There's something satisfying about grabbing a cold bottle of water from the refrigerator. The sleek plastic cylinders fit so well in the palm of the hand. And cracking open a bottle of Desani makes you feel sporty, healthy, virtuous. It says you're a member of the world's hippest beverage club, as opposed to some vestigial, cola-swilling tool of the Pepsi Generation, which is what you really are.

But bottled water is too easy.

Behind its youthful image and seductive convenience, there's something fundamentally wrong about those shiny, clear plastic bottles with the pretty labels and hospital-white twist lids and squirt tops that have become a staple of corporate meetings, sporting events and community gatherings.

What's wrong is this: Bottled water isn't particularly good for the planet.

In this country, at least, tap water is as good as or better than packaged, bottled water. Tap water just takes a little more work. Tap-water users have to get up and walk to a faucet and wait as their reusable bottles fill, as opposed to buying the already-bottled stuff.

Bottling water pollutes and consumes natural resources, and in some communities, bottled-water plants are taxing wetlands and natural aquifers, according to numerous conservation groups.

And yet the market for bottled water has skyrocketed in the past 10 years. Americans alone consume 30 million small bottles a day, according to the Sierra Club.

Clearly, we love our store-bought water, but at what price?

The amount of energy used to make, transport and recycle the plastic bottles is enormous. And 10 billion bottles are discarded every year in the United States alone, most of them ending up in landfills.

Bottled water also is pricey - the Sierra Club figures tap water costs a seventh of a cent per gallon, while bottled water is $1.27 a gallon. Yet that doesn't stop us from shelling out $2 a pop for high-end, brand-name stuff.

Ask why and many experts blame Madison Avenue and the incredible power of advertising.

Bottled water has become huge business - a $100 billion-a-year worldwide industry, according to Corporate Accountability International, a nonprofit that for 30 years has hounded tobacco companies and other conglomerates to be better citizens of the planet.

CAI's current target is bottled water and the corporations that sell it, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestlé and Suez, a French conglomerate.

"These corporations spend millions of dollars marketing their products as safer and purer than tap water. But the truth is that more than one-fourth of all bottled water comes from municipal sources, just like tap water," Kelle Louaillier, CAI's associate director, wrote in an op-ed piece she sent to newspapers recently.

CAI folks happened to be in Denver two weeks ago with their Tap Water Challenge, a national touring taste test in which blindfolded consumers sample tap water and bottled water made by Desani (Coke), Aquafina (Pepsi) and Arrowhead (Nestlé).

Their taste test basically got snowed out - it was scheduled for Oct. 17, the day of the big storm here - but the organizers already knew the results.

"Across the board, consumers can't tell the difference" between tap and bottled water, said Bryan Hirsch, CAI press officer, who has run tests in 35 U.S. cities.

"The point of the challenge is simply to create awareness around the misleading marketing of bottled water," he said.

CAI and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Polaris Institute believe safe drinking water is a basic human right. They're fighting the privatization of water, citing examples of corporations that are lobbying to tie up water sources in Michigan, Texas and India. "These corporations are trying to make water into a profit-driven commodity, like oil," said Hirsch.

Coca-Cola spokeswoman Diana Garza responded to Hirsch's claims with a written statement: "The Coca-Cola Company knows that water is essential to life, that water is a vital resource that must be shared. . . . It is in our company's long- term interest to ensure the sustainability of water resources."

Garza added that in India, the beverage industry uses less than 1 percent of the country's water.

She's clear about another thing: Consumers buy bottled water because they like it. "We treat water to the highest quality standards, put it into convenient packaging and distribute it to places where it's wanted. It's a personal choice."

I am not an economist, but I've lived in Colorado nearly 20 years, and I know how fast water can become scarce.

That's what I think of any time I'm tempted to buy bottled water.