
Bottled Water Is Sucking Florida Dry - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/opinion/bottled-water-is-sucking-florida-dry.html
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sundayedition
It must be nice to pay $115/year to get a million gallons of water per day.
This is a significantly better deal than we're getting under JEA, our single
available utility company here in our area of Jacksonville.

Our water bills include a $30/month connection fee for tap water, a $30/month
connection fee for reclaimed water (lawn and yard), $15/month for sewer, and a
tiered water system that puts you in the $250+/month (total) range to water a
relatively standard size lot plus provide water for a family of 3.

If our HOA didn't prohibit it, I'd drill a well.

This could certainly benefit from a heavier tax, considering their 91.4B in
revenue

~~~
Someone1234
You're buying it from a utility (water company) they're taking it straight out
of the ground. It is an apples and oranges comparison. Most of what you're
paying for is purification and the infrastructure cost piping it to your
home/business, neither of which is true with groundwater.

Look, I am not defending these people, but to have a real conversation about
this topic we have to at least get the facts right.

The law is outdated. It treats water the same as air. If you can get it on
your property it is essentially yours. They're buying land, putting in a well-
head, getting a cheap permit, and taking it straight out of the groundwater,
just like a utility would.

The problem, as I said, is that the law is outdated. But if it was updated we
also need to have a real discussion about farm/agriculture usage of water and
what they pay/how it is distributed.

By the way in, 2017, 41% of South Florida's Water District's surface &
groundwater[0] went to agriculture (1,076 million gallons). Another 41% went
to the public utility (1,084 million gallons). Only 4% to
industrial/commercial (116 million gallons). But yet we're talking about the
4%, not the 41%. Why is that?

[0] [https://www.sfwmd.gov/our-work/water-supply](https://www.sfwmd.gov/our-
work/water-supply)

~~~
e40
Did you miss "If our HOA didn't prohibit it, I'd drill a well."? A well
wouldn't be treated water from his water company.

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Aunche
> The permit allows Nestlé to take one million gallons per day at no cost,
> with just a one-time $115 application fee.

This has virtually no impact on the aquifer:

> According to the United States Geological Survey, total withdrawals from the
> Floridan aquifer system in 2000 were ranked 5th highest of all principal
> aquifers in the Nation at 3,640 million gallons per day (Mgal/d)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floridan_aquifer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floridan_aquifer)

~~~
mc32
Regardless, they are making money on this extraction and the state isn’t
getting direct compensation. It doesn’t need to be exorbitant but it should be
more than a nominal amount. There should be some volume dependence. It should
be whatever the commercial water rate is.

It’s also not only a FL problem. Nestle has similar contracts with other
states too.

~~~
wil421
Why does the state need compensation? It’s an aquifer the state isn’t treating
waste water and selling it to Nestle. Commercial water rates include treatment
and all the infrastructure to move it around.

That’s similar to saying farms should pay the state for using soil.

~~~
mc32
It’s a shared natural resource. If it gets exhausted or gets polluted we all
are affected.

If they bought the land and proportionately drew water, then, okay. They’d pay
taxes on the land asf.

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lalos
Every time I see this kind of news, this cartoon comes up in my mind:
[https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995](https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995)

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creato
> Florida should prioritize providing safe drinking water for its residents,
> rather than bottling that water to resell elsewhere.

Does bottled water actually get exported/shipped long distances?

~~~
chrisseaton
> Does bottled water actually get exported/shipped long distances?

Have you ever seen Fiji water?

~~~
creato
That is exactly why I thought _most_ bottled water is not exported/shipped
long distances: I thought Fiji was an outlier in this industry.

~~~
chrisseaton
Are you joking? Evian. Perrier. Volvic. Massive export water brands shipped
all around the world to probably every country on earth.

~~~
creato
Those all still seem small compared to the "common" bottled water brands that
you can get everywhere, which I thought were bottled relatively locally.

~~~
chrisseaton
What common brands can you get in more places than Evian?

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disjhshava
This article is missing evidence to support the basic claim in the title. What
portion of water usage can be attributed to bottled water?

