Peter Gleick: Water fountains victory – The Cavs cave
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 11, 2010 at 7:54 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle:
“OK, my crystal ball is often cloudy, but in my last post just two days ago, I predicted that the decision by the Cleveland Cavaliers to remove the drinking water fountains from the Quicken Loans Arena (the Q), ostensibly for health reasons, would ultimately be reversed.
Well, I was right. Fan reaction, outrage, and the perceptions that the Cavs were just trying to boost bottled water sales were all factors, but so was the fact that it is a violation of Ohio building codes to have a stadium without water fountains.
Water Number: 1 for 1000. Most building codes require that public arenas and sports stadiums have one water fountain for every 1000 seats. This is true of the Ohio building codes and it is true of the Florida building codes, where the Central Florida University stadium water-fountain fiasco occurred. … “
Continue reading this post from Peter Gleick by clicking here.
Peter Gleick on the bottled water wars: The war on tap water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 9, 2010 at 7:59 amFrom Peter Gleick at the City Brights blog:
“There is a war going on. The target? Tap water. In a month or two, I have a new book coming out from Island Press called “Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water.” Look for it at your local… well, wherever you buy books now.
The book is a popular account of the reasons we buy bottled water, the manipulations of the private water bottlers to get us to buy it, the industry war on tap water, the history of weird claims made for bottled water, and much more. It explores the remarkable explosion in bottled water sales and the recent consumer revolt that is beginning to threaten sales.
But make no mistake. The war for what you drink continues.
Water Number: $4 a bottle. In the latest skirmish in the war on tap water, the sports arena that hosts the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team — with the lovely name of the Quicken Loans Arena concession — has removed its drinking water fountains. The only way for thirsty fans to get water now is to wait in line at the concessions counter for a free small cup or pay $4 for bottled water or try to drink water from the bathroom faucets. … “
Continue reading this post from Peter Gleick by clicking here.
AlterNet: What to make of the latest article warning of scary tap water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 21, 2010 at 8:02 amFrom AlterNet:
“Charles Duhigg’s recent New York Times article, That Tap Water Is Legal but May Be Unhealthy, was certainly scary. It let us know that drinking water systems in the United States are in sorry shape and, with over 60,000 chemicals in our industrial inventory, “…not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000.”
I’m lucky to live in a place with very good tap water, but it’s clear from Duhigg’s article that some people have no choice but to drink bottled water. On top of being robbed of clean public water, something Americans generally think of as a right, the expense of bottled water (or water filters), which many people just can’t afford, adds insult to injury.
Still, Duhigg’s article should not generally be read as a reason to buy bottled water. Let’s remember the facts: as outdated as our water regulations may be, in the United States, tap water is far better regulated than bottled water, not to mention that up to 40 percent of the water sold in bottles is tap water that’s simply been packaged – and packaged in containers (those ubiquitous plastic bottles) that are harmful to human and environmental health. To make matters worse, the bottled water industry, which is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is not required to disclose the results of any contaminant testing it conducts. … “
Read more from AlterNet by clicking here.
Bottled water sales dry up; industry asks ‘why?’ Consumer backlash begins to bite, but recession also likely to blame
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 20, 2009 at 8:01 am
From MSNBC:
“Heather Lewis was wracked with guilt when she realized she was addicted to the bottle. Bottled water, that is.
At her worst, she said she went through five plastic bottles of water a day nearly every day for two years. “It was appalling,” said Lewis, an architect from Louisville, Colo. “I felt like Aquafina’s trained monkey.”
But one day in January, as she gazed at the piles of plastic in her recycling bin, she decided to quit. “It was a cumulative sense of responsibility that made me do it,” Lewis said.
Lewis is part of a bigger backlash against bottled water happening across the nation, and after decades of growth, the $11 billion industry is stuttering. … “
Read more from MSNBC by clicking here.
Commentary: Let’s make smart decisions regarding the commercial use of Sacramento’s water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 27, 2009 at 12:37 pmFrom the Sacramento Press, this commentary by Sacramento city councilman Kevin McCarty:
“With California in its third year of drought, the City of Sacramento’s water conservation strategy includes busting people who flood sidewalks.
Since June, we’ve been telling residents they can water landscaping on only three specific days per week and there is to be no watering between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Last year, the City Council decided to ban bottled water at its meetings. We did so in recognition that plastic water bottles are littering the world and the precious water they once contained is often wasted.
