The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHS) recently told people in Benton Harbor, a predominantly black city in southwestern Michigan, to stop drinking, cooking or brushing their teeth with local tap water. "Out of prudent consideration," state officials instead recommended the use of bottled water to prevent lead from flowing in the city's water supply system and eventually entering residents' homes and bodies.
The warning and 20,000 boxes of bottled water were issued approximately three years after testing first showed that the lead content exceeded the 15 parts per billion (ppb) action level set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The "action level" is the legal threshold for triggering regulatory actions. In fact, after the first test, the town’s drinking water “failed to meet the standard for six consecutive sampling cycles in the past three years,” and almost no measures were taken. This all happened three years after Michigan added the "Lead and Copper Rule" to the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act in 2018.
The rule was added in response to the Flint Water Crisis, requiring "removal of all lead service lines in Michigan" and reducing the "15 ppb" standard to "12 ppb on January 1, 2025." Perhaps the most annoying to people in Benton Harbor is that the rule promises that “the state government will work closely with local water authorities to respond quickly to any test results that show high levels of lead, including measures to reduce the amount of lead required by state regulations. level." "
Unfortunately, for the approximately 10,000 residents of Benton Port, it was not until September 30 this year, a week before the official warning, that according to local TV station FOX17, MDHS finally began to "live in Benton Port." until 10 On the 11th, five days after the above warning was issued, they offered "free blood lead testing for children" and "home inspections for anyone showing signs of lead in their system."
Since then, state officials and volunteers dumped boxes of "free" bottled water into this increasingly angry town. Some residents waited more than an hour and a half to get the drinking water that should be readily available at home. But, like the notorious story of lead pollution in Flint, 180 miles east of Benton Harbor, the iconic image of government failure is the arrival of the corporate brand of bottled water. Once again, it is life-saving bottled water, providing residents with the most basic things a well-functioning local government should provide: clean, safe water.
Ironically, however, because most of the bottled water we drink is just packaged tap water. A 2018 study by Food & Water Watch found that 64% of bottled water in private companies comes from municipal tap water. If filtered out, just like Coca-Cola’s Dasani (sales of 1.06 billion U.S. dollars in 2020) and Pepsi-Cola’s Aquafina (sales of 1.06 billion U.S. dollars in 2020), "the process will remove beneficial minerals such as calcium and magnesium." Dan Heil, a professor of exercise physiology at State University, told the Los Angeles Times, “It does not support the premise that purified water is healthier or better for the body than tap water containing natural minerals.”
Nevertheless, Jill Culora, vice president of communications for the International Bottled Water Association, assured the grocery industry magazine The Shelby Report that “consumers’ preference for healthy hydration is indeed good news for public health.” Grandview Research January 2021 market analysis It is believed that the “increasing consumer awareness of the health benefits of drinking bottled water” has promoted the “market growth during the forecast period” from 2021 to 2028. The bullish report also noted that “bottled water instead of regular water... seems to have become the best choice for health-conscious buyers.”
Somehow, ironically, "health-conscious" Americans find themselves increasingly dependent on bottled water that is often contaminated with microplastics and chemically leached, but in a shaky state that is trying to replace as many as 12 million lead pipes. This has not yet been fully reflected in countries with a country’s water infrastructure. Currently, nearly 22 million people are provided with potentially toxic water. At the same time, private companies raided public water sources or simply filtered tap water that many Americans often unnecessarily refuse to drink, then package it in petrochemical-produced plastic and sell it back at 2,000 times the price from their taps. give them.
The fact that this company-packaged water repeatedly rescues systems contaminated with lead is even more difficult to accept, because it is a product of the de facto privatization of public water. It is no coincidence that Michigan has been at the center of the lead crisis and water privatization.
In an interview with Michigan Public Radio’s Steve Camodi, a Flint resident stated that in 2017, Michigan terminated a subsidy that paid about two-thirds of Flint residents’ water bills. "The use of water that does not meet federal quality standards dates back to 2014." Meanwhile, Switzerland-based Nestlé's Michigan business was buzzing about 123 miles northeast of Maccosta County. . Bloomberg Businessweek reported on the joint venture, which is “pouring local spring water into containers ranging from 8 ounces to 2.5 gallons.” Most of the production lines are “operating 24/7, with a pumping capacity of 500 per minute per production line. To 1,200 bottles". 60% of the water is transported back to Mecosta's springs through a 12-mile pipeline. The rest were brought by truck 40 miles from neighboring Osceola County. They produce as many as 3.5 million bottles every day.
That year, Nestlé’s bottled water business achieved global sales of US$7.7 billion. The report stated that “more than US$343 million of this came from Michigan, where the company bottled the natural spring water and purified water product line Pure Life of Iceberg in Michigan.” Surprisingly, Nestlé only needs to pay a nominal $200 per year in paperwork fees for each of its bottling facilities to obtain the right to extract, package, sell and export Michigan water. Therefore, although the people of Flint, we now know that the people of Benton Harbor, Hamtrak, and Wayne, and perhaps countless others, have varying degrees of lead-contaminated water flowing into their homes, but Nestlé Hardly pay any price to pump water. "Millions of gallons" are valuable resources of Michigan people and sold for millions of profits. This is not only the de facto privatization of important public resources, but the people of Michigan basically subsidize Nestlé's business with extremely cheap liquid gold.
