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Comment by daflip | Hacker News Reader

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".

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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.

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.

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