In a decision that could end a years-long battle over commercial water extraction from public lands, the U.S. Forest Service has ordered the Arrowhead bottled water company to shut down its pipeline that collects water from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains.
The Forest Service notified BlueTriton Brands in a letter last month, saying its application for a new permit had been denied.
District Ranger Michael Nobles wrote on July 26 letter that the company “must cease operations” in the San Bernardino National Forest and submit a plan to remove all of its pipelines and equipment from federal lands.
The company has challenged the denial in court.
Environmental activists praised the decision.
“It’s a huge victory after 10 years,” said Amanda Frye, an activist who has campaigned against water extraction from the forest. “I hope we can restore Strawberry Creek, get its springs flowing again and get the habitat back.”
She and other opponents say BlueTriton's operation has dramatically reduced the creek's flow and is causing significant environmental damage.
The Forest Service announced the decision a month after a local environmental group, Save Our Forest Assn., filed a lawsuit arguing that the agency was illegally allowing the company to continue operating under a permit whose expiration date had passed.
The company has denied that its water use is damaging the environment and has argued that it should be allowed to continue extracting water from the national forest.
BlueTriton Brands and its predecessors “have operated continuously under a series of special use permits for nearly a century,” the company said in an email.
“This denial has no legal merit, is not supported by the facts, and negatively impacts the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians,” the company said, adding that the tribe uses a portion of the water that passes through the pipeline and relies on that water for firefighting needs.
Representatives for the tribe did not respond to a request for comment.
If the Forest Service's decision stands, it would prevent the company from using its namesake brand, Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.
The mountain springs north of San Bernardino, which have been a source of bottled water for generations, get their name from a natural arrowhead-shaped rock formation on the mountainside.
State officials have said the first facilities to divert water in the Strawberry Creek watershed were built in 1929and the system expanded over the years as additional wells were drilled into the mountainside.
At the base of the mountain and near the company's water pipeline is the old closed water well. Arrowhead Springs Hotel property, which the San Manuel tribe purchased in 2016. The company has said that under a decades-old agreementSome of the water flowing through the 4.5-mile pipeline arrives at the Arrowhead Springs property, and some of the water is delivered to a roadside tank and trucked to a bottling plant.
The Forest Service has been charging a permit fee of $2,500 a year. There has been no charge for water.
Controversy over the issue erupted when the Desert Sun newspaper reported in 2015 that the Forest Service was allowing Nestlé to extract water using a permit that listed a 1988 expiration date.
The Forest Service then began reviewing the permit and in 2018 granted a new permit for up to five years. The revelations about Nestlé’s use of forest water pipes sparked a wave of opposition and prompted several complaints to California regulators questioning the company’s water rights claims, leading to a lengthy investigation by state water regulators.
BlueTriton Brands took over the bottled water business in 2021 when Nestlé's North American bottled water division was purchased by private equity firm One Rock Capital Partners and investment firm Metropoulos & Co. (Last month, BlueTriton and Primo Water Corp. Announced plans to merge and form a new company.)
Last year, state officials determined that the company had been illegally diverting much of the water without valid rights, agreeing with Frye and others, who had challenged the company’s claims and submitted historical documents. The state Water Resources Control Board voted to order the company to stop its “unauthorized diversions” of water. But BlueTriton Brands filed a lawsuit to challenge that decision, arguing that the process was riddled with problems.
In the July Forest Service letter, Nobles said the company was repeatedly asked to provide “additional information necessary to ensure compliance with BlueTriton’s existing permit,” but that the requests “always went unanswered.”
Nobles said that under the regulations, he will be able to consider whether the water used exceeds the “needs of forest resources.”
He also said that while the company had said in its application that the water would be used for bottled water, its reports showed that between 94% and 98% of the amount of water diverted monthly was delivered to the former hotel property for “undisclosed purposes,” and that “for months BlueTriton has indicated that it has not bottled any of the water withdrawn,” while significantly increasing the volumes withdrawn.
“This increase represents a significantly larger amount of water than has been supplied thus far,” Nobles wrote. “The hotel and conference facilities on the property are not operational and there is no explanation as to where the millions of gallons of water per month are going.”
He said the decision is final and cannot be appealed.
Nobles ordered the company to “stop use of the BlueTriton pipeline” within seven days by “cutting or blocking the pipeline at every tunnel or shaft” at a dozen sites; remove locks from its equipment; and submit a plan within three months to remove all of its infrastructure.
Forest Service officials did not respond to an email seeking comment on the decision.
The BlueTriton spokesperson said the Forest Service agreed to a “temporary 30-day suspension for the sole purpose of meeting the needs of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, including fire prevention.”
“We will continue to operate in compliance with all state and federal laws while we explore legal and regulatory options,” the spokesperson said.
The company argues in the lawsuit that the Forest Service violated federal law with an “arbitrary and capricious” decision.
BlueTriton said studies conducted by its scientific consultants have shown that water extraction “has not adversely impacted the environment of Strawberry Canyon.”
Records show about 319 acre-feet, or 104 million gallons, flowed through the company's pipelines in 2023.
In the rugged canyon downhill from the springs, Strawberry Creek has continued to flow over the years. But when Frye has walked along the creek, he has found that its western fork, downhill from the wells, is just a trickle that forms a series of pools among the bushes and trees.
“Our goal was to get the water back into the creek and protect the forest,” Frye said. “The test will be when the pipes and all that infrastructure are removed and restored. But I think we’re getting close to the end.”