That’s why I was surprised to learn that the Nestle Waters North America Co. is moving forward with plans for a water bottling plant in my council district at the Florin/Fruitridge Industrial Park – a plant with the potential to intake more than 81 million gallons of city water yearly. Another 20 million gallons would be trucked in to the plant from springs in El Dorado, Placer, Tuolumne and Napa Counties. …”
Read more from the Sacramento Press by clicking here.
Pressure builds over bottled water: Towns around the U.S. fight firms that want to soak up a local resource
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 26, 2009 at 7:51 amFrom the Christian Science Monitor:
“In many ways Salida, Colo., typifies the 21st-century Rocky Mountain town. Originally founded along a railroad line in the late 1800s, it’s now geared primarily toward tourism.
Among the red brick buildings of the historic center where ranchers, miners, and railroad workers once held sway, tourists now move between coffee shops, galleries, and outfitters. During warmer months, kayakers “surf” a man-made wave in the fast-flowing Arkansas River, which marks the edge of the downtown area.
For the better part of this year, Salida – population 5,400 – has also been the setting for a 21st century kind of battle – over water.
Here and there in windows and entryways are signs reading “Stop Nestlé” or “Nest-Leave.” They refer to a proposed project by Nestlé Waters North America, which hopes to pump water from a spring a half-hour north of here and sell it under its Arrowhead label.
Citing myriad concerns, a group of residents has objected vigorously. They worry about impacts to the watershed and to nearby wetlands. They say that climate change, predicted to further dry Colorado and the Southwest, warrants a precautionary approach to all things water-related. And, pointing to fights other communities have had with the company, they say they simply don’t want Nestlé as a neighbor. …”
Read more from the Christian Science Monitor by clicking here.
Sacramento City Council considers special ordinance on water bottlers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 15, 2009 at 8:04 amFrom the Sacramento Bee:
“The Sacramento City Council will discuss whether it should draft an urgency ordinance that would require special permits for water bottling facilities after some members of the community raised concerns over a new Nestlé water plant planned for south Sacramento.
Councilman Kevin McCarty asked Tuesday night for city staff to place the discussion on a council agenda in the near future. He also asked the city’s Utilities Department to explore a system of tiered water rates for commercial facilities.
Councilwoman Lauren Hammond also called for a council discussion on the issue of whether an emergency ordinance should be written to place special permits on water bottling facilities.
Hammond and McCarty are running against one another for state Assembly. …”
Read more from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Sacramento Nestle Waters bottling plant draws fire
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 5, 2009 at 6:26 amFrom the Sacramento Bee:
“Sacramento banned bottled water from its City Council meetings last year, but over the summer it welcomed a Nestle Waters plant that would churn out millions of those bottles every week.
With California in its third year of drought and Sacramentans facing watering restrictions, Councilman Kevin McCarty thinks the plant needs a closer look.
“It comes at a bizarre time,” said McCarty, whose district includes the project site in the Florin Fruitridge Industrial Park. “Extreme profits are going to be made with Sacramento water as we’re trying to conserve” it.
Nestle’s Northern California expansion started in a more picturesque place. In 2003, the company signed a contract to build a large, spring-fed plant on the flank of Mount Shasta.
But Siskiyou County locals delayed the project on environmental grounds, and early this year the company began to consider a site in south Sacramento, according to Dave Palais, Nestle’s natural resource manager for the region. …”
Read more from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Supervisors ban bottled water for county workers; Sonoma County was spending $70,000 for water bottles and dispensers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 2, 2009 at 6:11 amFrom the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:
“Tap water is in, bottled water is out for Sonoma County government workers.
A ban on buying water bottles and dispensers will save the county about $70,000 a year and officials believe it will help save the environment from litter of plastic containers that don’t get recycled, officials say.
When they’re thirsty, county employees will have to use reusable water bottles and refill them with tap water.
“This marks how committed we are to conservation,” said Supervisor Valerie Brown. “We have a Water Agency that keeps reminding us what great water we have, so we should drink it.”
Brown, who proposed the policy change that was approved unanimously by supervisors Tuesday, said she is challenging city governments and other public agencies to follow the county’s lead in switching from packaged water to tap water. …”
Read more from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat by clicking here.
Australian town ‘world’s first’ to ban bottled water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 28, 2009 at 7:31 amFrom The Raw Story:
“An Australian town pulled all bottled water from its shelves Saturday and replaced it with refillable bottles in what is believed to be a world-first ban.
Hundreds of people marched through the picturesque rural town of Bundanoon to mark the first day of its bottled water ban by unveiling a series of new public drinking fountains, said campaign spokesman John Dee.
