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Forest Service orders Arrowhead bottled water company to shut down California pipeline

News Feed
Wednesday, August 7, 2024

In a decision that could end a years-long battle over commercial extraction of water from public lands, the U.S. Forest Service has ordered the company that sells Arrowhead bottled water to shut down its pipeline that collects water from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains. The Forest Service notified BlueTriton Brands in a letter last month, saying its application for a new permit has been denied.District Ranger Michael Nobles wrote in the July 26 letter that the company “must cease operations” in the San Bernardino National Forest and submit a plan for removing all its pipes and equipment from federal land.The company has challenged the denial in court.Environmental activists praised the decision.“It’s a huge victory after 10 years,” said Amanda Frye, an activist who has campaigned against the taking of water from the forest. “I’m hoping that we can restore Strawberry Creek, have its springs flowing again, and get the habitat back.”She and other opponents say BlueTriton‘s operation has dramatically reduced creek flow and is causing significant environmental harm.The Forest Service announced the decision one month after a local environmental group, Save Our Forest Assn., filed a lawsuit arguing the agency was illegally allowing the company to continue operating under a permit that was past its expiration date.The company has denied that its use of water is harming the environment and has argued it should be allowed to continue piping water from the national forest.BlueTriton Brands and its predecessors “have continuously operated under a series of special use permits for nearly a century,” the company said in an email.“This denial has no legal merit, is unsupported by the facts, and negatively impacts the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians,” the company said, adding that the tribe uses a portion of the water that passes through the pipeline and relies on that water for firefighting needs.Representatives of the tribe did not respond to a request for comment.If the Forest Service decision stands, it would prevent the company from using the namesake source of its brand, Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.The springs in the mountains north of San Bernardino, which have been a source for bottled water for generations, are named after an arrowhead-shaped natural rock formation on the mountainside.State officials have said that the first facilities to divert water in the Strawberry Creek watershed were built in 1929, and the system expanded over the years as additional boreholes were drilled into the mountainside.At the base of the mountain and near the company’s water pipeline stands the long-closed Arrowhead Springs hotel property, which the San Manuel tribe bought in 2016. The company has said that under a decades-old agreement, a portion of the water that flows through the 4.5-mile pipeline goes to the Arrowhead Springs property, and a portion of the water is delivered to a roadside tank and hauled on trucks to a bottling plant.The Forest Service has been charging a permit fee of $2,500 per year. There has been no charge for the water.Controversy over the issue erupted when the Desert Sun reported in 2015 that the Forest Service was allowing Nestlé to siphon water using a permit that listed 1988 as the expiration date.The Forest Service then began a review of the permit, and in 2018 granted a new permit for up to five years. The revelations about Nestlé piping water from the forest sparked an outpouring of opposition and prompted several complaints to California regulators questioning the company’s water rights claims, which led to a lengthy investigation by state water regulators.BlueTriton Brands took over the bottled water business in 2021 when Nestlé’s North American bottled water division was purchased by private-equity firm One Rock Capital Partners and investment firm Metropoulos & Co. (Last month, BlueTriton and Primo Water Corp. announced plans to merge and form a new company.)State officials determined last year that the company has been unlawfully diverting much of the water without valid water rights — agreeing with Frye and others, who had questioned the company’s claims and presented historical documents. The State Water Resources Control Board voted to order the company to halt its “unauthorized diversions” of water. But BlueTriton Brands sued to challenge that decision, arguing the process was rife with problems.In the July Forest Service letter, Nobles said the company was repeatedly asked to provide “additional information necessary to assure compliance with BlueTriton’s existing permit” but that the requests were “consistently left unanswered.”Nobles said that under the regulations, he may consider whether the water used exceeds the “needs of forest resources.”He also said that while the company had said in its application that the water would go for bottled water, its reports showed that 94% to 98% of the amount of water diverted monthly was delivered to the old hotel property for “undisclosed purposes,” and that “for months BlueTriton has indicated it has bottled none of the water taken,” while also significantly increasing the volumes extracted.“This increase represents significantly more water than has ever been delivered previously,” Nobles wrote. “The hotel and conference facility on the property is not operating, and there is no explanation of where the millions of gallons of water per month are going.”He said the decision is final and cannot be appealed.Nobles ordered the company to “stop use of the BlueTriton pipeline” within seven days “by severing or blocking the pipe at each tunnel or borehole” at a dozen sites; to remove the locks on its equipment; and to submit a plan within three months for removing all of its infrastructure.Forest Service officials did not respond to an email requesting comments about the decision.BlueTriton’s spokesperson said the Forest Service has agreed to a “temporary 30-day stay for the sole purpose of supplying the needs of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, including for fire prevention.”“We will continue to operate in compliance with all state and federal laws while we explore legal and regulatory options,” the spokesperson said.The company argues in the lawsuit that the Forest Service has violated federal law with a decision that is “arbitrary and capricious.”BlueTriton said studies by its scientific consultants have found that the taking of water “has not negatively affected the Strawberry Canyon environment.”Records show about 319 acre-feet, or 104 million gallons, flowed through the company’s pipes in 2023.In the rugged canyon downhill from the springs, Strawberry Creek has continued flowing in recent years. But when Frye has hiked along the creek, she has found that its western fork, located downhill from the boreholes, is just a trickle, forming a series of puddles among the bushes and trees.“Our goal was to get that water back in the creek and protect the forest,” Frye said. “The proof will be when the pipes and all that infrastructure is taken out and it’s restored. But I think we’re nearing the end.”

