{"id":412,"date":"2023-09-21T22:02:34","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T22:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/?p=412"},"modified":"2023-09-21T22:02:34","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T22:02:34","slug":"arrowhead-water-loses-big-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/?p=412","title":{"rendered":"Arrowhead Water Loses Big Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water and the private equity firm that owns it lost a big battle recently to the State Water Resource Control Board.\u00a0 They’ve been pulling water from the San Bernadino mountains for over a century with uncertain water rights, even during times of drought.\u00a0 They’ve now been ordered to stop piping around 80% of the water they’ve been pulling from the national forest and selling as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.\u00a0 Blue Triton Brands is the “owner” of Arrowhead, and Blue Triton is owned by One Rock Capital Partners and investment firm Metropoulos & Co.\u00a0 They bought the Arrowhead from Nestle back in 2021.<\/p>\n

This could have huge implications across the board for California and water rights in general.\u00a0 Arrowhead’s water rights were speculative and not as strong as Sheep Creek Water Company’s water rights, but that hasn’t stopped them from draining Strawberry Creek and the surrounding watershed for over 100 years.\u00a0 They’ve been doing this on the cheap too, paying less than $2000 a year for the water they’ve been selling for big money for a long time.<\/p>\n

Couldn’t be happier about this news.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/environment\/story\/2023-09-19\/california-rules-against-arrowhead-bottled-water-company<\/p>\n

For decades, water has been siphoned from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains and piped downhill to be bottled and sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water. After a years-long fight over the bottled water operation<\/a> in the San Bernardino National Forest, California water regulators ruled Tuesday that the company must stop taking millions of gallons through its pipelines.<\/p>\n

The State Water Resources Control Board voted unanimously to order the company BlueTriton Brands to \u201ccease and desist\u201d taking much of the water it has been piping from tunnels and boreholes in the mountains near San Bernardino.<\/p>\n

Environmentalists, who have campaigned for years against bottling water from the forest, praised the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re incredibly pleased this unlawful removal of the public\u2019s water from public lands will finally end,\u201d said Michael O\u2019Heaney, executive director of the nonprofit Story of Stuff Project.<\/p>\n

The board\u2019s members adopted the order after the agency\u2019s staff determined the company has been unlawfully diverting water from springs without valid water rights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another article here:\u00a0 https:\/\/fortune.com\/2023\/09\/20\/california-orders-arrowhead-bottled-water-stop-drawing-mountain-springs-san-bernardino\/<\/p>\n

The vote was a triumph for a small band of community residents who have been fighting the company for years. They include Amanda Frye, a resident of Redlands who has spent countless hours combing through documents to investigate the case. She said when hiking the mountain, she can see BlueTriton\u2019s pipes gushing with water as they run along the dry bed of Strawberry Creek.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrawberry Creek can no longer support fish,\u201d she said. \u201cEssentially they inserted a straw into each spring and diverted it down the mountain to their trucks to take it away.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water and the private equity firm that owns it lost a big battle recently to the State Water Resource Control Board.\u00a0 They’ve been pulling water from the San Bernadino mountains for over a century with uncertain water rights, even during times of drought.\u00a0 They’ve now been ordered to stop piping around…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-waternews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scwcshareholders.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}