Shopkeepers ceremoniously removed the last bottles of water from their shelves and replaced them with reusable bottles that can be filled from fountains inside the town’s shops or at water stations in the street.
“Every bottle today was taken off the shelf and out of the fridges so you can only now buy refillable bottles in shops in Bundanoon,” Dee told AFP. …”
Read more from The Raw Story by clicking here.
Well tests under way at potential Crystal Geyser site in Orland
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 8, 2009 at 7:54 amFrom the Chico Enterprise-Record:
“An engineering company that specializes in environmental and water issues began testing wells Tuesday on and near a proposed bottled-water company site in Orland.
Malcom Pirnie Inc., out of Emeryville, is conducting the aquifer testing on behalf of Crystal Geyser Water Co. of Calistoga, which may locate a bottled-water plant and warehouse in Orland at the corner of County Roads 200 and N.
Crystal Geyser’s location to Orland depends on the results of the tests. Engineers have estimated if the project goes through, Crystal Geyser will draw 160 acre-feet of water yearly from the local aquifer to produce sparkling mineral water.
The testing is to determine the long-term sustainability of the test well and assess impacts a commercial supply well might have on nearby, privately owned wells and in Orland, according to a press release from Malcolm Pirnie.
Read more from the Chico Enterprise-Record by clicking here.
Commentary: Nestle on the prowl – Poised to steal Sacramento’s water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 27, 2009 at 6:42 amFrom IndyBay.org, a commentary by “Save Our Water”:
“On July 26, with a brief back page article, the Sacramento Bee broke the story that Nestle Waters is coming to Sacramento. A glowing article in the Business Journal and a critical article in the News and Review followed, and then the story was mostly forgotten.
Since this initial publicity, Nestle and the city of Sacramento have worked hard to quietly fast-track this project so Nestle can open its south Sacramento bottling plant in the next few months. City staff consider this project “non-discretionary,” which means if all goes as planned, there will be no public comment, no city council vote and no environmental impact report.
Down the Drain
Nestle claims that their Sacramento plant will be a “micro-bottling plant,” bottling only 50 million gallons of water. According to Nestle, approximately 30 million gallons will come from Sacramento’s municipal water system and 20 million will be trucked to the plant from nearby “private springs.” City staff have refused to answer questions about the springs and Nestle has provided no information about their location, other than telling the Sacramento News and Review that they are in the Sierra Nevada foothills. A search of water extraction permits issued by the State of California over the last two years reveals nothing. The only clues come from other communities struggling to keep from being robbed of their water. In July of 2008 Attorney General Jerry Brown delivered a near fatal blow to Nestle’s plans for their massive bottling plant in the small mountain town of McCloud California. That same month, developer Lawrence Adams filed an application to increase the amount of water he could extract from a parcel of land he owns in Shingletown, California. Adams was granted permission to increase the amount he pumps from 26,000 gallons a day to 288,000 gallons a day. Despite requests from Shingletown residents, Adams has refused to disclose who he plans to sell the water to. This foothill town, looted for water in the same month that Nestle’s McCloud deal crumbled, is the only site we can locate that could possibly be Nestle’s mysterious private spring. If Nestle is Lawrence Adams’ secret customer, then quite possibly the fate of this town’s water depends on whether or not the Sacramento bottling plant is built. …”
Read more from IndyBay.org by clicking here.
Bottled water sales see a drought: Amid the recession, thrifty consumers have rediscovered another source for their third-favorite drink: the tap
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 14, 2009 at 7:12 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
“The recession has finally answered the question that centuries of philosophers could not: The glass is half-empty.
That’s because sales of bottled water have fallen for the first time in at least five years, assailed by wrathful environmentalists and budget-conscious consumers who have discovered that tap water is practically free. Even Nestle, the country’s largest seller of bottled water, is beginning to feel a bit parched. On Wednesday, it reported that profits for the first half of the year dropped 2.7%, the first decline in six years.
The biggest loser? Water.
“It’s an obvious way to cut back,” said Joan Holleran, director of research for market research firm Mintel. “People might still be buying bottled water, but you can bet that they’re refilling those bottles.” …”
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Water wars: Bottled vs. tap
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 12, 2009 at 8:55 amFrom the Tahoe Daily Tribune:
“Lake Tahoe is known for its clean, clear water. And the tap water at the South Shore is among the cleanest in the state, as well as the country.
But that doesn’t stop bottled water from flying off the shelves at Tahoe grocery stores. “I have been in the (grocery store) business for 22 years, and the water section continues to expand and become one of the larger sections stores have,” said Steve Parker, manager of Lira’s market in Meyers. “When we opened our store (the water aisle) used to be 12 feet and it is now 20.”