The Forest Service told bottled water company BlueTriton Brands to stop piping water out of a California national forest. The company is suing to challenge the decision.

In a decision that could end a years-long battle over commercial extraction of water from public lands, the U.S. Forest Service has ordered the company that sells Arrowhead bottled water to shut down its pipeline that collects water from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains.

The Forest Service notified BlueTriton Brands in a letter last month, saying its application for a new permit has been denied.

District Ranger Michael Nobles wrote in the July 26 letter that the company “must cease operations” in the San Bernardino National Forest and submit a plan for removing all its pipes and equipment from federal land.

The company has challenged the denial in court.

Environmental activists praised the decision.

“It’s a huge victory after 10 years,” said Amanda Frye, an activist who has campaigned against the taking of water from the forest. “I’m hoping that we can restore Strawberry Creek, have its springs flowing again, and get the habitat back.”

She and other opponents say BlueTriton‘s operation has dramatically reduced creek flow and is causing significant environmental harm.

The Forest Service announced the decision one month after a local environmental group, Save Our Forest Assn., filed a lawsuit arguing the agency was illegally allowing the company to continue operating under a permit that was past its expiration date.

The company has denied that its use of water is harming the environment and has argued it should be allowed to continue piping water from the national forest.

BlueTriton Brands and its predecessors “have continuously operated under a series of special use permits for nearly a century,” the company said in an email.

“This denial has no legal merit, is unsupported by the facts, and negatively impacts the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians,” the company said, adding that the tribe uses a portion of the water that passes through the pipeline and relies on that water for firefighting needs.

Representatives of the tribe did not respond to a request for comment.

If the Forest Service decision stands, it would prevent the company from using the namesake source of its brand, Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.

The springs in the mountains north of San Bernardino, which have been a source for bottled water for generations, are named after an arrowhead-shaped natural rock formation on the mountainside.

State officials have said that the first facilities to divert water in the Strawberry Creek watershed were built in 1929, and the system expanded over the years as additional boreholes were drilled into the mountainside.

At the base of the mountain and near the company’s water pipeline stands the long-closed Arrowhead Springs hotel property, which the San Manuel tribe bought in 2016. The company has said that under a decades-old agreement, a portion of the water that flows through the 4.5-mile pipeline goes to the Arrowhead Springs property, and a portion of the water is delivered to a roadside tank and hauled on trucks to a bottling plant.

The Forest Service has been charging a permit fee of $2,500 per year. There has been no charge for the water.

Controversy over the issue erupted when the Desert Sun reported in 2015 that the Forest Service was allowing Nestlé to siphon water using a permit that listed 1988 as the expiration date.

The Forest Service then began a review of the permit, and in 2018 granted a new permit for up to five years. The revelations about Nestlé piping water from the forest sparked an outpouring of opposition and prompted several complaints to California regulators questioning the company’s water rights claims, which led to a lengthy investigation by state water regulators.

BlueTriton Brands took over the bottled water business in 2021 when Nestlé’s North American bottled water division was purchased by private-equity firm One Rock Capital Partners and investment firm Metropoulos & Co. (Last month, BlueTriton and Primo Water Corp. announced plans to merge and form a new company.)

State officials determined last year that the company has been unlawfully diverting much of the water without valid water rights — agreeing with Frye and others, who had questioned the company’s claims and presented historical documents. The State Water Resources Control Board voted to order the company to halt its “unauthorized diversions” of water. But BlueTriton Brands sued to challenge that decision, arguing the process was rife with problems.

In the July Forest Service letter, Nobles said the company was repeatedly asked to provide “additional information necessary to assure compliance with BlueTriton’s existing permit” but that the requests were “consistently left unanswered.”

Nobles said that under the regulations, he may consider whether the water used exceeds the “needs of forest resources.”

He also said that while the company had said in its application that the water would go for bottled water, its reports showed that 94% to 98% of the amount of water diverted monthly was delivered to the old hotel property for “undisclosed purposes,” and that “for months BlueTriton has indicated it has bottled none of the water taken,” while also significantly increasing the volumes extracted.

“This increase represents significantly more water than has ever been delivered previously,” Nobles wrote. “The hotel and conference facility on the property is not operating, and there is no explanation of where the millions of gallons of water per month are going.”

He said the decision is final and cannot be appealed.

Nobles ordered the company to “stop use of the BlueTriton pipeline” within seven days “by severing or blocking the pipe at each tunnel or borehole” at a dozen sites; to remove the locks on its equipment; and to submit a plan within three months for removing all of its infrastructure.

Forest Service officials did not respond to an email requesting comments about the decision.

BlueTriton’s spokesperson said the Forest Service has agreed to a “temporary 30-day stay for the sole purpose of supplying the needs of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, including for fire prevention.”

