Water from a bottle

While bottled water provides necessary relief in the wake of crises like the devastating Louisiana floods, the industry itself poses serious long-term threats to the environment and public access to water, and these threats shouldn't be ignored.

Last month a 200-mile swath of southern Louisiana was hit by rising waters which caused damage to a whopping 60,000 homes, 20,000 people had to be rescued from the floodwaters, and more than 12,000 people ended up sleeping in shelters. Thirteen people were killed.

In the wake of such disasters, or in the human-caused water crisis in Flint, Mich., communities are in desperate need of help. One type of necessary relief often comes in the form of bottled water distributed by community organizations, the government, or bottled water companies.

When an entire city is flooded or poisoned, people can't get water any other way. Bottled water and the volunteers who provide it make a necessary and important difference during these tragedies.

Even so, bottled water is not designed solely to provide this necessary relief to people suffering during an emergency or disaster. Just walk into any corner store, grocery store or office, and you'll find shelves and refrigerators full of plastic-wrapped, single servings of water --even when clean tap water is available. Bottled water consumption grew 120 percent between 2000 and 2015, and its consumption now exceeds tap water.

Behind this tremendous increase in consumption is a huge multibillion-dollar industry that is draining water in local ecosystems and aggressively--often unscrupulously--attempting to expand its access to natural water sources to facilitate the tremendous growth of its product. In these much more common cases, the industry is harming the environment, privatizing public resources, and reducing water security in many poor, rural towns.

For example, Nestle Waters North America, the largest water bottling company in the U.S., has been removing millions of gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest in California without a permit for the past 28 years while paying a fee of only $524 per year. This drainage, combined with the historic drought California is suffering, is straining the local ecosystem; local creeks are literally drying out.

After a long battle, voters in Hood River County, Ore., successfully blocked Nestle from building a plant in their county in March. And Nestle's second attempt to negotiate a regional plant nearby in the small town of Waitsburg, Wash., has ended in controversy. The mayor of Waitsburg resigned amid accusations of backroom deals with the company and strong protests by residents.

Furthermore, the removal of water from its natural ecosystem for bottling, combined with the tremendous amount of plastic pollution created by the industry, only exacerbates the existential crisis of climate change. And the privatization of water by these companies for bottling purposes hurts--not helps--the public's long-term need for clean, accessible water.

Bottled water use during disaster relief makes for a good industry photo op. But no matter how good the marketing, these consequences simply can't be edited out of the picture.

Editorial on 09/24/2016

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