Pumping massive quantities of water from below-ground aquifers depletes surface water

In a world where making environmentally friendly decisions is an increasingly confusing task, seeing the big picture and being well-informed are paramount. Because of this, it is distressing to read misleading information disseminated by conglomerates such as Nestle Waters, the corporate parent of Poland Spring.

There is no doubt about it: Nestle Waters strives to promulgate that it is a responsible, eco-friendly corporation. In letters to the editor, it has outlined the “positive effects” another Poland Spring facility would have for the Maine economy and environment.

Its Web site details the importance of “responsible management” of our most precious resource. And Poland Spring now markets a new “Eco-Shape” bottle, which uses 30 percent less plastic than comparable leading beverage brands.

Nestle Waters also backs its eco-image with donations to The Nature Conservancy and similar institutions, and explains all construction for new facilities must meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building standards. They are even switching their trucking fleet to biodiesel!

With all of these fantastic efforts toward environment conservation, what tree-hugger couldn’t fall in love with Nestle Waters?

One who sees the big picture. These efforts are a desperate and costly marketing strategy designed to distract the consumer from the truth: bottling water is fundamentally environmentally irresponsible.

On its Web site, Nestle does a great job summarizing the first part of the problem: freshwater is scarce. Ninety-seven percent of the planet’s water is salt, unfit for consumption, leaving about 3 percent freshwater. Of that, 2 percent is frozen in glaciers and icebergs. This remaining 1 percent comes in three forms: precipitation, surface water and underground aquifers. Agriculture uses between 65 and 70 percent of this total.

Earth’s population is using that small remaining amount of freshwater faster than the hydrological cycle can replenish it; the legitimacy of the water crisis does not rest upon some busybody environmentalist cuckoo theory, but upon hydrological realities.

How does bottled water fit into this picture? The problem with bottled water, and hence the entire premise upon which Nestle Waters existence is based, is as follows:

• Plastic into landfills. Bottling water pumps huge quantities of freshwater from our limited supply, adds a plastic bottle – of which approximately 13 percent is recycled, and the remaining 87 percent goes to landfill – and then sells, at a profit, a product that directly competes with local municipal water supply.

• Degradation of municipal water supplies. As people come to rely less on tap water and begin to consider it inferior or distasteful, a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs: less policy and financial resources are devoted to maintaining water quality in municipal systems, and they degrade. People who cannot afford bottled water are then victimized.

• Destruction of ecosystems. During pumping, aquifers are depleted and surface water levels are affected significantly, harming ecosystems that depend on them. Spawning salmon are trapped and cannot reproduce.

Recreational sanctuaries used for canoeing, swimming, and bird-watching dry up.

Essential freshwater flow to saltwater oyster and other seafood resource estuaries slows to a trickle.

Homeowners’ wells cease to provide adequate supply.

Environmental havoc is wrought due to the little-known, but scientific fact that an inexorable connection exists between ground and surface water: pump enough groundwater, the water table drops, surface water drains in to fill the underground voids, and lakes and steams disappear.

• Increased carbon emissions. Trucks and barges transport billions of gallons of bottled water (up 1,300 percent from 1978 to 5.4 billion gallons in 2001) across the globe. This system is massively inefficient as Italians drink Poland Spring and Mainers drink San Pellegrino, and fossil fuels burned in transportation to achieve this odd exchange of the same commodity contribute to overall carbon levels in the atmosphere.

Bottling water flies in the face of environmentalism. Nestle Waters struggles to put on a good face with its list of out-of-context defenses. But in this world of increasingly limited resources, balance and moderation are key to maintaining an adequate water supply for future generations.

Bottling water is incongruous with a responsible, long-term vision.

Perhaps a few astute citizens will instead choose to tote around that unfathomably cumbersome bottle of warm tap water, and leave the Poland Spring to those a little less informed.

Karen Hebold is a first-year graduate student at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, pursuing a degree in urban and regional planning. She lives in Lewiston.