Bottled Water: The Private Equity Firm Tapping America’s Spring Water

Photo: Water pours out of a pipe beside one of the sites in the San Bernardino Mountains where the company BlueTriton Brands collects water for bottling. Photographer: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

BlueTriton Brands owns Poland Spring, Arrowhead and other bottled water brands. As it tries to grow, experts worry sensitive springs, creeks and groundwater supplies from Florida to California are paying the price.

Ginnie Springs is a true Florida oasis. Ringed by towering cypress trees, the spring-fed pools off the Santa Fe River in Gilchrist County draw thousands of visitors every year to swim and cool off in their turquoise waters.

It’s also big business. For years, a local operator has been pumping the water to sell to bottlers, despite evidence of declining flows. Years of extraction have led the water district tothe lower Santa Fe River basin as “in recovery.”

“There’s way less vegetation. The river has shrunk. You don’t see as many turtles. You don’t see as many fish,” said Ryan Smart, executive director of the Florida Springs Council, an advocacy group that fights to limit bottling. “It’s like watching a family member get sick.”

Yet the business, Seven Springs Water Co., keeps taking more. In early 2021, Seven Springs won the right to withdraw close to a million gallons per day. (Seven Springs did not respond to a request for comment.) In the past, the company had usually pumped about a quarter of that volume. But Seven Springs had a new customer, Nestlé SA, which had recently purchased a nearby plant producing Zephyrhills branded bottled water, a ubiquitous presence in Florida grocery stores. To keep up with demand, Nestlé was expanding the facility, with plans to increase production equal to the permit’s full amount.

That same year, Nestlé sold Zephyrhills — and most of its other North American bottled water brands — to a pair of private equity firms. Operating under the name BlueTriton Brands, Inc., the new owners now control a large share of the bottled water sold in the US, including Poland Spring, Arrowhead and Deer Park.

In its nearly three years since entering the business, BlueTriton has made good on its permit at Ginnie Springs, according to public water use reports obtained by Bloomberg Green. In 2022, close to 115 million gallons of water flowed through the pumps at Ginnie Springs, up more than 37% from 2020, the year before the acquisition, records show. They’re on track to take more in 2023. A Bloomberg Green investigation found that from 2020 to 2022, pumping increased at other BlueTriton sources in at least six states: Florida, Maine, Colorado, Michigan, Texas and South Carolina.

Not all of BlueTriton’s springs around the US are being squeezed tighter than before; at some, usage has been […]

Full article: www.bloomberg.com