This is the profit model that Nestlé replicated throughout the United States.
The San Bernardino National Forest in California is about 74 miles east of the notoriously thirsty but water-scarce Los Angeles. Home to Big Bear Lake and Strawberry Creek, it is also the main source of Nestlé’s “almost fabulous purity” Arrowhead Mountain spring water. Sunset Magazine found that Nestlé “fetched an average of 62.6 million gallons of water from the San Bernardino Forest from 1947 to 2015”, but under a permit that expired in 1978, it paid only US$524 per year. Despite the expiration, Nestlé continued to make insignificant payments until the outcry from citizens and activists in 2017 caused the US Forest Service to issue a new permit in 2018, with a new annual fee of only $2,000.
However, on April 23 this year, the California Water Resources Control Commission issued a draft "stop and halt" order to Nestlé, claiming that it illegally transfers millions of gallons of water each year, exceeding its allowed 7.26 acre-feet of water. This is equivalent to approximately 2.3 million gallons. In contrast, Nestlé drew 180 acre feet (approximately 58 million gallons) of water from the Strawberry Creek headland in 2020. Nestlé’s Arrowhead is still sipping and profiting. A few months later, the draft letter is still awaiting final approval from the California Water Control Board.
For the Pure Life brand, Nestlé uses municipal water systems in Sacramento, Livermore, Pasadena, Ontario, Los Angeles and Cabazon. In Sacramento, Pure Life and other bottled water companies pay $1 for every 100 cubic feet of city water, just like residents and local businesses. Sunset said the main difference is that “the benefits will not return to the community because most bottles are exported outside the local community.” And, of course, they enjoy a profitable price increase.
Pure Life also extracted 35 million gallons of water each year from sunny Phoenix, Arizona, until it closed the controversial plant after less than three years of operation. In terms of Sunset's unprofitable business of Pure Life in Sacramento, Nestlé's $35 million investment in its Phoenix business only translated into the loss of only 15 jobs when the factory's leader was closed in 2019.
An ironic story. Ironically, California and Arizona, especially Phoenix, have been dealing with climate-related droughts, which have increasingly restricted water flow to farms and have restricted the flow of water to farms in the past year. More and more residents. With the rapid development of the climate crisis, allowing companies to bottle drinking water and repackage it with oil-based plastics seems to be counterproductive. By 2030, the emissions of this plastic will exceed those of coal. To make matters worse, these plastic bottled water must be transported through an oil-driven supply chain so that it can be purchased at a high price and shipped home by consumers, who can and should access it safely and efficiently through their taps. The public's water is used for company packaging and resale to make substantial profits in water-scarce and drought-affected areas. This sadly symbolizes the parasitic process of privatization, which seems reckless and completely unsustainable in the long run. .
As Bloomberg Businessweek pointed out in its 2017 exposure, Nestlé’s predatory actions identified “regions with weak water regulations or lobbying to weaken the law”, thus opening the door to this de facto privatization process And dragon head.
But Nestlé is not alone.
As Consumer Reports pointed out in 2020, “a 262,000-square-foot Coca-Cola manufacturing plant on the west side of Detroit... is busy”, while many other companies have been forced to suspend operations due to the COVID-19 shutdown. Coca-Cola's Dasani brand produces profitable bottled water by "purchasing, processing and bottling municipal water, and then selling it to consumers at a high price," and the company has annual sales of more than $1 billion. Pepsi's Aquafina brand follows the same profit model as bottled water in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Consumer Reports found that its price increase is "about 133 times higher" than the price purchased from the public water system.
Back in Detroit, Consumer Reports also found that Coca-Cola paid an average of $0.01 per gallon for municipal water. After passing through the purification filter and packaging, they charge a wholesale price of $1.33 for the same gallon of water. Surprisingly, this increase is not enough to prevent Coca-Cola from failing to pay its bills. If residents owe $150 or delay paying their bills for 60 days, they will face the risk of water cuts, as happened in about 2,800 households at the beginning of the pandemic, but Coca-Cola continues to lag behind on bills, reaching $287 at one time and paying $250 late. . But unlike the Detroitans who were short of funds seeing their water shut down, Coca-Cola, which was in arrears, was allowed to continue to use municipal water supply, unabated. In response to the "Consumer Reports" condemnation, the Detroit Water and Wastewater Department interpreted the default as "urban errors, including address mailing problems."
When Sunset Magazine delved into the “looting” of California’s water resources, they found CG Roxane, the company that owns the crystal geyser. The company generated $36 million in revenue in 2020 by pouring 42 million gallons of water into plastic bottles. Part of their water comes from "groundwater and well water from Weed," a small city near the foothills of Mount Shasta affected by the drought, and from the unincorporated town of Olancha near the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Since 1913, the aqueduct has transported 233 miles of water from the Owens River to Los Angeles.
