Press Release:Virginia Governor Acting at Bottled Water Industry’s Behest?

 

Governor McDonnell’s move to revive state spending on bottled water comes at the same time that the Governor has introduced state budget proposals that would cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for K-12 education, including the elimination of school breakfast programs for low-income children.    Media coverage of the ban has included positive reactions to McDonnell’s action from Chris Saxman, Board Member of the International Bottled Water Association and employee of Shenandoah Valley Water Company, a major water bottler in Virginia.   Not coincidentally, initial reviews of state spending on bottled water show that Shenandoah Valley was far and away the single largest recipient of government money spent on bottled water; for example, the bottler received over $101,000 in cash payments from government agencies in FY09.   

 

“Governor McDonnell’s decision sends the wrong message about the state’s high quality public water systems – systems the Governor has been entrusted to support and protect,” said Leslie Samuelrich, chief of staff at Corporate Accountability International. “McDonnell ran on a campaign platform that promised common-sense steps to curb state spending and protect the environment.  His actions today seem to suggest he is more interested in protecting cushy state contracts for the bottled water industry than protecting the environment or prioritizing state funding for vital public services.”  

 

While former Governor Kaine was in office, Corporate Accountability International’s Think Outside the Bottle campaign worked with allied organizations and members across Virginia to encourage the state officials to begin phasing out state spending on bottled water. Prior to McDonnell’s reversal, Virginia was among a handful of states with firm commitments to cut bottled water from the budget, including Illinois, New York, and Colorado. 

 

                                                                        # # #

 

 

Additional background about the bottled water industry in Virginia:

 

The Shenandoah Valley Water Company website includes the following statements about bottled water and tap water:  

“How is bottled water different from tap water? 

Consistent quality and taste are two of the principle differences between bottled water and tap water.
 

Quality is in every container of bottled water. It's consistent and it is inspected and monitored by governmental and private laboratories. Unfortunately, tap water can be inconsistent -- sometimes it might be okay while other times it is not. While bottled water originates from protected sources (75% from underground aquifers and springs), tap water comes mostly from rivers and lakes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reported that hundreds of tap water sources have failed to meet minimum standards. Another factor to consider is the distance tap water has to travel and what it goes through before it reaches the tap.

Taste is the other major reason people prefer bottled water versus tap water. Chlorine is most often used to disinfect tap water. That can leave an aftertaste and lead to other problems. Some bottlers use ozone, a form of supercharged oxygen, and/or ultraviolet light as the final disinfecting agents, both of which leave no taste or chemical trace .”
 

These statements illustrate the bottled water industry’s efforts to compete with and undermine public water systems, by suggesting that bottled water is better regulated than the tap. In reality, FDA regulation of the bottled water industry is largely inadequate – for example, in 2009 the Government Accountability Office released a report titled “FDA Safety and Consumer Protections Are Often Less Stringent Than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water. ”  This report found that on the average the FDA had 2.5 staff people available to inspect hundreds of bottled water facilities across the country.  The GAO concluded that the FDA lacked capacity to adequately monitor water quality throughout the industry and largely relies on bottlers to police themselves.   

 

Shenandoah’s Valley statement about how treating water with ozone leaves no chemical trace is also inaccurate.  Treatment with ozonation can sometimes cause a chemical reaction with minerals in the water that creates the compound bromate, a potential carcinogen.  In 2004, Coca-Cola recalled half a million bottles of its Dasani bottled water brand on the UK market after testing showed elevated levels of bromate beyond the legal safety limits.