Stupak scrutinizes bottled water during Capitol Hill grilling

The multi-billion dollar bottled water industry, which has major operations in Michigan, has gone to great lengths to market its product as clean, healthy and superior to other water. But at a congressional hearing led by U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak of Menominee earlier this week, a representative for the Government Accountability Office confirmed what water activists have been saying for years: Bottled water has less oversight than water from municipal systems.

(Creative Commons photo by Muffet via Flickr)

Unlike municipal water systems which are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration which treats it as a food. And while public water systems are required to issue prompt public reports about contaminants identified in the water system, bottled water companies are not held to such disclosure standards. They also aren’t required to use certified labs for tests of the water they bottle.

“[B]ottled water has been recalled due to contamination by arsenic, bromate, cleaning compounds, mold, and bacteria,” said Stupak, a Democrat whose district spans the Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula.

“In April, a dozen students at a California junior high school reportedly were sickened after drinking bottled water from a vending machine,” said Stupak, who at times had the “tenacity of Eliot Ness” during the Energy and Commerce oversight and investigations subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

Stupak presented a chart of ways in which bottled water is less regulated than tap water. Together with the Energy and Commerce Committee’s chairman, Democrat Henry Waxman of California, Stupak formally asked 10 bottled water companies to submit information about their sources of water, how they treat and test water, what contaminants have been found and consumer complaints. The companies have an Aug. 10 deadline to comply with the committee’s request.

Stupak is the most vocal opponent of the privatization of water in Congress and was the sole voice of dissent last fall when Congress approved a Great Lakes water compact that was intended to protect the region from large-scale water diversion but allowed water to be exported when packaged in small containers.

The state’s bottled water operators have run into organized local opposition to increasing the extraction rates, which environmental and conservation groups say is damaging Michigan watersheds. Earlier this week, Nestle, which bottles Ice Mountain near Stanwood in Mecosta County, came to an agreement with the group Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation ending a nine-year dispute.

Earlier this month, Stupak introduced a resolution to put Congress on record as opposing the commercialization, privatization and exploitation of the Great Lakes. By focusing on the consumer safety aspect of bottled water, Stupak is joining forces with a largely grassroots campaign that has managed to get at least 60 cities to stop buying bottled water.

Kristin Urquiza, campaign manager for Corporate Accountability International’s Think Outside the Bottle Campaign, said in an interview with Michigan Messenger that she was thrilled that members of Congress have officially requested information that her organization has been seeking for years.

Urquiza said her group has worked with faith groups, campus groups, restaurants and the U.S. Conference of Mayors to raise awareness about economic and human rights aspects of bottled water.

“Bottle water corporations like Coke, Pepsi and Nestle are spending millions of dollars to try and sell us a product that is no better than tap water,” Urquiza said. “It is marketed with absurd claims, but they have been successful in clouding perceptions of whether tap water is safe.”

Recent economic pressures are leading people and organizations to reconsider spending habits, she said and accelerating the trend away from bottled water.

A few years back, she said, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom investigated his city’s use of bottle water and learned the city government was spending half a million dollars, and more recently Rhode Island state authorities investigated and learned they were spending $75,000 per year on bottled water.

In June, New York Gov. David Paterson ordered all state agencies to stop paying for bottled water.

“As we are figuring out how to proceed forward and fund projects like public infrastructure, bottled water is expensive, bad for the environment and bad for our pocketbooks,” Urquiza said. “Who do we want to own our water? Do we want it to be Coke, Nestle and Pepsi? Or do we want it to be democratically controlled governments who are accountable to the public?”