And that, according to some, is a waste.
“The crazy thing about bottled water: The high price you pay, the waste that it produces, in a country where we have clean, extremely cheap drinking water that comes into every house,” said Shelly Barnes, a water conservation specialist for South Tahoe Public Utilities District, which provides tap water for much of the South Shore. “It’s like buying air.” …”
Read more from the Tahoe Daily Tribune by clicking here.
Future of planned McCloud bottling plant in question
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 31, 2009 at 7:12 amFrom redding.com, website of the Record Searchlight:
“Siskiyou County residents will know by Labor Day whether Nestle Waters North America will go ahead with a long-planned bottled water plant in McCloud.
When Nestle decided it would proceed with plans to build a water-bottling plant in Sacramento, the fate of the McCloud project became uncertain, and the company is now weighing whether to continue, said Dave Palais, the plant’s project manager.
“At this point, we don’t know how the new plant will affect the project in McCloud,” Palais said. …”
Read more from redding.com by clicking here.
Nestle Waters to build bottling plant in Sacramento
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 25, 2009 at 4:09 pmFrom the Sacramento Bee:
Nestle Waters North America announced today it plans to build a water bottling plant in a warehouse at the Florin Fruitridge Industrial Park in South Sacramento.
The $14 million plant is scheduled to begin operations early next year and will employ 40 people. It will bottle water for the Nestle Pure Life and Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water brands, a news release states.
Read more from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Peter Gleick on bottled water labels: no salt, no fat, no cholesterol, and no useful information
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 9, 2009 at 7:34 am
From Peter Gleick on his City Brights blog:
Today, the U.S. Congress held a hearing on bottled water in the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee. Among other things, witnesses testified that labels on bottled water could be far more informative to consumers. I’ll say. The labels on bottled water in the United States are a combination of disinformation, misinformation, and no information.
That leads to today’s Water Number:
Water Number: Zero. This is the amount of calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium (more on that below), carbohydrates, and protein reported on the labels of bottled water. It is also the amount of useful information provided on the label.
In the U.S., bottled water is regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and as a result, its required label is the same as the other food products the FDA regulates.
Read more from Peter Gleick at the City Brights blog by clicking here.
Water risks ripple through the beverage industry
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 16, 2009 at 8:12 amFrom Reuters News:
At New York’s Del Posto, diners can share a $130 entree of wild branzino fish with roasted fennel and peperonata concentrato and a $3,600 bottle of Dom Perignon. They cannot share a bottle of Perrier or San Pellegrino water.
The Italian restaurant backed by celebrities Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich is one of several shunning bottled water, along with the city of San Francisco and New York state.
“The argument for local water is compelling and obvious,” said Bastianich, who is phasing out bottled water across his restaurant empire, which stretches to Los Angeles. “It’s about transportation, packaging, the absurdity of moving water all over the world,” he said.
As environmental worries cut into sales from traditionally lucrative bottled water, beverage companies such as Coca-Cola (KO.N), PepsiCo (PEP.N), Nestle (NESN.VX) and SABMiller (SAB.L) are becoming more attuned to the risks of negative consumer environmental perceptions. Water is becoming scarcer, raising a fear that so-far manageable price increases could spike and leading drink companies to take action to maintain access to water and fight their image as water hogs.
Read the full text of this article from Reuters News by clicking here. For a related Factbox story on steps beverage companies are taking to lessen their water footprint, click here.
Campaign stresses water over liquid sugar shockers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 4, 2009 at 2:50 pmFrom the Long Beach Press Telegram:
Drink more water, preferably from the tap. That’s the message being delivered this summer by a variety of California public health and social service organizations.
In the Inland Empire, the Desert Sierra Health Network has launched its “Be Sugar Savvy” campaign, which includes the dissemination of details on the hidden amounts of sugar in foods and beverages that many think are healthy choices – or at least reasonably good choices.
This group, representing San Bernardino, Riverside and Inyo counties, is comprised of state, county and city government groups, school districts, private nonprofits and business organizations.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles County has kicked off a campaign for a “Soda Free Summer,” training county workers and others who assist low-income residents to get out the message that “fizzy and fun” can add weight and hurt calcium absorption, said Suzanne Bogert, a registered dietician with the Los Angeles County Health Department Nutrition Program.
Read more from the Long Beach Press Telegram by clicking here.