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commandlinefan
… and if it’s being shipped off to other places and people are drinking it,
then… that’s a good thing, right? As long as it’s not being wasted. I’m a lot
more concerned about people (like my kids) who take three sips from a water
bottle and then throw the whole thing in the trash. Now fresh water has been
completely removed from the ecosystem, at least until the plastic decomposes
in ten million years.

~~~
kaybe
Your trash collectors will probably crush the whole thing, so the water will
seep out. Polluted, yes, but not locked away for that long. (And even if not,
I'd give it a very short time until the water seeps out from micro-fractures
anyway.)

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nitwit005
Is there some political reason people go after the bottled water companies
than the other water users? Does it poll well with focus groups or something
similar?

~~~
hoorayimhelping
It's a stupid, inefficient, and wasteful use of water.

If almond growers want to use a ton of water to grow almonds, fine. At least
we get almonds, almond milk, almond oil, etc from that water usage.

Bottled water gets us nothing because most places it's getting shipped to
already have clean, potable water available. It's a waste of water first and
foremost. (Obviously this argument is against wealthy first world nations
drinking bottled water. It's totally reasonable to ship clean water to the 2nd
and 3rd world).

It's doubly offensive when you factor in the fact that most bottled water is
transported in single use plastic containers that don't fall apart. There
weren't any empty water bottles washed up on lakes in the 90s. They're
everywhere now.

It's triply offensive when you consider this water is transported using
pollution emitting vehicles.

It's 3x the waste for 1x the benefit.

The final straw is that a company is getting rich doing this but not paying
for the externalities they're creating.

~~~
peteey
Almonds, meat, and golf courses are exorbitant consumers of water which no one
needs to survive. You absolutely need water to survive.

One liter of bottled water requires 1 liter of water. One liter of almond milk
requires 384. It is absurd that you justify almost 400x water consumption
because "at least we get almonds".

I live in Florida. The amount of water I need is independent of bottles. If I
drink a gallon of water from a pipe or bottle, I take a gallon of water out of
the springs. If I drink a gallon of almond milk, I take 400 gallons from
somewhere in California.

Your argument against plastic applies to almost all other things in grocery
stores. The argument is specifically applied to water because everyone seems
to have a personal grudge against Nestle.

Is bottled water wasteful? Yes. Should we dedicate more energy towards 400x
wasteful activities in the same grocery store? Only if you want to be taken
seriously.

~~~
ChrisLomont
Where do you think those 384 liters of water to produce a liter of almond milk
go? Back into the environment, mostly the ground.

Water is not being consumed or destroyed. There’s the same 384 liters left.

~~~
dpark
If this were true, aquifers wouldn’t be falling worldwide. Some of the water
will make its way back into the aquifer. _Most_ of it will evaporate,
eventually raining down into an ocean or onto a watershed that drains into an
ocean.

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radium3d
I don't think I've ever purchased bulk bottled water. Occasionally I have
bought a single bottle if I'm in a pinch but I can't remember the last time. I
just carry a double walled vacuum insulated water bottle with me and fill it
up with a simple brita filter carafe that I keep in the fridge for ice cold
water all day and near zero waste other than a filter once every few months.

~~~
kaybe
It's good to store a pack for cases of emergency. Even things like a broken
supply water pipe on a hot sunday can be harsh, let alone local pollution
warnings that last half a day or more.

Storing the tap water itself is a lot harder since you need to keep it clean
enough nothing grows in there for a while; bottled water is very convenient.

~~~
radium3d
Definitely, I have a few gallon bottles at home and a couple in the car for
emergencies.

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rjsw
Does it matter ?

I thought that fresh water aquifers in Florida were predicted to get
contaminated with seawater fairly soon.

~~~
0xffff2
Isn’t seawater infiltration directly related to depletion of the fresh water
in the aquifer?

~~~
rjsw
I thought that it was caused by the expected rise in sea level.

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nafizh
In US, socialism for corporations is fine. But if you talk about giving free
health care to cancer patients, all hell breaks lose.

~~~
hanniabu
This is unfortunately the narrative that the news has forged