“We will continue to operate in compliance with all state and federal laws while we explore legal and regulatory options,” the spokesperson said.

The company argues in the lawsuit that the Forest Service has violated federal law with a decision that is “arbitrary and capricious.”

BlueTriton said studies by its scientific consultants have found that the taking of water “has not negatively affected the Strawberry Canyon environment.”

Records show about 319 acre-feet, or 104 million gallons, flowed through the company’s pipes in 2023.

In the rugged canyon downhill from the springs, Strawberry Creek has continued flowing in recent years. But when Frye has hiked along the creek, she has found that its western fork, located downhill from the boreholes, is just a trickle, forming a series of puddles among the bushes and trees.

“Our goal was to get that water back in the creek and protect the forest,” Frye said. “The proof will be when the pipes and all that infrastructure is taken out and it’s restored. But I think we’re nearing the end.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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European Parliament Supports Year-Long Deforestation Law Delay

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Parliament on Wednesday voted in favour of delaying the implementation of the European Union's deforestation law by one year.Companies will have an additional year to comply with new EU rules to prevent deforestation, the European Parliament said in a statement.Large operators and traders must respect the obligations of this regulation as of December 30, 2026, and micro and small enterprises from June 30, 2027.The ban on imports of cocoa, palm oil and other commodities linked to forest destruction is a key pillar in the EU's green agenda.The world-first policy aims to end the 10% of global deforestation fuelled by EU consumption of imported soy, beef, palm oil and other products, but has become a politically contested part of Europe's green agenda.But it faces pushback from some industries and countries that say the measures are costly and logistically challenging.Critics have previously warned of environmental setbacks.Food majors such as Nestle, Ferrero and Olam Agri back the law. They warned last month that delaying it endangers forests worldwide and is contrary to the EU's aim of simplifying business rules.Advocacy group Business For Nature called the delay "a profound failure of political courage".(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout, editing by Bart Meijer and Ed Osmond)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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Two College Students Are Building a Robot to Replant Burned Forests

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Most of the money (30%) went towards biodiversity protection, with another 27% supporting environmental policy. Yet funding for scientific research accounted for just 0.1%.“The basin countries don’t prioritise research,” says Dr Richard Sufo Kankeu, a lecturer at the University of Le Mans and one of the report’s authors.Loango national park in Gabon, which forms part of the Congo basin, the world’s second-largest rainforest. Photograph: Lee Dalton/AlamyThe result is a wide gap in scientific understanding. 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Forests

Dipsas Speaks

Dipsas Speaks is a poetic reflection on the human-wildlife conflict in the Andean Amazon cloud forest of Ecuador, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Dipsas klebbai, a snake, observes changes in her world. 100% wildlife cast.

Forests
Conservation
Animals

LEAVES

An academic woman in Texas becomes concerned when a massive red oak in her backyard seems to be ailing, though she isn’t sure why it bothers her so much. At the same time, in her small cottage, her attention to her work is distracted by news reports she sees and hears. They tell in graphic terms of the out-of-control forest fires up and down the West Coast. Her attention is further pulled in the direction of other stories about the worsening conditions of the world’s rainforests which she discovers are disappearing at the astounding rate of 200,000 acres a day. Suddenly such stories are all she seems to hear and see on the radio or television or on her computer. But when she hears/sees a science report about how trees actually communicate with each other, she begins to realize there may be a connection between her tree and what she is learning from the news. She begins to recall a strong connection she herself has with that tree and allows that connection to regrow…..

Pollution
Forests
Inspirational

The Story of a Forest

In 2004, a generation of activists arose in South Florida, carrying the passion of direct action groups like Earth First. and the deep analysis of the global justice movement that had swept the country in the preceding years. These activists sought local issues that exemplified the threats of corporate globalization. They stumbled upon a plan from biotech industry giants acting in collusion with the administration of then-Governor Jeb Bush to clear a vast swath of land in the Northeast Everglades of Florida to accommodate The Scripps Biotech Research Institute - And it was on. Over the next ten years, endless county zoning meetings were counter-balanced by dozens of civil disobedience arrests and a near-constant flow of news headlines about the battle: lawsuits, scandal, corruption, tree sits, endangered species, pranks, blockades, and a roller coaster of incremental victories followed by devastating losses for years on end. THE STORY OF A FOREST captures it all in a 1/2 hour documentary about the Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition (PBCEC) and Everglades Earth First!'s (EEF!) ten-plus year campaign to stop the Scripps Biotech development, with a focus on protecting biodiversity in the Briger forest and the Florida wetlands.

Activism
Forests
Business

The Windshield Effect

As a child, Julian and his mother, Sylvie, could spend hours out in nature admiring the soundtrack of the plentiful insects. One day, a grown Julian is out on a run in those same woods and when he takes off his ear buds, realizes he cannot hear anything at all. A trip to the audiologist assures him there is nothing wrong with his ears, but he is still left shaken. Back in the forest, he comes to the realization that the insects themselves have gone silent in a mass die off. Also known as the "Windshield Phenomenon" that documents how bugs no longer splatter on windshields as we drive as insect populations are down more than 45% over the last 4 decades.

Forests
Extinction
Nature

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