Merced’s water bottled by Safeway, resold at a profit
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 1, 2009 at 6:10 amFrom the Merced Sun-Star:
Wells are drying up across the county from an overtaxed and sinking water table. Drought and climate change threaten the future of local water supplies. And Merced has been selling its tap water since 2002 to a water bottling plant, which then sells that water at rates far above what it costs the plant to buy it from the city.
The Safeway Inc.’s water bottling plant in Merced — one of the top five commercial/industrial water users in the city, which bottles Safeway’s in-house purified and spring water brand Refreshe — uses roughly 50,000 gallons a day, five days a week, for its bottling operation.
The plant, which provides most Refreshe drinking and spring water to Safeway stores in the state, filters city water, puts it in bottles and sells it as purified water. The bottles note that the water was bottled in Merced, but not that it was pumped out of the ground by the city. (Refreshe spring water is shipped in from a spring and then bottled in Merced.)
Some say the operation is just like any other business that buys water from the city.
But others claim it represents a troubling trend. Environmentalists and water rights activists contend that the increasing commercialization of public water and the selling of tap water not labeled as such isn’t how water pumped out of the ground by cities is meant to be used. They claim that bottled water sells itself as safer and healthier than tap water, but in many cases is not.
Read more from the Merced Sun-Star by clicking here.
Peter Gleick: We need a “local water” movement
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 27, 2009 at 7:29 amFrom Peter Gleick’s City Brights Blog:
More and more restaurateurs are shifting to encourage healthy foods and sustainable agriculture grown nearby – a campaign many call “local food.” It is time to launch what I’ll call a “local water” campaign to encourage consumers to turn away from bottled water and back toward local sources of supply.
Bottled water is convenient. And we’re increasingly being told to fear our tap water. But there is a serious cost to bottled water, both economically and environmentally. Economically, bottled water is a thousand times more expensive than tap water (if you pay around $1 per cubic meter at home, or around $1000 an acre-foot, which as my previous post showed was not unusual, and $1 for a liter of bottled water, also not unusual).
Environmentally, bottled water has many costs, from the energy cost of making the bottle and producing the final product, to the cost of transporting it, to the costs of disposing (one way or another) of the billions of bottles we drink in the U.S. every year. That leads to today’s Water Number…
…. which you can find out by reading the rest of Peter’s post by clicking here.
Peter Gleick: The power of information and action
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 9, 2009 at 6:38 amFrom Peter Gleick’s City Brights Blog:
It is so easy to become disheartened by our water problems and the potential to solve them. Despite working on water for more than two decades, however, I still find myself to be mostly optimistic. I’m not sure why–the numbers (such as the two from my first two posts) certainly point to serious and unresolved water problems and the human suffering that accompanies them.
But I guess it is the silver linings–the small signs of progress–that continue to keep my spirits up. In this light, let me offer a small sign of progress, in a small area of water, that suggests that efforts to understand, communicate, and act to improve water problems can and do make an impact.
Water Number: The total sales of bottled water in the United States in 2008 actually declined by around 75 million liters (20 million gallons) from 2007, according to preliminary data from the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
Read more of this post by Peter Gleick on his blog by clicking here.
Nestle gets 10,000 messages in a bottle
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 25, 2009 at 7:12 amFrom YubaNet.com:
The following was released by Corporate Accountability International:
While Nestle executives put on a good show of the corporation’s green and good neighbor initiatives in Switzerland, communities sent out an SOS from the corporation’s headquarters for its bottling operations in North America. Leaders from communities near Nestle bottling sites, and the national Think Outside the Bottle campaign that works with them, delivered 10,000 messages in a bottle calling on Nestle to stop undermining local control of water.
Nestle is currently involved in water bottling disputes with communities in six states and Canada. From outside the shareholders’ meeting the picture is an unpleasant one for the bottling giant:
Another run at McCloud. Nestle recently announced plans to make another run at bottling water near Mt. Shasta in California, despite years of local resistance.
Read more from YubaNet.com by clicking here.
Nestle asked to stop fooling with community water supplies; Nestle making yet another pass at Mt. Shasta water; annual shareholders’ meeting April 23rd
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 17, 2009 at 8:12 amFrom YubaNet.com:
In the lead-up to Nestle’s annual shareholders’ meeting this April 23rd, a storm is gathering around the business practices of the world’s largest water bottler. Communities across the country have long been engaged in struggles with the bottling giant over control of local water resources. Now many of these struggles are coming to a head and a national campaign called Think Outside the Bottle is using April Fools Day to call on the corporation to, “stop fooling with community water supplies.”
