Water Lobby

The most interesting tidbit from my recent trip to the Water Law Conference in San Diego had to finding out who the bottled water industry has hired as its lobbyist. I am not making this up, but the gentleman formerly lobbied on behalf of tobacco companies and drug makers.

I first began to sour on bottled water when I realized that much of it is simply repackaged city tap water. In truth, that might be preferable to the "spring waters" that sound so pure and natural. Most of these "springs" are deep wells that dry up natural springs. In Texas, the Ozarka company drained the water table and left its neighbors high and dry, ultimately resulting in a fairly important water case that went to the Texas Supreme Court. (The company won, but the legislature was urged to consider, maybe, kinda doing something about it...and if I remember correctly, that's about what they did.)

Most of these "local" brands are now owned by big international companies like Nestle and of course Coke/Pepsi are now in the bottled water business.

Well, looks like they've found just the man to look after their interests.

American's spent about two billion dollars on bottled water in 1987. (I can remember that it was still thought to be a silly California thing to pay for water.) Twenty years later, we now spend $12 billion while 1.1 billion people in the world don't even have access to clean drinking water. We do, but would prefer to spend more money for water that is both clean, hip, contained in unnecessary packaging, and transported hundreds of miles by truck. Ah, the refreshing blessings of liberty.