BlueTriton, the company that owns Arrowhead brand, has been taking water from San Bernardino springs for more than 100 years
California has ordered the company that owns Arrowhead bottled water to stop using some of the natural springs it has utilized for more than a century, following a years-long campaign by environmentalists to stop the operation.
Regulators on Tuesday voted to significantly reduce how much water BlueTriton – the owner of the Arrowhead brand – can take from public lands in the San Bernardino mountains. The ruling is a victory for community groups who have said for years that the bottled water firm has drained an important creek that serves as a habitat for wildlife and helps protect the area from wildfires.
Arrowhead bottled water traces its roots to a hotel at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains that first opened in 1885 and began selling bottled spring water from its basement in 1906. But environmental and community groups say the company has never had permission to take water from the springs in the San Bernardino national forest.
The state water resources control board agreed that BlueTriton does not have permission to use the water and ordered the company to stop. The order does not ban the company from taking any water from the mountain, but it significantly reduces how much it can take.
BlueTriton (depressingly corporate garbage name, btw) is still basically Nestlé.
Reporting shouldn’t be allowed to further obfuscate the corporate hierarchies involved in fucking up everyone’s lives. If reporters included all the arcane structural and legal bullshit that corporations pull in order to escape even the slightest sliver of responsibility (and spin public perception), the average reader would be much more aware of the corporatocratic hellscape in which we live.
Edit: added a bit because it’s technically not Nestlé but that’s the whole problem as the technicality is about as far as it goes…