The logo for Sierra Springs bottled water shows a range of beautiful, gleaming white peaks. The image and the name conjure up visions of icy-cold, crystal-clear water gushing from pristine springs fed by pure mountain snows.
Reality is a little different: The Sierra Springs water that you get at your office or home was bottled at a big factory in an industrial area of Portland not far from the airport, and essentially it came out of the tap.
That’s a source of considerable irritation to Nick Seifert, business manager for EartH20, a small spring water bottling company in Culver. “Basically what that company is delivering is Portland’s municipal source of water, which is a polite way of saying it’s Portland tap water,” he said. “People portray it as a spring water and it’s not.”
Consumption of bottled water – both the kind that’s delivered in big bottles and the kind that you buy in small bottles at the supermarket – has exploded in the United States over the last decade.
“Bottled water emerged as the second largest commercial beverage category by volume in the United States in 2003, and … continued to grow at a rapid pace in 2006,” the Beverage Marketing Corporation said in its 2007 report. The corporation reported that total U.S. bottled water sales exceeded 8.25 billion gallons in 2006, a 9.5% increase over 2005. “That translates into an average of 27.6 gallons per person, which means U.S. residents now drink more bottled water annually than any other beverage, other than carbonated soft drinks.”
All that bottled water also translates into a flood of money for the beverage industry. According to the Washington, DC-based group Food and Water Watch, “in 2005, consumers shelled out more than $8.8 billion for almost 7.2 billion gallons of non-sparkling bottled water.”
The great American bottled water craze has been driven partly by the perception that everybody should drink plenty of water and partly by the perception that bottled water is more pure and healthful than the stuff that comes from the tap. The first perception may have some validity, but the second one often is just plain wrong.
In fact, as in the case of Sierra Springs – as well as Coca Cola’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina, among others – the stuff in the bottle and the stuff that comes out of the tap often are one and the same. In its report “Take Back the Tap,” Food and Water Watch wrote that “as much as 40% of bottled water is nothing more than the tap variety.”
And on the journey from the tap to the bottle and then to the water cooler or supermarket shelf, water goes through many steps of processing and transportation that critics say waste energy, increase pollution and add to the greenhouse effect.
The Sierra Springs plant in Portland covers almost 193,000 square feet and employs more than 80 people. It went into operation in the summer of 2006 with a permit to use more than 102,000 gallons of water per day and discharge 60,000 gallons per day into the city wastewater system.
Some of that huge volume of wastewater is created by washing out bottles before refilling them, but most of it results from the “reverse osmosis” process the plant uses to purify municipal water. In reverse osmosis, a common treatment method in the bottled water industry, water is forced through a membrane that traps particulate matter – that is, solids. The process doesn’t eliminate chemicals that may be dissolved in the water.
“Reverse osmosis is a fairly wasteful process,” said Steve Emery, president of EartH20. “Depending on the amount of solids in the water, there’s typically three to nine gallons of wastewater for each gallon of bottled water that’s produced.”
The wastewater from the reverse osmosis process that goes back into the treatment system is highly alkaline, Emery said – “the Ph level is equal to that of ammonia.” After a heavy rainfall the treatment system sometimes can’t handle all the runoff, and some is released into local rivers – which doesn’t do fish and other aquatic life any good. “If anybody’s ever had a goldfish they understand the value of keeping the Ph close to neutral,” Emery said.
EartH20 takes its water from Opal Springs, a natural source that flows at 108,000 gallons per minute at a constant 58 degrees. The company uses paper micron filters to remove any particulates and treats the water with ultraviolet light and ozone, as required by the US Food and Drug Administration. (Because bottled water is considered a “food” it’s regulated by the FDA; the Environmental Protection Agency oversees the safety of municipal water supplies.)
But coming from a spring or well doesn’t necessarily guarantee that a bottled water is purer or safer than water from the tap. In fact, according to Food and Water Watch, tap water may often be cleaner because it’s subject to more stringent regulations and closer monitoring.