“For years Nestle employed a range of tactics to wrest water rights from rural communities and downstream users, keeping its abuses out of sight and out of mind to the public,” said Deborah Lapidus, campaigns director for Corporate Accountability International. “Well, affected communities have now made it clear there is a pattern that needs to stop.”
To begin bottling in communities, Nestle has been engaged in everything from costly public relations campaigns and legal challenges to backroom deals for water rights. For example:
Public relations to pump. This year, several Maine communities passed ordinances to protect community water rights. Their victory was significant, given that just a few years earlier, Nestle pumped more than $200,000 to front groups that successfully attacked and defeated similar, statewide measures in the media.
Read more from YubaNet.com by clicking here.
Pacific students campaign against bottled water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 2, 2009 at 5:46 amFrom Stockton’s Record:
Several hundred University of the Pacific students this week are pledging to give up bottled water, and a taste-test experiment on Wednesday may have converted even more to the cause.
During the noon hour, clusters of students outside the University Center were tasked with correctly judging which of three pitchers marked “A,” “B” and “C” contained bottled water, filtered water, or tap water.
For many, it was guesswork. They sipped thoughtfully, cast blank looks at their friends and finally scribbled their evaluations on slips of paper. Brandon Wong seemed confident. “I thought pitcher ‘A’ had a very distinct bottled water taste,” he said. To which his buddy, Alex Bae, turned and said, “I thought it was pitcher ‘B.’ ” They laughed. “Clearly, we have no idea,” Bae said.
Student organizers fear their friends have no idea of the environmental consequences of bottled water, including the millions of gallons of oil needed to produce the bottles, pollution from transporting them, and the waste that results if bottles aren’t properly recycled.
Read more from The Record by clicking here.
Out West, a new kind of water war: Nestle wants to tap an aquifer in Colorado for bottled water. Many residents are angered by the project. ‘They’re taking and not giving,’ one critic says.
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 2, 2009 at 5:20 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
Reporting from Denver — In rural Chaffee County, Colo., one of the world’s largest beverage companies has discovered water it deems fit for a bottle: clean and crisp, with the mountain spring flavor people are willing to pay for.
Nestle Waters North America wants to tap an aquifer feeding a pair of springs near Salida southwest of Colorado Springs and draw 65 million gallons of water per year to bottle and sell under its Arrowhead brand.
But many mountain residents say Nestle should go bottle someone else’s water. “I’m afraid they will pump and pump until they suck it dry,” said Michele Riggio, a Salida physical therapist who has led the opposition.
The conflict is the latest skirmish in an ongoing battle against the bottled water industry, which has enjoyed strong growth over the last decade thanks to the beverage’s popularity among consumers who eschew tap water and soft drinks.
As companies like Nestle, which operates 50 spring sites around the country, seek to acquire new water sources, communities have increasingly resisted, said Noah Hall, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and an expert in water law.
“By the nature of its business — taking water out of the ground and putting it in a bottle and selling it — Nestle is a lightning rod for opposition wherever they go,” Hall said, citing conflicts in Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington and California.
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Protect Our Waters speaks on Nestle/McCloud bottling plant issue
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 13, 2008 at 5:55 amFrom Mt. Shasta Area Newspapers:
The issue of the proposed Nestle water bottling plant in McCloud has undergone many changes over its five year history, but what has not changed is that it is perhaps the single most contentious issue in the county.
In the following interview, Debra Anderson, president of McCloud Watershed Council, and Curtis Knight, California Trout Mount Shasta Area Program Manager, answer questions about their umbrella organization – the Protect Our Waters Coalition – and what the past years dealing with the Nestle issue in McCloud have been like from their point of view. Anderson and Knight answer some of the questions individually, and some jointly on behalf of Protect Our Waters.
Q: What is Protect Our Waters?
Debra Anderson and Curtis Knight: Protect Our Waters Coalition (www.protectourwaters.org) formed to protect the ecological and hydrological integrity of Mount Shasta’s headwaters areas. Water in California is an important issue, and the Nestle issue was a catalyst that made us realize that we needed to learn more about our watersheds so we could develop policies to protect our waters that are based on sound science.
Read more of this interview from Mt. Shasta Area Newspapers by clicking here.
Issue: Getting Nestlé Waters’ Green Story Out; With the bottled water industry under fire, Nestlé Waters North America needed to communicate about the company’s green initiatives
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 10, 2008 at 5:46 amFrom Business Week:
What do you do when you’re a company that believes it’s always been environmentally responsible and yet environmentalists are calling for you to step up your actions and play a greater role in sustainability? And what do you do when you reach the limit with your most visible effort? Those are the challenges facing Nestlé Waters North America, best known for its Poland Spring brand of bottled water.
