Post by taylor on Mar 13, 2008 8:21:25 GMT -4
www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/03/12/bottledwater_0313.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13
As Fannin residents run dry, bottled water flows out
By HEATHER VOGELL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/13/08
Brad and Lucy Bradbury couldn't even pour a glass of tap water in September after the spring that fed faucets in their Georgia mountain home sputtered silent.
The Bradburys showered at friends' homes and hauled water back in milk jugs while waiting three weeks for a new well. They were among scores of Fannin County residents whose springs or wells ran dry last year.
Yet Fannin's spring water remained plentiful 90 miles south. On metro Atlanta store shelves, bottles upon bottles of it awaited purchase.
"It just tears me up to see all these trucks hauling water out of our county," said Brad, who blamed bottling — not just the drought — for his spring's demise.
Five spring water bottlers or suppliers have set up shop in Fannin near the Tennessee border, perhaps more than in any other Georgia county. The companies pay nothing for the millions of gallons they draw and sell.
As the state fell deeper into drought last year, Fannin residents began asking whether the industry was partly at fault for their dry plumbing.
They found no easy answer. Although scientists say some spring water companies do diminish groundwater, only a detailed study would show whether they were sucking up the supply for nearby homes.
The companies don't draw enough to need permits that would subject them to greater state control. As a result, no one knows how much water they take from springs all together.
Still, residents such as Arlene Prescott are suspicious, and frustrated that state officials can't reduce spring withdrawals even during a historic drought.
Prescott's own spring dried up last year for the first time in her 37 years in her house.
"We can't live without water," she said. "But we can live without bottled water."
Concerns like hers are cropping up nationwide as bottlers seek to satisfy a growing thirst for their product. The average American drinks twice as much bottled water today as a decade ago, the industry estimates.
Skirmishes in states such as Michigan, Florida, Maine and California have pitted residents and environmentalists against water companies over withdrawals from springs, rivers and aquifers.
Critics say bottlers are siphoning off a limited natural resource. Bottlers counter they are a relatively small user, and fresh-tasting drinking water is a convenient, healthy product.
Some states are setting more rules for bottlers. Michigan, for instance, lowered the volume bottlers can withdraw before needing a state permit and required them to solicit public comments on their plans.
What's the harm?
Calls to Appalachian Well Drilling began picking up last summer, said manager Brent Montgomery. Many callers had relied on their Fannin springs or wells for two, three or four decades.
"I was hearing the same story: 'We've been living on this spring and not having a problem with it, and we went out this morning and it was gone,' " he said.
Water is big business in Fannin. Each year, three suppliers have sent millions of gallons to the Crystal Springs bottling plant in Mableton owned by DS Waters, which touts itself as the U.S. leader in home and office delivery of bottled water.
Another Fannin bottler, Georgia Crown Distributing, bills itself as one of the state's largest water companies.
Nearly two-thirds of the county's 14,500 homes and businesses depend on spring or well water. The question of whether water bottling hurts private sources, however, is not easy to answer.
Spring withdrawals always decrease the flow feeding streams and creeks drop for drop, scientists say.
The effect on groundwater — the supply for wells and springs — is harder to discern. Bottlers' methods make a difference.
Three Fannin spring water companies have drilled boreholes, or small wells, alongside their springs, state records show.
Boreholes tap into the groundwater and allow companies to pull what flows into the spring more easily, said Chris Leeth, supervisory hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey.
"The ones that are pumping out of wells will by definition lower the water table," he said.
Pumping can affect both the quality and quantity of groundwater. But without more research, no one can say by how much, or how close other users would have to be to feel the effects, Leeth said.
Representatives of Georgia Crown and Nature's Purest Spring Water, which records show have boreholes, declined to comment.
A third borehole is located at Georgia Mountain Water, which was acquired in 2000 by one of the companies that later created DS Waters.
Headquartered in Atlanta, DS Waters declined to say whether its Georgia suppliers use boreholes. In a statement, the company said, "In the Blue Ridge region, Crystal Springs only withdraws a fraction of the total available spring water that free flows naturally from the spring sources."
Fannin County Commission Chairman Howie Bruce said complaints about dry wells and springs don't seem to be concentrated around the water companies. But no one has mapped them.
"It's spotted and sporadic, and it's not something we can tie a direct cause to," he said.
'A straw in the glass'
Springs are among Georgia's most vulnerable water resources. Yet state regulators don't track the total amount of water pumped from them or whether multiple industry withdrawals in sensitive areas are depleting the water for other users.
Spring water sellers must get a state environmental permit only if they take more than 100,000 gallons a day. No Fannin County water company has such a permit.