The company is partly attracted by Olancha's reliable groundwater, which can persist even in dry years. The problem is that it contains naturally occurring arsenic. Therefore, the Crystal Geyser filters it to meet federal drinking water safety standards. According to an investigation by the Ministry of Justice, the company illegally stored dangerous by-products of this process in "arsenic pools" for 15 years, thereby endangering "groundwater and wildlife in the area." Crystal Geyser also dumped "23,000 gallons of toxic and possibly carcinogenic water" into California sewers. As Sunset puts it bluntly, “The company’s cost is a fine of $5 million, which is not considered a threat to its business.”
After years of controversy and struggles with local activists, Nestlé finally gave in and sold Nestlé North America Water (including its iceberg bottled water business in Michigan) to two New York-based private equity firms One Rock Capital Partners and Metropoulos & Co. After the $4.3 billion transaction, these companies renamed their business to "Blue Triton Brands" and reduced their gallons per minute (gpm) extraction rate in Michigan to 288 gpm, which is less than The on-site monitoring and supervision threshold established over the years has caused controversy over Nestlé's operations in the state. Blue Triton now includes the aforementioned icebergs, as well as Poland Spring, Deer Park, Ozarka, Hefeng Mountain, Arrowhead, Pure Life and Splash, and will be able to extract 414,720 gallons per day, with an annual limit of 20,059,039 gallons.
Despite its withdrawal, Nestlé is still the world leader in bottled water, and it still maintains control of the well-known "premium brands" Perrier, S. Pellegrino and Acqua Panna. It seems appropriate for Nestlé to keep Perrier, because Perrier's health and luxury brands in the late 1970s laid the foundation for the transformation of the bottled water business into a multi-billion dollar behemoth.
Perrier was once part of the “niche” market for mineral water, increasing from 3 million bottles in 1975 to approximately 200 million bottles on the eve of the 1980s. As the food writer Robert Moss detailed in Serious Eats, driven by a marketing campaign that emphasized the “French descent and premium” of healthy and luxurious water, Perrier took advantage of the “baby boom generation as one generation gets rid of its Status and the growing desire for status". Tie-dyed T-shirts and began to enter the corporate world. "
By the time Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, Perrier had grown large enough to gobble up its leading competitor, Poland Spring Water, and thereby captured 85 percent of the bottled water market. This triggered a nationwide recall and caused the company's sales to plummet." Other companies captured Perrier's lost customers. Within two years, Nestlé captured Perrier and became the global bottled water giant today.
Did you know that "Evian" is the reverse of "naïve"?
When the Evian brand and bottled water became ubiquitous in the early 1990s, this was a joke often told. But now the joke is on us, and the punch line is found in the bottom line of the companies. These companies often take tap water or water from the commons, bottle it and sell it back to us for huge profits, thereby earning billions of dollars. .
Perhaps the cruelest irony is that the more Americans rely on bottled water, which is basically privatized water, the less political urgency will be to make the much cheaper public water from our taps clean. , Safe and accessible to everyone. It is not a coincidence that Americans apparently consume more and more bottled water in the era of conspicuous consumption of luxury brands, or that this thirst coincides with the advent of the so-called Reagan Revolution and its extensive attacks on the nature and effectiveness of government and government.
This is a major political change immersed in neoliberal concepts, that is, government supervision is inherently bad, privatization is inherently good, and the government should always be suspected and despised. It brings disregard for public investment that has nothing to do with the military-industrial complex. Although companies like Nestlé took advantage of the wave of deregulation initiated by Reagan, critical infrastructure was left to decay, and long-overdue upgrades were left off the agenda. Decades of indifference to public investment led to the persistence of leaded water, which in turn forced citizens to rely on privatized bottled water as the only safe and drinkable option.
Perhaps this is why the people of Benton Harbor do not laugh. They, like Flint’s lead-affected residents; Jackson, Mississippi; Clarksburg, West Virginia; Newark, New Jersey; Orleans, New York; Racine, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois; and Cincinnati, Ohio. Long and expensive road to repair and reconstruction. Millions of people may also know that their pipes carry more than just water.
The recently passed US$1.2 trillion "Bipartisan Infrastructure Act" allocates US$55 billion for water-related expenditures, and US$15 billion is earmarked for plumbing repairs. The estimated cost of replacing all lead pipelines in the country ranges from 28 billion U.S. dollars to as high as 60 billion U.S. dollars, so it is difficult to consider 15 billion U.S. dollars as a good start.
In fact, it is only about 1 billion dollars more than the nearly 14 billion Americans spent on privatized public water that they like to drink in plastic bottles this year.
JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, publication historian, radio co-host, and documentary filmmaker (The Warning, 2008). His credit includes serving as a news magazine producer on the "NewsHour" news channel, C-SPAN, and Washington-based ABC affiliate WJLA. His weekly show "Inside the Headlines With The Newsvandal" is co-hosted by James Moore and airs every Friday on KRUU-FM in Fairfield, Iowa. He writes a blog under the pseudonym "The Newsvandal".
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