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Lawmakers open groundwater fight against bottled water companies:
Washington state, land of sprawling rainforests and glacier-fed rivers, might soon become the first in the nation to ban water bottling companies from tapping spring-fed sources.
The proposal is one of several efforts at the state and local level to fend off the fast-growing bottled water industry and protect local groundwater. Local activists throughout the country say bottling companies are taking their water virtually for free, depleting springs and aquifers, then packaging it in plastic bottles and shipping it elsewhere for sale.
"I was literally beyond shocked," said Washington state Sen. Reuven Carlyle, who sponsored the bill to ban bottling companies from extracting groundwater. It was advanced by a Senate committee last week.
"I was jolted to the core to realize the depth and breadth and magnitude of how they have lawyered up in these small towns to take advantage of water rights," the Democrat said. "The fact that we have incredibly loose, if virtually nonexistent, policy guidelines around this is shocking and a categorical failure."
Elsewhere, lawmakers in Michigan and Maine also have filed bills to restrict the bottling of groundwater or tax the industry. Local ballot measures have passed in Oregon and Montana to restrict the industry, though in Montana, Flathead County's zoning change remains tied up in court.
"The Washington state bill is groundbreaking," said Mary Grant, a water policy specialist with the environmental group Food and Water Watch. "As water scarcity is becoming a deeper crisis, you want to protect your local water supply so it goes for local purposes. (Bottled water) is not an industry that needs to exist."
Though much of the controversy around the bottled water industry has concerned "bottled at the source" spring water sites, nearly two-thirds of the bottled water sold in the United States comes from municipal tap water, according to Food and Water Watch. The Washington state legislation would not keep companies from buying and reselling tap water.
Americans consumed nearly 14 billion gallons of bottled water in 2018, while sales reached $19 billion—more than doubling the industry's size in 2004. The bottled water industry is expected to grow to more than $24 billion in the next three years, according to Beverage Industry magazine.
Industry leaders have opposed sweeping legislation that would cut off resources, pointing out the potential hit to local employment and the importance of bottled water in disaster relief.
"This legislation would prevent any community from having these jobs or having a project in their area," said Brad Boswell, executive director of the Washington Beverage Association, who testified against the bill. "We think these issues are best dealt with on a project-by-project basis."
The International Bottled Water Association defended the track record of its members in an emailed statement. The bill in Washington and other legislation to limit the industry "are based on the false premise that the bottled water industry is harming the environment," wrote Jill Culora, the group's vice president of communications.
"All IBWA members," she wrote, "are good stewards of the environment. When a bottled water company decides to build a plant, it looks for a long-term, sustainable source of water and the ability to protect the land and environment around the source and bottling facility."
Culora did not address specific examples of community claims that bottling companies have damaged their watersheds and aquifers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by edIII on Tuesday February 18 2020, @11:01PM (22 children)
You've missed the point. I don't fucking care if the industry exists or not.
What I want, is regulations on the plastic, or to use glass again. Glass may not be necessary because we have plenty of products similar to plastic, but compostable. Sustainable or reusable containers is needed.
Those fuckers can sell all the bottled water they want........ as long as their bottling facilities are in town and hooked up to the same water supply I have access to. Then the Capitalist proposal, the ones with free markets that don't exist, would provide those that want it better filtered water than the tap.
The critical issue is that they're DESTROYING our fucking forests for greed. Considering that forests drained of water usually result in HUGE FUCKING FIRE HAZARDS, I'm going to go with we round these fuckers up and set them on fire. They literally refuse to listen to reason, refuse to listen to science, refuse to listen to the evidence of their harm, and then argue they have the absolute rights to drain the forest of all water.
THERE is your problem to focus on. Obtaining water at the expense of our environment for profit. They need to put their bottling facilities farther down from the source, specifically AFTER whatever municipal and rural taps on that water exist, such that we can measure and tax those bastards accordingly. When they go ludicrous-plaid and demand 90% of our water supply for profit, we tell them to fuck-off-and-die and live with the allotment we gave them. That allotment would include the recommendations of scientists that understand just what supply is currently available in our groundwater supplies.
This is the perfect example of toxic Capatilism at work that is perfectly okay with great harm, as long as their is great profit. At the expense of the rest of us. As you might guess, this is rather personal to us in California because Nestle is draining the fuck out of our forests, dangerously. The forests are having adverse effects, and are just becoming a greater fire hazard. The number of dead trees in our forests is extremely scary and sobering.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @11:19PM
Have you not read Fustakrakich's method of using a series of contracts to to maintain flexibility without draconian laws? If that fails then it is your fault for not voting out the people who allowed this to happen. /s for safety
(Score: 4, Disagree) by deimtee on Wednesday February 19 2020, @12:05AM (10 children)
We have the same activist idiots trying to ban bottled water here in Oz.