The FDA – witness all the recent recalls of beef, salad greens and other products – is notoriously short-staffed and unable to do an adequate oversight job, Food and Water Watch says. According to the organization, a 1999 study of bottled water by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that “about one-quarter of the brands tested contained bacterial or chemical contamination in some samples at levels that violated ‘enforceable state standards or warning levels,’ and nearly one-fifth … ‘exceeded state bottled water microbial guidelines in at least some samples.'”
The idea that water in a bottle is especially pure and safe, Food and Water Watch says, “comes from the beverage industry spending millions of dollars a year to advertise and market bottled water as the quintessence of purity.”
Calling a brand of bottled water “Sierra Springs” when it really is just processed Portland city water is one example of that kind of marketing in action. The company that produces Sierra Springs, Atlanta-based DS Waters of America, sells eight different brands of bottled water in various regions of the country; five of them have the word “springs” in their name.
But if you go to the Sierra Springs website – or those of any of the other DS brands – to try to find out specifically where the water comes from, you’ll search in vain. All you’ll learn is that DS uses “springs, wells, artesian wells and treated municipal water” as the sources for its products.
Asked if she thought the name “Sierra Springs” was misleading, Shayron Barnes-Selby, vice president for public affairs at DS Waters, replied via e-mail: “Various types of bottled drinking water are manufactured and sold to customers and consumers under the Sierra Springs brand name. Our Sierra Springs product labels adhere to applicable general food and bottled water labeling regulations set forth by the federal Food and Drug Administration.”
In other words, DS isn’t breaking any law – which is frustrating for Steve Emery and other purveyors of real spring water. “There are labeling laws, but they [DS] were smart on how they established it,” Emery said. “They’re not calling themselves a spring water; the name is just ‘Sierra Springs.'”
Food and Water Watch and other environmental and consumer protection groups are lobbying Congress to get the labeling laws tightened up. In the meantime, the best advice may be to take bottled water marketing claims with a heavy helping of salt … or give up the bottle entirely.
bruce@tsweekly.com
This article appears in Mar 20-26, 2008.
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Nice work. Thank you for validating my opinion on bottled water as a whole. We all owe San Fran a big thank you (with a middle finger behind the back) for starting the bottled water trend years ago. By the way, did you hear now that SF is trying to ban bottled water because it’s bad for the environment? Funny…
Was it really SF that started the bottled water craze? I can’t remember.
HBM: Nice cheep shot at Sierra Springs, a quality Oregon Company. I was under the impression Bull Run had good quality water. Why not talk about all other brands that use filtered city water? Earth2O definately has a superior product so let the market decide.
Jed, Sierra Springs is not an “Oregon company” — it’s part of DS Waters, based in Atlanta GA. Did you bother to read the story?
80 people employed in Oregon makes it important whether the parent company is in state or not!!
Jed, I think you’re just one of those guys who likes to argue. If I said the sky was blue you’d say it was orange.
Eighty people is an infinitesimal portion of the Oregon work force. And I really don’t think one little story in the Source is going to put Sierra Springs / DA Waters out of business.
How dare you question the omnipotent unseen hand of the market HBM, you Marxist!
This one is for you Jed, if they were a quality Oregon company they would give something back to the oregon economy or their consumer through some kind of donation or support for the people that support them not just by supplying them with a reprocessed municiple source of water that requires waste to make.
What this story really is, is a marketing ploy by Earth 2 O. It doesn’t include really any of the other variables in the mater market. Like which waters are directly from the spring, also no matter which water your using most tap water is just as good with out the waste product of bottles. By the way Earth 2 Oisn’t special, it is just Culver Oregon city water which the plant get permission to bottle X number of gallons.
Your right Bob…all you are saying is Culver has really good water, NSWA certified at the source! That dosent mean anything though, Brilliant 😛
Hey Bob…I am a passionate believer in minimaly processed natural products. Here is an interesting test that will answer some of our questions.
