News Coverage
Water vendor pushing bill to weaken state's water standards
Published March 24, 2004
After it settled a consumer fraud lawsuit alleging it failed to meet water quality standards, the state's largest retailer of vended drinking water is pushing a bill that would roll back California's water standards.
The proposed law would allow vended water - filtered tap water dispensed by a machine and into a customer's jug - to contain higher concentrations of trihalomethanes, or THMs, chemicals that are a byproduct of treating water with chlorine, and lead.
Current state law holds bottled and vended water to tougher standards for those two elements than tap water, which must meet roomier federal standards.
Glacier Water Services Inc., which owns roughly 7,000 water vending machines in California, has sponsored the bill by Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Salinas. Company officials argue California's rule should be consistent with the federal government's.
The Vista-based company in October settled by a stipulated judgment a lawsuit by the Los Angeles city attorney and the Environmental Law Foundation alleging it misled the public and sold water that exceeded state THM standards.
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered the company abide by the state THM vended water standard of 10 parts-per-billion. The tap water standard is 80 parts-per-billion.
One part-per-billion is equal to about one drop of water in a swimming pool.
Now, the environmental group says, the company is trying to get around the judgment by changing the law.
"It's outrageous that Glacier wanted to roll back the standard," said Philip Shakhnis, a staff attorney for the Environmental Law Foundation. "They basically want to nullify the law that the judgment says it has to meet."
Glacier President Brian McInerney said his company approached Denham with the idea for the bill, but it has nothing to do with the lawsuit.
"This is not to get around the law. We are committed to meeting the state standard," McInerney said. "To commingle the two is offensive."
Vended water shouldn't be held to the same standards as bottled water,McInerney said, and the law puts California in conflict with federal standards.
He said the standard is arbitrary and not based in science. "It's illogical for me to have to spend money to meet that."
On average, the company charges 25 cents a gallon for the filtered water, McInerney said.
He doesn't have a problem meeting the tighter 5 part-per-billion standards required for vended water for lead, and said the bill would be amended to eliminate the lead reference. The tap water standard for lead is 15-parts-per-billion.
The federal standards are safe enough, said Nick Rappley, Denham's press secretary.
But consumers can pay 100 times the price of tap water for vended water, and they should get their money's worth, said Bill Walker, west coast vice president for the Oakland-based Environmental Working Group.
Studies suggest that THM exposure is linked to greater incidence of miscarriages, Walker said.
A pregnant woman might choose to be safer by buying vended water or bottled water and she should get what she pays for, Walker said.
"A lot of people can't afford bottled water and vended water is marketed very heavily to recent immigrants from other counties who don't trust the tap water. So it's an environmental justice issue, too," Walker said.