Do you remember far enough back when it was actually kind of weird and indugent to BUY WATER? What happned? Why do we have to BUY this now

The fad started with the health craze: drink much more water and far less tea, coffee, sugary sodas and fruit juices.

It was further boosted via the new age health movement which asserts that the chlorine and fluoride in city water supplies are bad for us.
Fluoride, while it does improve teeth, especially in babies in utero and children up till they have their adult teeth, is thought by some to contribute to depression. 
Chlorine is unquestionably a poison at sufficient concentrations - but not at tap water levels of dilution. However, it does smell and taste unpleasant. 

But the fashion for buying water in plastic bottles is dead among those who care about pollution.
Those who can afford it buy metal bottles they can keep and refill, and install expensive filters on their kitchen taps to remove the fluoride and chlorine.

Nothing wrong with the tap-water here. Its hardness does vary a lot around the country - it is hard in my area - and can sometimes taste a bit flat or insipid, but neither is a problem of safety.

You can buy bottled water easily enough and there are occasions when you may need to, but straight from the tap's fine.

Mind you, it is protected by very stringent laws on safety; and when very occasionally something does go wrong the water companies have to put it right as soon as possible. The most common fault is a major breach of a main pipe.

If you want to jazz it up a bit, one effective way is to fill a jug with tap-water, put a slice of lemon or a couple of drops of lemon-juice in it, and chill it. But don't fall for one piece of nonsense I once read in a magazine I had expected better of - a suggestion to put bottles of cold tap-water in the fridge to "help it generate cold". I kid you not - obviously the editor was as ignorant as the writer.

The M1 motorway through Nottinghamshire passes a major Severn-Trent Water  treatment works that bears a huge illustrated banner facing the road, saying something like : -

     "1 litre of this [tap-water] = 30 of these [photos of litre bottles of water]".

(That water company's name is from the two major rivers whose catchments adjoin in the English Midlands.) 

There is a certain irony, often quoted, that we are supplied with perfectly potable water but actually drink far less of it cold or in diluted cold fruit drinks, than we use of it to flush lavatories, wash clothes, windows and cars, or to water gardens. 

At least you still have piped water, even if it sometimes falls below standard....

One of the News programmes on BBC Radio Four yesterday reported on that Southern Indian city (I'm not sure of its name) now so short of water that an entire train of water-tank wagons has been sent to it, adding to the water already being taken in by road. The town's four reservoirs are now nearly dry.