Bottlers account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of U.S. water use, experts say, but their cumulative impact can be significant.
"Think of an aquifer as a giant milkshake glass, and each well is a straw in the glass," said Robert Glennon, a University of Arizona law professor who wrote a book on the environmental impact of groundwater pumping.
"What Georgia law permits is a limitless number of straws in the same glass," he said. "That's your problem."
More than half of U.S. states require permits, or at least reporting, for groundwater withdrawals at a level below 100,000 gallons a day, a 2004 Georgia State University report found.
Permitting allows state authorities to curtail usage if it threatens a waterway. For instance, state officials last year ordered permit holders in North Georgia to cut water use by 10 percent.
"With that humongous 100,000-a-day limit before you're required to have a permit, there's an awful lot of water use you don't know anything about," said retired professor Ronald Cummings, who co-authored the report.
A new state plan calls for developing regional plans to manage water. That might mean more users, including bottlers, would need a permit.
"Clearly there should be a priority kind of system, that if perhaps people's wells are going dry, then perhaps some sectors would be shut down before others," said University of Georgia hydrology professor Todd Rasmussen.
Requiring more users to report withdrawals — and managing that information better — would help Georgia weather periodic droughts, he said. Such data could allow the state to distinguish between the effects of high-volume water use and the impact of a drought, which in turn would help officials decide whether to regulate withdrawals more heavily.
Drought changes picture
Early this year, dried-up creeks crisscrossed rural Fannin County, where spacious second homes perch on hillsides and gamecock pens nestle in the hollows.
Municipal water is too far for many Fannin homeowners to tap in. The county plans to expand it, but when and where aren't clear.
Lucy Bradbury said she wishes the county could at least tax the bottling industry's water withdrawals.
Driver Johnnie Phillips hauled 6,800-gallon tankers brimming with spring water from Sugar Valley Springs, Nature's Purest and Georgia Mountain Water to the Mableton plant last summer. His own spring outside Blue Ridge ran dry, too.
Few residents questioned bottling until the drought worsened and they ran out of water themselves, he said.
"If you've got plenty of water, you don't notice water going down the road," he said. "If you don't have enough water, you count every truck."
Most people don't remember Fannin ever being so dry, but Phillips said his parents told stories about a terrible drought in the 1920s. "A lot of the springs," he said, "never came back again."
As Fannin residents run dry, bottled water flows out
By HEATHER VOGELL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/13/08
Brad and Lucy Bradbury couldn't even pour a glass of tap water in September after the spring that fed faucets in their Georgia mountain home sputtered silent.
The Bradburys showered at friends' homes and hauled water back in milk jugs while waiting three weeks for a new well. They were among scores of Fannin County residents whose springs or wells ran dry last year.
Yet Fannin's spring water remained plentiful 90 miles south. On metro Atlanta store shelves, bottles upon bottles of it awaited purchase.
"It just tears me up to see all these trucks hauling water out of our county," said Brad, who blamed bottling — not just the drought — for his spring's demise.
Five spring water bottlers or suppliers have set up shop in Fannin near the Tennessee border, perhaps more than in any other Georgia county. The companies pay nothing for the millions of gallons they draw and sell.
As the state fell deeper into drought last year, Fannin residents began asking whether the industry was partly at fault for their dry plumbing.
They found no easy answer. Although scientists say some spring water companies do diminish groundwater, only a detailed study would show whether they were sucking up the supply for nearby homes.
The companies don't draw enough to need permits that would subject them to greater state control. As a result, no one knows how much water they take from springs all together.
Still, residents such as Arlene Prescott are suspicious, and frustrated that state officials can't reduce spring withdrawals even during a historic drought.
Prescott's own spring dried up last year for the first time in her 37 years in her house.
"We can't live without water," she said. "But we can live without bottled water."
Concerns like hers are cropping up nationwide as bottlers seek to satisfy a growing thirst for their product. The average American drinks twice as much bottled water today as a decade ago, the industry estimates.
Skirmishes in states such as Michigan, Florida, Maine and California have pitted residents and environmentalists against water companies over withdrawals from springs, rivers and aquifers.
Critics say bottlers are siphoning off a limited natural resource. Bottlers counter they are a relatively small user, and fresh-tasting drinking water is a convenient, healthy product.
Some states are setting more rules for bottlers. Michigan, for instance, lowered the volume bottlers can withdraw before needing a state permit and required them to solicit public comments on their plans.
What's the harm?
Calls to Appalachian Well Drilling began picking up last summer, said manager Brent Montgomery. Many callers had relied on their Fannin springs or wells for two, three or four decades.
