Forest Service orders Arrowhead bottled water to shut down California pipeline | Hacker News Reader

Forest Service orders Arrowhead bottled water to shut down California pipeline

latimes.com

143 pointssizzle28 comments

Sounds like BlueTriton simply f'd around and found out. For starters, they were flagged for operating without a permit:

> The Forest Service announced the decision one month after a local environmental group, Save Our Forest Assn., filed a lawsuit arguing the agency was illegally allowing the company to continue operating under a permit that was past its expiration date.

In addition to not having a permit, even if they did have one they were using the water for non-permitted purposes:

> In the July Forest Service letter, Nobles said the company was repeatedly asked to provide “additional information necessary to assure compliance with BlueTriton’s existing permit” but that the requests were “consistently left unanswered.”

> Nobles said that under the regulations, he may consider whether the water used exceeds the “needs of forest resources.”

> He also said that while the company had said in its application that the water would go for bottled water, its reports showed that 94% to 98% of the amount of water diverted monthly was delivered to the old hotel property for “undisclosed purposes,” and that “for months BlueTriton has indicated it has bottled none of the water taken,” while also significantly increasing the volumes extracted.

> Records show about 319 acre-feet, or 104 million gallons, flowed through the company’s pipes in 2023.

It's 3 gallons a second.

Bottled water is dumb so it's not like I care about going to bat for Arrowhead, but if you think this has any environmental impact whatsoever you completely lack an understanding of the orders of magnitude involved in the water cycle.

Of course it will have at least some environmental impact if the water stops being directed in to plastic bottles and instead is left flow along on the land. 3 gallons a second is still a pretty significant flow of water - at least enough to power a small stream or creek. Nothing in the broader scheme of things of course, but you can't say there's zero environmental impact "whatsoever".

3 gallons a second is not enough to power a small stream or creek. It’s roughly ‘rivulet’ or ‘wet spot’ territory, and only roughly 10x garden hose flow rates at typical household water pressures.

I’m honestly shocked they could run a commercial bottling operation off that. That’s only 180 gpm, or .4 cubic ft/s.

A typical 5000 gallon commercial water carrier truck is going to take about 30 minutes to fill off that, and that isn’t much water by natural standards.

For instance a 100 ft diameter pond, 3 ft deep (quite small) holds 176,256 gallons, and due to soil absorption and evaporation might never fill up from that source. Even if plastic lined and in a non-desert environment (this one isn’t) that’s over 40 hrs at full flow rate to fill it.

On other hand calculating it in roughly 0.5 l bottles make numbers seem tad more sensible. 1 gallon is what 8 0.5 l bottles. So 1440 bottles a minute or 24 per second. And total would be 800 million bottles a year. Which actually seems not unreasonable number to run factory on. Gallon is not 4 litres, but less, still it is not that slow rate if you think of how much waters go to each bottle.

Good point with those tiny bottles!

Well I'm drinking out of one now, and coke cans are way smaller than this, so tiny isn't the adjective I'd pick.

Doubt you're walking around with a gallon jug in your backpack either.

Most beverages are sold in 0.5L to 1L bottles (a wine bottle is 0.75L), so "those tiny bottles" make the most sense when we're talking about a bottled water company.

I carry around 1 liter bottles, which is about the smallest before ‘consume in one gulp’. But I do drink a lot of water.

Sure, 0.5L is a small bottle, 1L is medium, 2L is large.

I feel like tiny sounds a bit too sarcastic though.

Apparently Nestle bought the operation, and it's been using the water for something other than bottled water:

    ... "for months BlueTriton has indicated it has bottled none of the water taken,”
    while also significantly increasing the volumes extracted.

Sounds like they've been up to something shady.

For perspective - 3 gallons a second (180 per minute) is a 2-3" pipe at maximum possible flow rate. In other words, a decent sized fire hose.

For perspective, Strawberry Creek is surrounded by desert or semi-arid biomes, so 3 gallons/second is a lot of water for the area.

I should have been more clear, I think that 3 gallons/second is quite a lot of water; much more than many creeks that I enjoy in the outdoors.

https://archive.is/4QrBw

Wonder if this will hold in the courts given SCOTUS ruling on power of regulatory agencies (ie, EPA enforcement in O&G industry is stagnant). My understanding is that unless it’s explicitly written into the law, then enforcement will not be applied. Hope somebody with legal background can chime in though

Everybody is pretending that ruling didn't happen and will probably force you to drag them through the courts kicking and screaming before they give up the power that they have become accustomed to.

I think there is a hope they can play lawfare games until they get the court stacked in their favor again.

>I think there is a hope they can play lawfare games until they get the court stacked in their favor again.

I'm sorry, but what instance of "court stacking" are you referring to when you say again?

The way the the Supreme Court has been stacked today (via Republicans refusing to consider Obama's SCOTUS nominee for nearly a year because the election was coming "soon", but fast-tracking Trump's nominee three weeks before the election) has, in my memory, been unprecedented.

Was there something similar that the "pro-environmental-regulation" side did in the past that I'm not aware of?

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/democrats-introd...

If anything, Loper would make it easier for the Forest Service, since it was the reissue of the (long-expired) permit in 2018 that would fail court examination as "arbitrary and capricious." And that permit was only for 5 years, so the re-issued permit expired in 2023. No matter how the law is interpreted, BlueTriton does not currently have a valid permit to take water from this spring.

The Forest Service order is just the second order barring them from using this water; the California water board has already issued a cease-and-desist, and Loper would have no affect on that order.

Where is the water coming from in the mountains anyone know?

From TFA

> The Forest Service has been charging a permit fee of $2,500 per year. There has been no charge for the water.

Disgusting. Not a moment too soon. Couldn't happen to a nicer company and all that. /s

[disclaimer: LA County resident]

Completely unbelievable that they were allowed to get away with paying essentially nothing for so long. Glad some action is being taken.

Water cost calculations in the West are always a bit incomplete without a discussion of water rights. It takes around 500 gallons of water to make one hamburger. [1] The reason it makes economic sense is because agricultural water is 'free' at the margin. Farmers grow alfalfa and feed it to cows. Alfalfa is ridiculously water-intensive, at 5 feet of water per acre.

In that context, giving 'free' water to a drinking water company doesn't really seem outrageous per se.

[1] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/23921/does-one-...

There’s another company that pays 99$ a year for a similar lease and I’m unable to locate the source.

Most bottled water companies have this sort of sweetheart deal because we as humans don’t seem to value the thing that keeps us alive properly.

Freshwater speculation will be huge in the future.

Related: Nestle pays $200 per year to bottle water near Flint, MI (2017) [1].

As a Michigan native who has family, friends, and coworkers affected by the Flint water crisis, very frustrating.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/29/nestle-pays-...

> Freshwater speculation will be huge in the future.

The Harvard endowment bought up some real estate in the wine country of Paso Robles, California because of the future value of associated water rights.

https://vinepair.com/booze-news/harvard-buys-californias-wat...

>[disclaimer: LA County resident]

Willing to give up your water to restore Mona Lake and the rest of the Owens Valley? What LA did to the central valley is equally disgusting.

How about willing to build nuclear power plants and use desal. LA is on the ocean.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com