got to 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 busted drinking fountain at Queen’s Beach, both fixtures shrouded in black plastic.

All water fountains were gone from Kuhio Beach Park, except for one that was out of order. It was also covered with a black plastic shroud and secured by yellow crime scene tape.

“The majority of the water fountains along Kuhio Beach Park have been removed over time because they got easily clogged with sand, particularly the ones closer to the beach,” parks department spokesman Nathan Serota explained in an email. “We have a similar issue with ironwood needles at Kapi‘olani Park, but most of those are still functioning.”

Returning home along the Ala Wai Canal, I found one drinking fountain still standing, but it was missing its handle and spout.

I asked the city if drinking fountains in parks are fading away.

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

In a follow-up phone call Friday when I asked for more information about drinking fountains removed from Kuhio Beach Park, Scheuring said:

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

He said the city is concentrating instead on fixing toilets, public restrooms and beach showers.

When the city does install new drinking fountains, Scheuring said, many are expected to be water bottle filling stations like those installed by the state at the airport and 15 state parks.

The Division of State Parks began on Oahu and many neighbor island state parks in 2018 after it received a $100,396 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help reduce the debris from single-use plastic water bottles polluting the ocean.

“The public seems to appreciate water bottle filling stations more than traditional drinking fountains,” said Scheuring.

Drinking fountains, which were once ubiquitous in public parks nationwide, began to fall out of favor with the public for a number of reasons, including the rise in sales of single-use plastic bottles in the 1990s, according to .

Also, because of damage by vandals and a lack of government investment in infrastructure and maintenance, people began to see the fountains as dirty.

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the public became even more wary of public water fountains, when it was mistakenly perceived the disease was spread by touch.

Even though we know now that not usually from touching surfaces, many people still avoid water fountains, said Scheuring.

Despite all the caution, there are good reasons to respect and demand access to free potable public water and to urge that more resources be spent to maintain the fountain facilities, be they the old-fashioned type or bottle filling stations.

First of all, water in public places should not be monetized.

Hydration is even more important for health in a world that is getting hotter. Readily available, free water can .

Homeless people should have access to free public water to prevent severe dehydration that sends many of them to seek expensive care in hospital emergency rooms.

The Honolulu 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 Department of Planning and Permitting, said the required minimum ratio is generally one drinking fountain per 100 people in any building.

But the city said an exact number of drinking fountains is not required in outdoor public parks.

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

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

The DOE is testing all drinking stations for lead and replacing affected stations using a grant under the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation act, a collaborative effort with the Department of Health and the Department of Human Services, Takazawa wrote.

The DOE is nearly done testing almost 10,500 drinking stations and upgrading approximately 1,500 affected stations within the public elementary schools, she said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency $1.4 million to fix the problematic drinking water sources.

School children learn and play better when they are adequately hydrated with pure water and it goes without saying, so do adults.

Letʻs make free drinking water more accessible to reduce the use of plastic bottles, help keep homeless people out of hospital emergency rooms and make sure all residents can stay adequately hydrated.

It is possible with a shift in government policy to give more priority to maintaining and upgrading existing drinking fountains, adding water bottle filling stations everywhere, and doing a better job of educating people about why itʻs important.

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