BlueTriton, the company that owns Arrowhead brand, has been taking water from San Bernardino springs for more than 100 years

BlueTriton, the company that owns Arrowhead brand, has been taking water from San Bernardino springs for more than 100 years

California has ordered the company that owns Arrowhead bottled water to stop using some of the natural springs it has utilized for more than a century, following a years-long campaign by environmentalists to stop the operation.

Regulators on Tuesday voted to significantly reduce how much water BlueTriton – the owner of the Arrowhead brand – can take from public lands in the San Bernardino mountains. The ruling is a victory for community groups who have said for years that the bottled water firm has drained an important creek that serves as a habitat for wildlife and helps protect the area from wildfires.

Arrowhead bottled water traces its roots to a hotel at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains that first opened in 1885 and began selling bottled spring water from its basement in 1906. But environmental and community groups say the company has never had permission to take water from the springs in the San Bernardino national forest.

The state water resources control board agreed that BlueTriton does not have permission to use the water and ordered the company to stop. The order does not ban the company from taking any water from the mountain, but it significantly reduces how much it can take.

  • @lobut@lemmy.ca
    16•10 months ago

    I mean, it’s a microcosm but I remember a friend in uni refusing to drink tap or Brita water. He’d just keep cases and cases of water by his mini fridge and just plow threw them.

    I got upset with my sister in law because she’ll buy bottled water when I had a water filter in our fridge. Hell, you can boil it if you’re really uncertain. She said there was stuff about chemicals and I said the plastic for the water probably isn’t any better for you.

    • Dudewitbow
      12•10 months ago

      But taking a shower in chemicals are okay? The mental gymnastics of some people.

      Tap water is also more regulated than bottled water too.

        • @Zink@programming.dev
          1•10 months ago

          Think of how many bottles of water you can get for $10. Anything from event prices to Costco prices, doesn’t matter.

          For $10 I get about a thousand gallons of tap water. I have a back yard pond, so I think in terms of bulk quantity cost of tap water, lol. Technically the sewer charge is about another $10 for that same amount of water.

          The water is pretty good, and tastes just about perfect to me once it’s run through the cheap filter in our refrigerator.

          IMO the worst part of bottled water is the plastic, plus the thought of shipping literal water around the country/world.