Veto Washes Out Key California Water Bill

By Mark Schlosberg
California Director
Food & Water Watch

With California in the midst of a drought and many communities experiencing water rationing, it is increasingly important for our elected officials to take concrete steps to ensure the continued vitality of our water resources. In this context, Governor Schwarzenegger’s recent veto of AB 2275 (Fuentes, D-Los Angeles) is particularly disturbing.

AB 2275, which passed the legislature with broad support, was a simple and straightforward piece of legislation. It would have merely required the public disclosure of how much California water is being bottled by water bottling companies. This information is important for policy makers at the state and local level to evaluate the impact of bottling operations on local water supplies and make decisions about how our precious water resources are allocated.

This is especially important in California, where there are more than 100 bottling facilities. While the amount of water that is bottled is small in relation to the total amount of fresh water used by Californians, the extraction of water for bottling can have dramatic effects on the local environment and particular watersheds.

Over pumping from particular locations can deplete local aquifers, resulting in wells drying up and river flow decreasing. This has been shown to be a problem in local communities and is part of the reason that community activists in areas targeted by water bottling companies have been increasingly vocal in their opposition to new bottling projects.

Besides the immediate impact on the local environment, bottled water also has other secondary environmental impacts. It takes a significant amount of oil to make the plastic bottles that hold the water and to ship the water around the country. Recycling of plastic bottles is inefficient, but most bottles are not recycled – 86% of them are simply discarded and end up in landfills.

And where does the water that is pumped from California go? We really do not know. There is currently no accurate accounting of how much of California bottled water is exported out of state.

As AB 2275 moved though the legislature, the only public opposition, ironically, came from the Department of Public Health, which opposed disclosure of the amount of water pumped on the grounds that it constituted “confidential business information.” This, despite the lack of public opposition from industry. With California water resources under increasing pressure; however, there is no reasonable argument that such information should be treated as a trade secret. Water resources are public resources and the public should have a right to know about how much of our water is being extracted – possibly to be shipped out of state.

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