CORRECTION: Mountain Valley Spring Water’s headquarters and visitor center are part of Hot Springs’ Central Avenue Historic District. This article incorrectly stated the visitor center’s location.
WASHINGTON -- Thirsty visitors to most national parks in Arkansas can either buy refillable bottles of water or stick to slurping from the drinking fountains. Only one of seven national park sites in the state sells bottled water.
The issue has come to a head in Washington in recent weeks, as bottled-water companies have pushed Congress to halt the National Park Service's 4-year-old policy that lets national parks ban bottled-water sales. Park officials favor installing bottle-filling stations and selling reusable bottles instead.
Workers at Arkansas' national parks gave a variety of reasons for why they don't sell water. Some said water doesn't sell well. Others said water is available elsewhere, and several said they want to control litter and trash. The national policy wasn't a factor in their decisions, they said.
"We really are trying to do the right thing for the right reasons," Fort Smith National Historic Site spokesman Michael Groomer said.
None of the parks in Arkansas have formal policies banning bottled-water sales, officials said.
In early July, at the urging of groups like the International Bottled Water Association, the U.S. House of Representatives supported prohibiting the Interior Department from using federal funds to halt bottled-water sales. The group's spokesman, Chris Hogan, said the association isn't against refillable water bottles, it just doesn't see the point in banning bottled water but selling other beverages in plastic bottles.
"Not everyone is going to be carrying a reusable container, or frankly, wants one. They might just want to be able to pick up a couple bottles of water for their kids or family on their way into a park," Hogan said. "It's just a very odd policy to go out of your way to ban bottled water. You're saying, 'We are going to remove this option, but if you want something that's going to come in a package ... you're going to have to choose something that's significantly less healthy than water.'"
In 2014, Americans spent more than $13 billion consuming more that 10 billion gallons of bottled water, about 34 gallons per capita, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp.
There are 408 parks, memorials and historic sites in the National Park Service. A 2011 policy lets parks ban the sale of bottled water if they study how it would affect visitors, get permission from the Park Service, and make reusable bottles and refilling stations available.
Nearly 20 national parks -- including the Grand Canyon in Arizona; Mount Rushmore in South Dakota; and Arches, Zion and Bryce Canyon, all in Utah -- have formally banned the sale of bottled water, according to the National Park Service.
In Arkansas, park officials said how they handle selling bottled water depends on the park.
Federal law requires Hot Springs National Park to provide spring water "in an unaltered, unending stream" to visitors for free 24 hours a day, park spokesman Mike Kusch said, so banning plastic bottles at that park has never been seriously considered.
"The park was established in 1832 to preserve the water, to protect the water and it was protected for public health," he said. "I have never heard a complaint about not being able to buy bottled water, usually we get the question of where they can get a bottle so they can fill [it] up with the water."
The visitor center there sells glass, aluminum and plastic bottles for less than $10 so people have bottles to fill. Also, shops in Hot Springs sell such containers.
Kusch said plastic bottles aren't a big litter problem along the city's Bathhouse Row.
"Most people are filling up their bottles and taking the water with them, and so they are not necessarily looking to throw a bottle away," he said. "I regularly see people who finish a bottle of water and then walk over and fill it up again, and they are ready to go."
Mountain Valley Spring Water, which has a visitor center on Bathhouse Row, is among the dozens of companies that signed a letter in April asking the National Park Service to lift its policy. The company president was not available for interviews last week.
Pea Ridge National Military Park in Northwest Arkansas is the only park site where staff members said bottled water is available through a vending machine.
Superintendent Kevin Eads said the visitor center sells a reusable bottle every few weeks, but more than 15 visitors a day use the site's bottle-refilling station.
Buffalo National River spokesman Caven Clark said that park, in the state's north, doesn't sell bottled water. Concession-stand operators can sell plastic bottles if they want to. There are water fountains in some areas, but not bottle-filling stations. Clark said the park's size and multiple entry points would make it difficult to enforce a ban on disposable water bottles.
"There is a culture of bottled water now, and people are just really accustomed to having bottled water available wherever they go," he said.
Plastic bottles make up a high percentage of litter in the park, Clark said, but the bottles aren't all from water drinkers.
"We couldn't ban bottled water, then ban Gatorade, then ban Mountain Dew. People who are going to litter are going to litter," Clark said.
Arkansas Post National Memorial Superintendent Ed Wood said the historic trading post in southeast Arkansas used to have a soda machine that sold Dasani brand bottled water.
"We don't sell enough of the drinks to support the machine, so we sent it back," he said. Visitors can still buy soda from a small refrigerator in the visitors center, Wood said.
The site installed a bottle-refilling station at the visitor center when a water fountain was replaced. In the less than a year since, 900 bottles have been filled, and visitors haven't asked why bottled water isn't available.
"It's real convenient, you can just pop the top, stick it under there and fill it up," Wood said.
The Fort Smith National Historic Site also got rid of a vending machine that had offered bottled water but wasn't selling much it.
"We are an urban park, and we have food and water literally a block away," Groomer said. "We really have not had any requests for the water already pre-bottled."
The President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home in Hope and Little Rock Central High School -- both national historic sites -- each have gift shops run by the nonprofit Jefferson National Parks Association, which oversees retail and concession sales at nine National Park sites in six states.
Liz Forrestal, association vice president of programs and partnerships, said it is entirely up to the sites whether the association sells bottled water.
"It really, I think, is handled on a park-by-park basis by that superintendent," she said. "Different parks have different needs."
Bottled water flies off the shelves where it's available, Forrestal said. At the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis where the Gateway Arch is located, water accounts for one-third of beverages sold in vending machines. Water outsells all other beverages on the park's refreshment carts.
Forrestal said soda and water are sold for the same price "so it's not a price preference, it's just a water preference."
Still, the association encourages use of refillable bottles and for national park sites to install bottle-filling stations.
"It sounds like we're kind of cutting our throats, but we are kind of aware of the hassle and the environmental impact [of plastic bottles]," Forrestal said.
Metro on 08/16/2015