San Diegans can drink their tap water. Many pay more at the vending machine anyway.

“These are folks who can ill afford to spend that kind of money on what is really not a necessary thing,” said Manny Teodoro, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studied the water vending machine industry in a 2022 book, “The Profits of Distrust.” “Money spent on (vended) water is money that’s not spent on healthier food, on perhaps needed medicine and healthcare.”