Great Lakes Law

Federal court orders the state to deliver bottled water and inform residents about lead contamination in Flint’s drinking water

“In modern society, when we turn on a faucet, we expect safe drinking water to flow out. As the evidence shows, that is no longer the case in Flint. The Flint water crisis has in effect turned back the clock to a time when people traveled to central water sources to fill their buckets and carry the water home.” – U.S. District Court Judge David M. Lawson, Opinion and Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary... Read more →

New book announcement - Modern Water Law: Private Property, Public Rights, and Environmental Protections

My new book, Modern Water Law: Private Property, Public Rights, and Environmental Protections, has been published by Foundation Press and is available on Amazon. I was honored to work with two superb co-authors on this book - Robert Adler, Interim Dean and James I. Farr Chair in Law, and Robin Kundis Craig, William H. Leary Professor of Law, both at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. Modern Water Law: Private Property, Public... Read more →

Capping the Bottle on Uncertainty: Closing the Information Loophole in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact – Guest Post by Jeff Dornbos

This is the second of two guest posts by Jeffrey Dornbos, an attorney with Warner Norcross & Judd in Holland, Michigan. In addition to his legal background, Jeff also taught environmental science, holds a captain’s license from the U.S. Coast Guard, and is a SCUBA diver. Jeff’s guest posts introduce his two excellent law review articles focusing on management of transboundary water resources – “Capping the Bottle on Uncertainty: Closing the Information Loophole in the... Read more →

Colorado bottled water dispute raises questions about western water deals and renews calls for federal regulatory reform

Another bottled water fight is heating up, this time in Colorado, where Nestle is moving forward with plans to bottle spring water that feeds the Arkansas River. Scot Kersgaard of the Colorado Independent has superb reporting of the dispute, which follows the typical storyline of bottled water fights in rural communities (with an interesting twist of some local officials from Chaffee County making cash on the deal). From a legal perspective, the Colorado controversy raises... Read more →

Beyond bottled water - review of the movie TAPPED

I was given the opportunity to review the new movie Tapped just before its release by Bullfrog Films. The movie is now out on DVD and available for screening, and I highly recommend it. For starters, I really enjoyed watching this film (and I watch a lot of movies). The production was fantastic – not surprising since it’s the same folks that made Who Killed the Electric Car? I especially loved the soundtrack (being from... Read more →

Is groundwater marketing legal?

When Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens proposed a massive scheme to acquire, market, and sell Texas groundwater, many water wonks began questioning if groundwater marketing is legal. (For the latest on the Pickens water scheme and its legal issues, see Dr. Michael Campana’s WaterWired blog.) Regardless of the merits of Pickens’ proposal, it raises the fundamental question of whether groundwater marketing is legal under the diverse state laws that apply to groundwater rights. I... Read more →

Protecting Freshwater Resources in the Era of Global Water Markets: Lessons Learned from Bottled Water

The University of Denver’s Water Law Review has just published my article, “Protecting Freshwater Resources in the Era of Global Water Markets: Lessons Learned from Bottled Water.” The citation is 13 U. Denv. Water L. Rev. 1 (2009), and I’m honored that the article was selected as the lead article of this year’s volume of the Water Law Review. The article covers a brief history of bottled water, the business of bottled water, and opposition... Read more →

Protecting Freshwater Resources in the Era of Global Water Markets: Lessons Learned from Bottled Water

My most recent article, Protecting Freshwater Resources in the Era of Global Water Markets: Lessons Learned from Bottled Water, will be published in the next volume of the University of Denver’s Water Law Review and a prepublication draft is now available online. The article covers a brief history of bottled water, the business of bottled water, and opposition to bottled water, along with a short summary of international trade law and federal food law as... Read more →

Reforming bottled water safety and labeling rules

While most of my work on bottled water is focused on the environmental impact of water withdrawals from aquifers and streams, there are also important issues of safety and labeling in the bottled water industry. Those issues were the subject this week of a Congressional hearing and federal Government Accountability Office report. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), held a hearing on the “Regulation... Read more →

Bottled water fights move west

Bottled water fights have played a major role in water policy debates in Midwestern and Eastern states for almost a decade now, and the trend is moving west. As featured in this story from the Los Angeles Times, Out West, A New Kind of Water War, Nestle seems to have a brewing battle over its plan to pump water from the Arkansas River watershed near Salida, Colorado. While there are significant differences in eastern and... Read more →

A brief history of bottled water in America

While it seems simple enough to credit (or blame) bottled water’s recent popularity on clever marketing, the industry also has a foundation in a history of “deeply ingrained, cultural reverence for pure water,” according to Dr. Francis H. Chapelle, a hydrologist with USGS and author of the book Wellsprings: A Natural History Of Bottled Spring Waters. Bottled water has been around a long time, and not just as small mom-and-pop operations. Bottled water in America... Read more →

Bottled water and wasted energy

Here’s another reason to pass on bottled water (besides wasting your money) – bottled water uses up to 2,000 times as much energy to produce and distribute as tap water. Water scientist extraordinaire Dr. Peter Gleick and Heather Cooley of the Pacific Institute have just released a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters detailing the energy footprint of bottled water. The study “Energy Implications of Bottled Water” concludes that the annual consumption... Read more →

Turning bottled water into cell phones

One of the environmental concerns with bottled water is all of the wasted plastic from the bottles that are often landfilled. Well, someone finally found a good use for those plastic water bottles. The smart folks at Motorola have just released a new mobile phone – the MOTO W233 Renew – with a plastic housing made entirely from recycled water bottles. This is great, but don’t feel like you need to rush out and buy... Read more →