"I was hearing the same story: 'We've been living on this spring and not having a problem with it, and we went out this morning and it was gone,' " he said.
Water is big business in Fannin. Each year, three suppliers have sent millions of gallons to the Crystal Springs bottling plant in Mableton owned by DS Waters, which touts itself as the U.S. leader in home and office delivery of bottled water.
Another Fannin bottler, Georgia Crown Distributing, bills itself as one of the state's largest water companies.
Nearly two-thirds of the county's 14,500 homes and businesses depend on spring or well water. The question of whether water bottling hurts private sources, however, is not easy to answer.
Spring withdrawals always decrease the flow feeding streams and creeks drop for drop, scientists say.
The effect on groundwater — the supply for wells and springs — is harder to discern. Bottlers' methods make a difference.
Three Fannin spring water companies have drilled boreholes, or small wells, alongside their springs, state records show.
Boreholes tap into the groundwater and allow companies to pull what flows into the spring more easily, said Chris Leeth, supervisory hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey.
"The ones that are pumping out of wells will by definition lower the water table," he said.
Pumping can affect both the quality and quantity of groundwater. But without more research, no one can say by how much, or how close other users would have to be to feel the effects, Leeth said.
Representatives of Georgia Crown and Nature's Purest Spring Water, which records show have boreholes, declined to comment.
A third borehole is located at Georgia Mountain Water, which was acquired in 2000 by one of the companies that later created DS Waters.
Headquartered in Atlanta, DS Waters declined to say whether its Georgia suppliers use boreholes. In a statement, the company said, "In the Blue Ridge region, Crystal Springs only withdraws a fraction of the total available spring water that free flows naturally from the spring sources."
Fannin County Commission Chairman Howie Bruce said complaints about dry wells and springs don't seem to be concentrated around the water companies. But no one has mapped them.
"It's spotted and sporadic, and it's not something we can tie a direct cause to," he said.
'A straw in the glass'
Springs are among Georgia's most vulnerable water resources. Yet state regulators don't track the total amount of water pumped from them or whether multiple industry withdrawals in sensitive areas are depleting the water for other users.
Spring water sellers must get a state environmental permit only if they take more than 100,000 gallons a day. No Fannin County water company has such a permit.
Bottlers account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of U.S. water use, experts say, but their cumulative impact can be significant.
"Think of an aquifer as a giant milkshake glass, and each well is a straw in the glass," said Robert Glennon, a University of Arizona law professor who wrote a book on the environmental impact of groundwater pumping.
"What Georgia law permits is a limitless number of straws in the same glass," he said. "That's your problem."
More than half of U.S. states require permits, or at least reporting, for groundwater withdrawals at a level below 100,000 gallons a day, a 2004 Georgia State University report found.
Permitting allows state authorities to curtail usage if it threatens a waterway. For instance, state officials last year ordered permit holders in North Georgia to cut water use by 10 percent.
"With that humongous 100,000-a-day limit before you're required to have a permit, there's an awful lot of water use you don't know anything about," said retired professor Ronald Cummings, who co-authored the report.
A new state plan calls for developing regional plans to manage water. That might mean more users, including bottlers, would need a permit.
"Clearly there should be a priority kind of system, that if perhaps people's wells are going dry, then perhaps some sectors would be shut down before others," said University of Georgia hydrology professor Todd Rasmussen.
Requiring more users to report withdrawals — and managing that information better — would help Georgia weather periodic droughts, he said. Such data could allow the state to distinguish between the effects of high-volume water use and the impact of a drought, which in turn would help officials decide whether to regulate withdrawals more heavily.
Drought changes picture
Early this year, dried-up creeks crisscrossed rural Fannin County, where spacious second homes perch on hillsides and gamecock pens nestle in the hollows.
Municipal water is too far for many Fannin homeowners to tap in. The county plans to expand it, but when and where aren't clear.
Lucy Bradbury said she wishes the county could at least tax the bottling industry's water withdrawals.
Driver Johnnie Phillips hauled 6,800-gallon tankers brimming with spring water from Sugar Valley Springs, Nature's Purest and Georgia Mountain Water to the Mableton plant last summer. His own spring outside Blue Ridge ran dry, too.
Few residents questioned bottling until the drought worsened and they ran out of water themselves, he said.
"If you've got plenty of water, you don't notice water going down the road," he said. "If you don't have enough water, you count every truck."
Most people don't remember Fannin ever being so dry, but Phillips said his parents told stories about a terrible drought in the 1920s. "A lot of the springs," he said, "never came back again."
