California orders bottled water firm to stop drawing from natural springs

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/20/california-bottled-water-arrowhead-springs

by bookofjoe • 3 years ago

88 61 3 years ago

rudolph9• 3 years ago

Do bottling water actually consume a significant amount water vs like an average size farm?

I personally thing bottled water is generally pretty unnecessary and really wasteful to transport but I can’t help think the actual amount of water given people are drinking it not watering plants or showering with it is relatively small?

xattt2• 3 years ago

Bottling water removes it from the local water cycle. If you are watering and showering, that water stays relatively local and ends up coming back into the local water system maintaining the local water table.

If you are bottling water, you are effectively removing it from the local “water system” with no chance of it ever replenishing the source.

Irrigation wells are not ideal either, and may be comparable in terms of ground water impact as bottling plants.

These draw tremendous amounts of water. The water table drops quickly in this scenario with a slow rate of replenishment. There’s also the possibility of contaminants leaching into the aquifer when there is no hydraulic pressure to push back.

My province is an island in the middle of an ocean, so infiltration of personal wells (ie for houses) with salt water is an issue when the water table is low. There is no quick fix for this either. Personal use should trump industrial use.

pphysch• 3 years ago

Sure but you could make the same argument about exporting food. Apples are 80-90% water

nsonha• 3 years ago

what is "local water"? The whole thing about water is that it flows. There isn't a magic property that bound water to a geographic localtion. Like when it rains, is it "local" cloud?

citrin_ru• 3 years ago

Significant fraction of water spent to water plants evaporates and then falls as rain, usually far away, so it doesn’t stay in a local water system either.

ipaddr• 3 years ago

Do you realize your water comes from the ocean through rain. It replenishes itself everytime it rains. You are on an island in the ocean? In your case companies are using the allure of locale to sell more bottles by claiming the water is purer in your area because of the lack of industry.

lordfrito• 3 years ago

If you are bottling water, you are effectively removing it from the local “water system” with no chance of it ever replenishing the source.

Sounds like the perfect solution to sea level rise caused by melting glaciers. Just bottle it all up.

I can see it now "Every bottle of water sold fights you dealing with climate change!"

klyrs• 3 years ago

Many blame Nestlé as the root cause of the Flint water crisis: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/29/nestle-pays-...

The question isn't if farming is technically worse on a global scale, it's whether each individual aquifer can sustain its output.

Aerroon3• 3 years ago

That article is absurd.

It opens with a mother talking about how she uses bottled water to bathe her child, because the tap water is polluted.Then it goes on to say that residents don't like that Nestle gets to bottle water in the area while their tap water sucks.

I don't see how these two points are related.

This sounds like a problem of incompetent politicians and officials that can't maintain water infrastructure. If anything they should be thankful companies like Nestle exist so that there's at least some source of clean drinking water for them since the city seems incapable of providing it.

darkwizard42• 3 years ago

Water rights are a super complicated and politically challenging issue to navigate. I don't know how it gets solved because so many laws and rules have been passed to protect water rights.

What would happen if a central authority (like say the regulators here) ignored the claim of the bottling company and then also defied the courts to protect some greater good? Is the only remedy for lawmakers to pass laws explicitly disallowing them from using the water?

Generally feels like the right legislation will take forever to get crafted and then will never catch up and if it gets through, it will get (intentionally) jammed up in courts...

Arrath• 3 years ago

The problem is so deeply seated with agreements, allotments, and obligations going back to homesteading acts and treaties with Native American nations that I fear the system is truly unfixable and needs a ground-up rebuild.

As with any genuine reform efforts, that too would take forever to work its way through legislature and also get blocked up in the courts for god knows how long. What can be done?

lnxg33k13• 3 years ago

We need to stop giving money to bottled water company, so to stop them giving the means and the reason to lobby against water being a human right, it is the job of a government to make sure that the infrastructure for clean water is present, and funded through taxes, to benefit any and all, and as always fuck nestle… and the other water companies

autoexec• 3 years ago

it is the job of a government to make sure that the infrastructure for clean water is present, and funded through taxes, to benefit any and all

this is a job they are failing at. I was recently shocked to see how many places in the US were under boil-water advisories. At this point I'd really like a national map of where the water is unsafe because they are everywhere and some of them go on for years while others are short term (water main breaks for example).

I found one advisory for a nearby town I frequent that had recently ended and I hadn't even been aware of it. Unless you're obsessively following the department of water/natural resources on social media for every city/state you visit you'd never know! There are bound to be many homes, businesses, even restaurants totally unaware that their water is unsafe and many more visitors to areas who don't have any clue.

happymellon• 3 years ago

Even places that aren't, the water out of the faucet is fairly grim. Heavily chlorinated and unpleasant. It's no wonder that they all drink filtered, or bottled water.

It's one of those things I forget about each time I visit and drink from the tap only to remember that I can't do that most places here after the first sip.

Georgelemental10• 3 years ago

Water being a human right

Human need ≠ human right. By definition, a limited resource cannot be a natural right.

dietr1ch• 3 years ago

So how's the argument that water is technically limited is enough to start selling it for corporate profit?

parineum• 3 years ago

Water isn't limited.

dragonwriter2• 3 years ago

Human need ≠ human right. By definition, a limited resource cannot be a natural right.

Rights aren’t natural, that’s a quasi-religious fiction invoked as a thought-terminating cliché to avoid debate over political ideology, and the bounds you state are simply the dogma of a particular political sect fond of the “natural rights” evasion.

Human rights are a matter determined by the conscience of humans, and (while not explicitly called out there), water seems to fall squarely within the broad international consensus on what constitutes “human rights” expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially Article 25.

em-bee5• 3 years ago

what? on the contrary.

every human need must by necessity be a right. ignoring human needs is in itself a human rights violation. since water is needed to survive, unless you want to deny people the right to live, water must be a human right.

lnxg33k13• 3 years ago

I was talking about humans on earth, that ball floating around made of 71% water, whose salt doesn't boil

perryizgr8• 3 years ago

Agreed, anything that requires other people's labour to provide to you is not your right, e.g. education, food, water, broadband, petrol, housing.

Eumenes2• 3 years ago

water being a human right

housing, jobs, healthcare, education, water ... strange how classically liberal rights, such as speech and fair trial, which if anything are antagonist to the state, have transitioned, in popular discourse, to physical and materialistic needs that require top down control of resources/institutions. not very liberal to me. nestle sucks, and shouldn't exist, but this 'human right' rhetoric is just stupid

TheAceOfHearts2• 3 years ago

If enough people agree that something should be available to all, then we can decide that it's a human right. I don't think it's that complicated.

Your comment seems like it takes on the problem from a platonic ideal of a reality which doesn't seem to exist.

jonmayer• 3 years ago

commercial use of california water is tiny:

https://waterdesk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/where-calif...

With that said, "take away something that's clean and free and then sell it back to you wrapped in plastic" is pretty much late stage capitalism's primary MO.

cameldrv• 3 years ago

Total water usage in the U.S.:

117,530 Billion Gallons Per Year.

Total bottled water usage in the U.S.

15 Billion Gallons Per Year.

phendrenad2• 3 years ago

So we're just making bottled spring water illegal? Why not put limits on how much can be drawn from any given area? Why is it an outright ban? Pretty weird.

az09mugen• 3 years ago

Because the bottled water doesn't come from natural springs lol. But agreed on the fact there is the need to stop feeding water bottles economy.

California orders bottled water firm to stop drawing from natural springs

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