It only makes sense if you legislate the same for soft drinks (soda pop to you guys). We have clean drinkable tap water here and the majority of times I use bottled water is because I want a drink when I am out somewhere, and I don't like all the suger or the artificial sweeteners. If they ban bottled water I'll just be buying iced tea or something. Same number of plastic bottles, and a fatter population.
I sometimes wonder how much funding Coke and Pepsi contribute to the groups trying to ban bottled water.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Wednesday February 19 2020, @01:40AM (1 child)
Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co. are among the largest [technavio.com] sellers of bottled water.
They make a larger profit selling tap water than selling soft drinks.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 19 2020, @03:49AM
Ah, yes. But they are not monoliths. I should have said the coke and pepsi divisions of the coke and pepsi companies.
I think you also underestimate just how cheap the syrup is. I would be surprised if the cost difference is more than a couple of cents per bottle.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday February 19 2020, @04:15AM (2 children)
You understand my issue has nothing to do with banning bottled anything right? I'm not interested in banning bottled anything either. Regulating the plastic use, sure. If we have reasonable alternatives, we will use them. I feel the same as you, I want to in some cases, have access to bottled water. Although, I might also say, it could be better to have your own container at least. Better bringing it from home, kept cold in a thermos, then buying bottled something while you're out. That's just pinching pennies though.
The issue at play here isn't banning bottled water at all. That may be what some activists are asking for, but the issue is the source of the water. That's it. Even in this case it's more about where they are getting this water, than what they are doing with it.
They need to be kicked out of the forests and natural springs, because they have zero respect for it, and very clearly continue to harm our environment. They have no rights to drain forests on public land, and they act like they do, and their LAWYERS argue that have absolute rights to all the water they can find anywhere. Offense and ridiculous.
If these companies were reasonable, and proper stewards of the environment they are in, they would reduce their water consumption to that which is safe. X amount of water out of the forest per year, so as not to harm the trees and ecology. They are not nearly this reasonable and have literally created huge fire risks.
As you are seemingly in Australia, I think you can appreciate the anger of creating greater fire risks for communities just to make greater profit.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 19 2020, @07:13AM (1 child)
I know that in OZ the complaints are mostly about the plastic bottles. I just don't see how they are worse than soft drink plastic bottles.
I don't really disagree with your post, but it isn't about the consumption of water either unless they are deliberately overtaxing very small springs.
For example, the entire 14 billion gallons p.a. of bottled water use in the USA is about one twentieth of the flow of the rather small Smith River in California [northcoastweather.com]. (Pic of the river) [google.com]
Distribute that over all the companies, all the places they collect from, and how much is actually just filtered tap water and there must be more to it. They are not diverting the Mississippi, the whole lot is the equivalent of one small creek.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday February 20 2020, @08:52PM
I remember when pop came in glass bottles, that were reused a few times.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday February 19 2020, @07:31AM (1 child)
Australia imports thousands of tonnes of bottled water. We also export thousands of tonnes of bottled water. The CO2 impact of all of that shipping, only to end up with a nearly neutral net position re: H2O movement.
At least with soft drink, they use local water and only export/import the syrup.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 19 2020, @07:54AM
Yeah I agree that's stupid, but its their choice. There is probably more wasted fuel in a single formula one race. Once again, if people want to pay for it, it's their choice. I don't buy imported bottled water, and I don't go to the races. Legislating to control personal discretionary spending is wrong.
Making the companies clean up their act and stop screwing the environment is fine, telling people they can't have water and have to drink coke or fanta is not.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 19 2020, @09:02AM (2 children)
Because buying plastic bottled water is the only solution or what?
Like should we congratulate the Aborigines for the discovery of the plastic bottle some 40k years ago, ' cause otherwise they would not have survived?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 19 2020, @09:46PM (1 child)
Why is buying a bottle of water worse than buying a bottle of soft drink?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 19 2020, @10:05PM
Never said it.
