Actually, I am in the water business in a bigger way. I work on major water/wastewater systems. Right now I am working as a consultant for one of the municipalities in central florida. Last year I was in Brisbane Australia working on developing/constructing a recycled water processing plant there. Berfore that I was in New York working on the 20 year dependability project, and before that in Baghdad working on their water problems. Water is becoming a bigger issue globally. Reverse Osmosis still seems to be the preferred water treatment solution for potable water systems with less than desirable intakes. Desalination plants are mostly just big RO systems, and so if I were to start a new business today, it would be manufacturing RO membranes, as the supply is not keeping up with demand at all, and the price for membrane is going through the roof.

Commercial UV treatment plants are becoming more plentiful, along with ozone treatement. In upstate New York they are going to build a $1.2 billion UV treatment plant to treat 90% of the water being supplied to NY metro.

The good news is UV, Ozone, and other treatment processes used to sterilize water also work well to break down and neutralize organic compounds like many pesticides and endochrine waste by-products (hormones, excreted medications, chemo waste products). Colloidal compounds and inorganics can be chemically precipitated or fairly easily filtered, so I wouldn't worry too much about the waste cycle making it's way back into the more modern water treatment systems. I would reconsider dropping a well in a lot of different places now. Unless you want to invest about $10,000 in a home based water treatment system, you might not want to just drink from any source anymore. Those days are going away.

Distillation still isn't a bad alternative. It won't get everything, but it gets all the really bad things. Distillation and then carbon filtering will pretty much get it all. Distillation is expensive, though.