“Being environmentally responsible is part of our DNA and has been in the 30 years that I’ve been with the company,” contends CEO Kim Jeffery. “Obviously, protecting the source of our product is important to us. We wouldn’t have a long-term business otherwise.”
He concedes, though, that for many years the company never felt a need to tout its environmental bona fides, and that the company found itself having to rethink that strategy. The light bulb moment came on what Jeffery describes as a sleepless night a couple of years ago when Wal-Mart (WMT) announced its plans to “go green.” “They were talking about what they were going to do, and when I thought about it, I could name 10 things that we had done [along the lines of going green] but no one knew about them.” Among those efforts: continually working with vendors to reduce the plastic content of its Poland Spring, Deer Park, and other spring water brand bottles, building LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) factories, and working collaboratively to seek comprehensive recycling solutions.
Read more from Business Week by clicking here.
Some bottled water toxicity shown to exceed law
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 15, 2008 at 6:12 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle:
Bottled water brands do not always maintain the consistency of quality touted in ads featuring alpine peaks and crystalline lakes and, in some cases, contain toxic byproducts that exceed state safety standards, tests show.
The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization with offices in Oakland, tested 10 brands of bottled water and found that Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Choice contained chemical levels that exceeded legal limits in California and the voluntary standards adopted by the industry. The tests discovered an average of eight contaminants in each brand. Four brands besides Wal-Mart’s also were contaminated with bacteria.
The environmental group filed a notice of intent to sue Wal-Mart Tuesday, alleging that the mega-chain failed to warn the public of illegal concentrations of trihalomethanes, which are cancer-causing chemicals.
“The investigation has uncovered that consumers cannot be assured of the quality of their bottled water,” said Olga Naidenko, a toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group and lead author of the bottled-water study.
Wal-Mart disputed the findings and responded:
“Both our suppliers’ tests and tests from an additional external laboratory are not showing any reportable amounts of chlorine or chlorine byproducts. We’re disappointed that the EWG has not shared more details with us as we continue to investigate this matter,” Frederick said. “We’re puzzled by the EWG’s findings.”
Read more on this story from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Bottled water versus tap: Which is safer to drink?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 11, 2008 at 6:54 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
Those ubiquitous plastic water bottles have been increasingly vilified in recent years. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Barbara, among others, have banned them from purchase with city funds. A few trendsetting restaurants, and even some markets and hotels, have banned them too. The trend has left many consumers wondering: Isn’t bottled safer than tap?
“Bottled water isn’t any safer or purer than what comes out of the tap,” says Dr. Sarah Janssen, science fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, which conducted an extensive analysis of bottled water back in 1999. “In fact, it’s less well-regulated, and you’re more likely to know what’s in tap water.”
Bottled and tap water come from essentially the same sources: lakes, springs and aquifers, to list a few. In fact, a significant fraction of the bottled water products on store shelves are tap water — albeit filtered and treated with extra steps to improve taste.
It’s not news to anyone that tap water can taste funky (too much chlorine, usually) or look discolored (from air bubbles or rust in pipes). But generally, that doesn’t mean it isn’t safe to drink, says Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for water with the Environmental Protection Agency. The great majority of the tap water in the country meets the EPA’s drinking-water standards, which regulate the levels of roughly 90 different contaminants, including germs such as giardia, heavy metals such as lead and dozens of industrial chemicals.
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Veto washes out key California water bill
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 3, 2008 at 1:35 pmFrom the California Progress Report, this commentary by Mark Schlosberg, California director of the Food and Water Watch:
With California in the midst of a drought and many communities experiencing water rationing, it is increasingly important for our elected officials to take concrete steps to ensure the continued vitality of our water resources. In this context, Governor Schwarzenegger’s recent veto of AB 2275 (Fuentes, D-Los Angeles) is particularly disturbing.
AB 2275, which passed the legislature with broad support, was a simple and straightforward piece of legislation. It would have merely required the public disclosure of how much California water is being bottled by water bottling companies. This information is important for policy makers at the state and local level to evaluate the impact of bottling operations on local water supplies and make decisions about how our precious water resources are allocated.
This is especially important in California, where there are more than 100 bottling facilities. While the amount of water that is bottled is small in relation to the total amount of fresh water used by Californians, the extraction of water for bottling can have dramatic effects on the local environment and particular watersheds.