I only said that one doesn't need either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 19 2020, @12:31AM (9 children)
Mandate that water bottlers actually recycle water. They can build desalination plants on the coasts, and pull their water from the ocean.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2020, @01:55AM
Better yet, mandate that water bottlers actually use recycled water. They can take their water supply directly from the output of the municipal wastewater treatment plants. If that water isn't clean enough for them, or their customers, they can shoulder the cost to filter it some more.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday February 19 2020, @04:27AM
The simplest requirement is that their water hookup is ALWAYS "downstream" from the mountains, forests, springs, aquifers, wells, etc. Mandated by law, their hookups are municipal and rate limited. They can buy X gallons of water at Y rate, and above a certain volume, the Z rate. It's tiered.
That's how I paid for water in Las Vegas for awhile.
I love freedom and peaceful enjoyment as much as the next person, but that doesn't give me the right, even on my own property, to adversely affect groundwater supplies for a whole fucking county. Which is why those bastards that frack improperly in shallow formations directly under the ground water supplies, ruining water for whole communities at a time, need to be dragged out into the street and gutted. In some places the water supplies are permanently screwed now with hydrocarbons leaking and bubbling up into the aquifers. The cost to the public and our country for allowing unfettered access to our resources has been huge, and devastating.
Water is a big fucking deal. The only way these toxic Capitalist fucks should be able to access unlimited water from us, is when we actually have the surplus. It's just common sense to properly steward our groundwater supplies.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday February 19 2020, @05:22AM (6 children)
Maybe in another century we'll be able to make drinkable water by processing brine for less energy than it takes to transport it from the glacier, but we're not there yet.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 19 2020, @03:18PM (5 children)
Actually, I have drunk "that crap". Five years of sea duty ensures that you're going to drink it, and probably sooner than later.
When a ship gets underway, there are no tens of thousands of gallon water tanks to top off. We make our own water, constantly. Two big evaporators pulled water from the sea, producing quite a lot of water.
Of course, the Navy has it's priorities. The boilers get all the water they could ever want, or need. Then, the galley gets water. Then, the dispensary. And, finally, the crew gets whatever is left - if any. Fresh water showers, drinking fountains, laundry, etc. On days when one of the evaps might be down for maintenance, the other evap doesn't keep up very well, so you go to "water hours". That is, no laundry outside of designated hours. Or showers. Or even drinking water if it gets that bad.
And, that water was always just as pure as pure can be. It's tasteless, but it's damned good water. People who are accustomed to pollutants in their water may not like desalinated water, but I'm fine with it. People pay a lot for water softening treatments, but desalinated water needs none of that.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday February 19 2020, @03:46PM (4 children)
So that would produce very pure water. Perfectly usable for all the other things you mention - cooking, cleaning and so forth. No problem. Safe to drink too, not life threatening. But as you say, completely bland and tasteless. If you're on a ship it makes sense, but if you're a restaurant and you serve water like that you're pushing your customers to order corn syrup or alcohol instead.
And this is NOT the process typically used to treat municipal water. It's far more energy intensive - which is fine on a navy ship but not so great in a municipal setting. Instead you have systems that look something like this: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/public/water_treatment.html
That system produces large amounts of 'safe' water, perfectly good for cooking and cleaning and irrigation but not very pleasant to drink. It does it very efficiently as well. The result is perfectly good to cover the vast majority of water usage. So instead of importing relatively small amounts of water for drinking, at relatively low prices, you want to mandate that the entire system be rebuilt, at great cost, into a system that will be far more expensive to run going forward, just to produce tasteless water that many people *still* won't really want to drink to cover that last 2% of usage?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by Myfyr on Wednesday February 19 2020, @03:59PM (2 children)
Around these parts, desalination makes up nearly half of our drinking water supply. It absolutely works, it tastes fine, and we'll likely need more of the same in the future. Without it we'd be completely screwed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Seawater_Desalination_Plant [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday February 19 2020, @04:19PM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday February 19 2020, @10:51PM
Bottled water is somewhat of an affectation, people drink it because they are conditioned (marketed? brainwashed?) into believing it is safer and superior to their local tap water. Maybe that is true for a few places, but most places I have lived have perfectly fine tap water. My current city even bottled and sold their water for a while (they may even still do so). If you are buying bottled water in plastic bottles as your primary drinking source over your local tap water, you are probably drinking water more contaminated than what usually comes out of your tap.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 19 2020, @04:15PM
I'll just point out that water sustains life. Most of the crap in flavored sugar water tends to shorten life. But, to each his own, right? We all have the right to choose our own poisons, then pay for the cures for those poisons in later life. Except, I don't think there is a cure yet for diabetes.
If it's good enough for Myfyr, it should be good enough for anyone! ;^)