Yesterday’s Washington Post covered the battle between local residents and national and multinational bottled water companies. The story focused on a fight in Fryeburg, Maine between local citizens and Poland Springs, whom they accuse of overdrawing from local resources.

In response to all this, bottling companies have said they’re being targeted unfairly, noting that agricultural irrigation and city water systems extract far more water from the earth than they do. A recent survey by a University of Maryland researcher found that only about 0.019 percent of all the groundwater removed in the United States winds up in bottles.

We take issue with this 0.019 percent statistic on three fronts. First, the UM study was funded by the bottled water industry. Second, the study has not passed peer review. Third, it’s an essentially meaningless statistic: the impacts of bottling water are always local, and comparing local withdrawals to total U.S. groundwater withdrawals is meaningless.

As for the industry claiming unfair targeting: We need irrigation and municipal water. We have quality tap water in the U.S., some of the best water in the world. We don’t need to buy it at 7-11. And we certainly don’t need to suck communities’ resources dry in the process.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Bottled Water. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.