The Problem With California's Water-Bottling Plants Isn't the Water

Water bottling plants in California have risen to the top of the drought-news cycle in the past week, and for understandable reasons. First, food giant Nestle came under fire for piping spring water from the San Bernardino National Forest under a nearly 30-year-old, expired permit. Then Starbucks announced last week that they’d be moving their Ethos Water bottling operations from a private spring in Baxter, California, to Pennsylvania.

Now, Crystal Geyser is moving ahead with plans to set up shop in a bottling plant at the base of Mount Shasta, formerly owned by Coca-Cola, filling its slim plastic bottles with private spring water. It’ll join 100+ other facilities of the kind across the state that make arrangements with municipal water suppliers, pipe water from public lands, and/or draw from private springs.