Another Water-Bottling Plant

A recent story in the Star Tribune told of a possible water-bottling plant in a south metro exurb call Elko New Market. It would draw 310 million gallons of water a year from the area's aquifer, up from the current DNR limit of 135 million they could do by right (!).

The company in question is California-based Niagara Bottling, which ships water all over the country. Their plan would more than triple the amount used by the public in Elko New Market currently. (They have opened similar-sized operations in four other states recently.)

Aside from the general idiocy of bottling water in plastic to ship it to other places, there are two things about this story that make me angry:

• The fact that we have no consumer protection from blatant misrepresentation in branding anymore. A name like "Niagara" is used to sell a particular idea of water, when the water is actually chemically treated public tap water from a range of places around the country. 
• The fact that Elko New Market is a distant exurb (located most of the way to Northfield!), with plans to grow from its current population of 5,000 to 80,000. That's what's known as sprawl, and is not what should be planned by anyone who understands the climate crisis. 
  

The reason town officials are in favor of the bottling plant is because they've over-built in anticipation of sprawl: the plant would go into an industrial park that has sat empty for eight years and pump water from an expensive, over-capacity water-treatment plant they opened in 2016. A city council member is quoted in the Star Trib story this way: "You'll hear that it's a great small town, community feel...but the water's so damn expensive."

Officials want to increase their tax base by shipping part of the area's aquifer to other parts of the country: the very definition of extraction. And all to fulfill a so-far failed plan. 

If the new bottling plant succeeds in making water in the town cheaper, though, it could have the effect of making home-building and other development in the town more attractive, encouraging more sprawl. Just what we need!

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Other posts related to transporting water:

I wrote about a not-dissimilar Poland Springs plan in the state of Maine 14 years ago here and here. The second link gives my estimate of the 2008 profit margins on a bottle of the Poland Springs water, compared to the amount they were paying for the water in Maine. (The Star Trib's story about Elko New Market doesn't say how much Niagara Bottling would pay for the water.)

Another Bad Pipeline…This Time It's Water (October 2022) about ideas to pipe Mississippi or Great Lakes water to the Southwest.

Driving the Drink (section of a Too Many Tabs post, September 2011) about the generally bad idea of transporting water and drinks of any kind over long distances. 

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An update on the outcome of the Elko New Market bottled water plant decision from 2023.