I don’t know why it took so long to discover it, but CBS13 in Sacramento aired a segment on the news Friday night questioning why Wal-Mart was being allowed to continue drawing water from the Sacramento Municipal water supply while the state is under water restrictions because of the drought.
This was just days after Starbucks opted to move its water sourcing and production of Ethos bottled water from California to Pennsylvania. Someone noticed it says right on the Great Value label, in very small print, that the water comes from the Sacramento municipal water supply.
Either they were unaware, uninformed or unintentionally did this,” said public relations expert Doug Elmets. “It could be all three of those. Whatever it is, it’s a bad move and they need to correct it and they need to do it quickly.”
The water extracted from the municipal water supply is sold by Sacramento to DS Services of America, at 99 cents for every 748 gallons. This is the same rate that commercial and residential customers pay. The water is then bottled and sold to Wal-Mart for 88 cents a gallon. Wal-Mart then sells the bottles for a tidy profit and don’t think they aren’t making money. That 99 cent expenditure for 748 gallons of water turns into a profit of $658.24 for Wal-Mart and DS Services.
Adam Scow, the California director of Food & Water Watch, says his group is calling on Governor Jerry Brown to put a moratorium on bottling water. “It’s only logical that as the governor has asked all Californians to reduce their water consumption that he holds extractive industries like bottled water companies to the same standard, yet he hasn’t asked anything of them,” he told the Guardian.
Wal-Mart says it is “very concerned” over the drought and how it’s affecting their customers and associates. “We share those concerns and are tracking it closely,” the spokesperson said. “Our commitment to sustainability includes efforts to minimize water use in our facilities. We have and continue to work with our suppliers to act responsibly while meeting the needs of customers who count on us across California.”
This sincere-sounding statement by Wal-Mart is all well and good, but it still begs the question of if they are so darned concerned about the welfare of their customers during this drought, why are they selling those very same people their own state’s water? This just does not make any sense.
But it is not just Wal-Mart and Starbucks that are doing this. We can add Nestles, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and who knows how many more water bottlers out there. Just recently, San Francisco-based Crystal Geyser decided to open a bottling plant near Mt. Shasta. They are planning on drawing water from a source that flows into the Sacramento River, removing thousands of gallons of water every day.
It people only thought about it, they would realize that the majority of bottled water comes from somebody’s municipal water supply. In California, these companies do not need a permit and they are not regulated. Raven Stevens, a representative for the Gatewood Neighborhood Association told the San Francisco Chronicle the main concern with many people is the lack of regulation and oversight.
“Crystal Geyser in one day plans to pump more water than any three of my neighbors will use in an entire year,” Stevens said. “The entire state is under a 25 percent cut, farmers are letting fields go fallow and we don’t have one piece of legislation regulating water bottling.”
