Critic wants lid on bottled water program

IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers Calleguas Municipal Water District was trying to make a point that its tap water is just as good as more expensive bottled water, but the effort may have backfired.

Calleguas provides potable water to residents of Oak Park, Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park, Moorpark, Camarillo, Simi Valley and part of Bell Canyon.

Five years ago Calleguas began promoting its drinking water by providing free bottles of the stuff to customers in the cities of Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks. Since then, some 125,000 of the 12- and 18ounce bottles have been ordered—at a cost of about $54,000.

Alice Sterling, a Simi Valley resident, found out about the practice while serving as a volunteer at meetings of the Sustainable Simi Valley committee where the bottled water was served. Sterling looked at the label and noticed the water was bottled not at Calleguas, but in Los Angeles County. She decided to do some research and was upset by what she learned.

Sterling found out the water was trucked 50 miles away to a City of Commerce bottling plant, then driven back to Calleguas users, adding to road congestion and air pollution. It's not sure whether the Calleguas bottles were recycled.

"A lot of people feel strongly about plastic bottles and how they get wasted and hurt the environment," said Sterling, who is employed as an environmental coordinator for the city of Pasadena. "There are environmentally, socially and economically superior ways to promote the safety of municipal tap water."

Environmental experts say quantities of carbon dioxide are released during the manufacturing of a plastic water bottle. In addition, a bottle that holds one liter of water consumes five liters of water during the course of its manufacturing.

Calleguas customers also pay for the human resources required to manage the water bottling, its pickup and its distribution, Sterling said.

"When you understand all the impacts, you realize, wow, this doesn't really make environmental sense, taking a truck, filling it up with water and taking it to another city to be bottled," Sterling said. "Now that we know the facts, we can't possibly continue with it."

Eric Bergh, Calleguas manager of resources, said the district's water bottle distribution was to show consumers that their tap water is just as safe—if not safer— than the bottled water purchased at a store.

"We're bottling our water just to kind of help send a message that the water in this bottle goes to a higher level of scrutiny than what you buy in the store," Bergh said. "Right or wrong, good or bad, that was the reality. Various other agencies have done this, too."

Sterling voiced her concerns to Calleguas officials and decided their protap water marketing approach was conceived with good intentions.

"My understanding is that they were providing a service (that was) asked for by the communities that they serve. I think there was a very altruistic meaning behind what they were trying to do," Sterling said.

Bergh told the Acorn that the water district probably won't order any more bottles.

"Given the budget concerns we're all facing, we can use the money elsewhere to bolster such programs as encouraging highefficiency washers and toilets and landscape programs," Bergh said.

In a letter to the Simi Valley City Council, Sterling requested that the city immediately discontinue its participation in "this absurd and wasteful practice."

"The Simi Valley City Council—from a building supplied with safe, potable water—consumes water from these bottles on the dais for the whole world to see," Sterling said.

Simi Valley Assistant City Manager Laura Behjan was familiar with Sterling's letter but did not know if Calleguas was endnot know if Calleguas was ending the bottled water program. Behjan said the city uses the water bottles for volunteers at its annual arroyo cleanup.

"If they were not to receive water from some source like this, we would still be providing them with water because they don't have access to water at the arroyo," Behjan said. "Through this program it didn't cost the city anything. Now it will."

Sterling disagrees with Behjan.

"In my mind nothing's free. Somebody's paying for it somewhere," Sterling said. "What price are we paying for this free water?

"Those plastic bottles are a lot of effort for a single use, something you're only going to spend a few minutes on and then discard. It's just not sustainable for generation after generation," Sterling said.

Behjan didn't know if the City Council was still using the water bottles at its meetings.

"That's certainly something we could look at and see if we could make a change there," Behjan said. "There certainly is a lot of good information Ms. Sterling has provided. It creates awareness and asks people to think about their practices and how they're using these various things."