Most of us have animals……take away your pets normal water dish and put out two identical containers to replace it. Fill one with processed Portland city water, and the other with spring or artisian well water. Let your pet show you which one they gravitate to. Let me know the results of your argument with your pet!
Just imagine.
You’re camped in a picturesque canyon formed in ancient times by the power of the earths natural forces. Out of the canyon wall flows crystal blue water, untouched by man, freely given by nature itself. Thirst comes upon you. You desperately search for your Dasani or Sierra Springs water……………that tap water from the walmart’s of the water world………………Come on, what would your body really be tempted to drink?
We’re fortunate in Oregon to have such a natural wonder as Opal Sring delivering naturally pure water for us to choose. That’s my bodies choice, how about yours?
Lee, you’d better be damn sure that water is REALLY untouched by man or you could end up with giardia (or worse).
Actually there’s nothing WRONG with the Sierra Springs water as water — it’s the misleading name that’s the problem. IMO.
Richard: I’m going to try that experiment but I suspect my dogs won’t give a damn.
to HMB, …..nothing wrong Sierra Springs water? Ya, I guess some of us have come to accept acetaminophen, caffine, ibuprophen and sulfamethoxazole in our water. Guess you don’t get many headaches! As for me I’ll take the water that nature provides naturally.
Funny what a hub-a-lou this Portland city water issue has began. It’s not just Portland city water, it’s all ground water municipalities across the nation! We are a heavily druged society much different than 50 years ago. There are more people who are taking more medicine who expell more medicines into the waste stream. The medicines have now reached the sources. Now the medicines are showing up in our drinking water. I believe this is just the beging of the problem. Water companies as well as utilities should supply us with labratory analysis reports of their product. If you don’t know what you’re drinking-why drink it? I know there are companies who do supply this information and I believe the local Culver company is one of them.
i got one thing to say:bottled water sux!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Opal Springs water has no radiation traces from WW2, meaning it’s been underground at least that long. There are no birth control chemicals, sulfa drugs, ibuprofen, caffeine or anything else man made in it. As a consumer, you should go to your municipal water utility office and ask for their latest water quality report. They are required to have an updated one for the public. Culver and Jefferson County are tremendously lucky to have Opal Springs water, and let’s hope the source stays the way it is, clean, clear and the same temperature since the first measurements were taken 100 some years ago. The fact that a bottling company has their own water meter and buys this product to sell in convenient packaging is just capitalism.
I think it’s funny that this is an article about “getting off the bottle” yet it manages to sympathize with Earth20, which is IN FACT a BOTTLED WATER COMPANY. 🙂 One thing I’ve seen becoming popular in many businesses is water dispensing coolers like the ones from Macro Solutions Pure Water Technology. My business has one and it not only filters out the tastes, odors and pharmaceuticals from the tap water, but also oxygenates it which keeps it fresh and from sliming up inside like many other coolers do. As a result, we are supporting our local community and eco system, but getting a convenient way of getting fresh cold and hot drinking water for our employees that tastes great!
As long as Portland subarbs continue to fluoridate their water, they will stay in business. Adding fluoridation chemicals is harmful to us and the environment. There is NO fluoride in their water which is why we purchase it.
Nick Seifert and his bunch of racist thugs over at Earth20 have great water. Unfortunately they dont deliver to niggers. something to keep in mind if people of color decide they want fresh drinking water. Earth20 will not supply it to them. Sad state of affairs when a company can be openly racist in todays day and age.
Does Earth2O respond to these posts? I would like to see their response to Joey Blow at the beginning of this thread. What exactly does he allege and how support it.
Just read all these comments and the bottom line people is that most city and all bottled water is not good for you. A good home filtration is the only way to be sure that your getting the best water for your body. The environmental cost of this useless product should be of serious consideration as well.
I grew up on drinking bottled water, and I just can’t go back. Now that I’m older I think I’ll be looking into getting a bottled water delivery service so that I don’t have to carry these bottles in bulks from the grocery store to my car. I like reading through your article about these water bottles even though you don’t think that they should be as popular as they are today. http://www.mountainvalleywaterar.com/