Although BlueTriton currently isn’t bottling water from Arrowhead Springs, it still operates a pipeline through the San Bernardino National Forest to deliver water to the Native American tribe that operates a nearby hotel.
By Edvard Pettersson, Courthouse News Service
The bottler of Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water on Monday asked a federal judge to issue an injunction against the U.S. Forest Service after the agency refused to renew its permit for a pipeline that runs through the San Bernardino National Forest.
U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal didn’t make a ruling on BlueTritonBrands’ request at the hearing in Riverside, California. The judge indicated he’ll issue a decision in a few days.
The company, a former subsidiary of Nestlé and since last year part of Primo Brands, claims its rights to the water that percolates to the surface at Arrowhead Springs in Strawberry Canyon predate the creation of the San Bernardino National Forest in 1893. However, this past July the Forest Service ordered BlueTriton to dismantle the pipeline that it has used for decades to transport water from the springs.
“Under blackletter law, the federal government is required to provide us with reasonable access to our claim,” George Sibley III, an attorney for BlueTriton told the judge. “What we see is an attempt by the Forest Service to regulate the water, and not the right-of-way.”
The company currently isn’t bottling water from Arrowhead Springs for the namesake brand after California’s State Water Resources Control Board issued a cease-and-desist letter ordering BlueTriton to stop diverting water from many of the tunnels and boreholes it was using in the Strawberry Creek watershed because, the board said, BlueTriton didn’t have any water rights that authorized these diversions and uses.
At the same time, the water board allowed the company to continue deliver water from Arrowhead Springs to the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians for the Arrowhead Springs Hotel the tribe owns and operates.
BlueTriton is fighting the 2023 state’s water board decision in Fresno County Superior Court, but while its water rights are in limbo, it has plugged the disputed boreholes, Sibley told the judge.
In response to the California water board’s halting BlueTriton’s siphoning of much of the water from Arrowhead Springs, the U.S. Forest Service sought information from BlueTriton about what was happening to the water it was still pumping through its pipeline that runs through the national forest before it was willing to renew the permit to use that pipeline.
“Rather than provide the information, BlueTriton obscured,” the Forest Service said in court filings. “The company sent letters arguing that it need not tell the Forest Service what it was doing with the water from Strawberry Creek, or that the Forest Service should ask the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians — to whom BlueTriton owes contractual water deliveries—rather than BlueTriton.”
In essence, Tyler Alexander, a Justice Department attorney representing the Forest Service, told the judge they were concerned that the water is being wasted.
The Forest Service was particularly interested in what happened with increased deliveries to the San Manuel Band, now that BlueTriton is no longer bottling the water, without any apparent change at the Arrowhead Springs Hotel property, Alexander said.
“The Forest Service doesn’t know what’s going on there, and it’s concerned that the water is being dumped offsite, outside the watershed,” the attorney said.
Although the Forest Service doesn’t regulate water use, Alexander argued, it has an obligation to consider the environmental impact of the pipeline before it issues a new permit, and since BlueTriton isn’t bottling the water from Arrowhead Springs, the Forest Service needs to know what happens with the water.
Nestlé’s, and later BlueTriton’s, use of the water from Arrowhead Springs for commercial ends has long been an issue for environmentalists who argue that it has led to depletion of the forest’s natural resources, in particular during the long periods of drought that have been plaguing Southern California in recent decades.
“The dry and diminished Strawberry Creek has led to impaired riparian fauna and flora and a creek that cannot support fish, like the native speckled dace, as fish need water to survive,” Save Our Forest Association said in an amicus brief filed in opposition to BlueTriton’s request for an injunction.
“[BlueTritonBrands] occupancy has dewatered Strawberry Creek and diverted natural springs, leaving Strawberry Creek with only intermittent pooling water and fractured habitats,” the environmental advocacy group said.