Read more from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
20 Reasons You Should Stop Consuming Bottled Water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 29, 2008 at 8:41 amFrom the Web Design School Guide (?), an article on bottled water:
The growing consumption of bottled water has many people taking a closer look at the industry. The association between bottled water and good health is now being questioned, as well as the excessive garbage and costs that store-bought water accumulates. Below are 20 reasons you should stop consuming bottled water.
1. High Cost – You are not getting a good deal when you buy bottled water. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), bottled water can cost up to 10,000 times more per gallon than tap water. Some vending machines actually offer 12-ounce bottles of water next to cans of soft drinks, charging the same for each item. This is simply a waste of your money, as water if often available for free from many places.
2. Not Healthier Than Tap Water – Contrary to what marketers would have you believe, bottled water is not the healthy, pure alternative to tap water. Do not buy into this propaganda of fearing tap water, as it was placed in the public’s subconscious in order to sell more bottled water.
Read the rest of this article from the Web Design School Guide by clicking here.
California legislation would measure how much water is bottled
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 24, 2008 at 5:59 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle, this commentary by Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes and Mark Schlosberg, director of the California Food and Water watch:
How much of California’s water is bottled? Legislation would let the public know.
California is in the midst of a drought and could be on the verge of a water crisis. The past spring was among the driest on record and experts are predicting that this upcoming winter season will be similarly dry. There have been various proposals offered to address this situation ranging from dams, canals, conservation and underground storage. While some of these proposals are highly controversial, the state should also take basic steps to understand how and where our water is being used.
Assembly Bill 2275 is a step in that direction. The legislation requires public disclosure of the source and volume of California’s water that is bottled every year. This information is crucial to help policymakers make responsible decisions about the ways in which our most precious resource should be allocated.
There are more than 100 bottled-water facilities operating in California. While each of these facilities report the amount of water extracted from groundwater sources to the state Department of Public Health, this information is neither compiled nor made available to local and state decision-makers who are responsible for water planning. This bill would allow them to have access to that information. The State Water Board, who is doing a full inventory of its water rights, is making a similar effort.
Read more of this commentary by the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Bottled, bottled water everywhere…
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 19, 2008 at 5:52 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle’s Village Green blog:
Admit it. You drink bottled water from time to time. You’ve mostly stopped buying flats of it from Costco or Trader Joe’s. But once in a while you’re on a road trip, and you didn’t bring along your Sigg bottle or some other receptacle you use to feel a bit less guilty about the bijillions of plastic water bottles you’ve consumed from and tossed into the recycling bin. And you’re filling up your car (a hybrid, of course!), and you are hot and thirsty and nothing else — coffee, Slurpee, apple juice — will slake your thirst. And there it is in the refrigerator case: cool and clear and gleaming.
Ok, enough set-up. People — policy makers, environmentalists, consumers — are getting more and more concerned about the ill effects of bottled water. There are the obvious ones: the energy, materials and waste associated with the bottles themselves. But there also is growing concern about the amount of water being poured into those containers (some estimates put it in the billions of gallons).
Enter AB 2275, introduced by Southern California assemblyman Felipe Fuentes. The bill would require water bottlers or private water sources to provide detailed information about the source of the water, whether it’s a public or private agency, an artesian well, lake, river, spring, etc. It would also require the company or source to detail the total volume of water bottled or sold for either wholesale or retail use.
Read more from the Village Green blog by clicking here.
Good news for conservation advocates – Nestle cancels contract for McCloud water bottling project
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 6, 2008 at 5:45 pmFrom the California Progress Report:
The Protect Our Waters Coalition (composed of the McCloud Watershed Council, California Trout, and Trout Unlimited) is pleased to learn that Nestlé Waters North America has agreed to cancel its contract with the McCloud Community Services District (District) to build a water bottling facility in the town of McCloud.
After ongoing concern among McCloud residents and conservationists about the plans for the Nestlé plant highlighted major flaws in the environmental review process for the facility, the company agreed to conduct additional scientific studies and to scale back the size of the proposed plant. In cancelling this contract with the District, Nestlé has taken a major step toward a more environmentally responsible project in the town. Nestlé still owns the land where a future plant could be located and all indications are that the company will pursue a new contract that is more responsive to concerns raised by residents.
Coalition member organizations remain apprehensive about the impact the plant would have on McCloud economically and on the environment, as highlighted recently by California Attorney General Jerry Brown in a public letter to the Siskiyou County Planning Department. Although the company has agreed to conduct additional scientific study, it has not yet committed to holding off on engaging in a new contract for a bottling plant until such study is complete.
Read the rest of this story from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
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