3 - Nestle's Pumping, and the Environmental Effects

Environmental Effects: What's happening, and what makes this an issue.

Nelson Switzer, Nestle's chief sustainability officer, stated "I hope people remember that water itself is a renewable resource, as long as that is managed properly that system will be renewable forever." (source)

But is Nestle's extractions of millions of gallons a year from drought-ridden California considered proper managing of this resource? 

Water is considered a renewable resource. This is based on the assumption that the water removed from the ground and bodies of water will be returned at the same rate is is removed in a process commonly known as the water cycle.
The issue with Nestle, and water removed from the environment in general, is that it is being removed at a significantly faster rate than it is returned, and faster than it takes for the earth to naturally filter and re-disperse that water, which leaves less water to be extracted, creating a feedback loop resulting in less and less clean and available water.

Nestle has a couple different ways of collecting water from the earth, with it's two main methods being collecting flowing water from rivers and streams (as shown in the video on the previous post), and by collecting groundwater from underwater aquifers, which includes "springs" where aquifers meet the surface.

While the environmental impacts from removing surface water are easy to see, (taking flowing water from above ground disrupts shoreline life such as animals that use the natural body of water as a source of drinking water or hunting grounds, water life (fish and water-mammals such as otters, beavers, muskrats, etc), potentially alters the natural course of the water, thus altering the ecosystem downstream, decreases amount of water that makes it downstream, and displaces water from it's natural location, making it more difficult to be naturally redistributed back into the environment,) the effects of draining aquifers faster than they can recharge (refill) are a bit more complicated.

In the previous post it was mentioned that in one particular case when Nestle moved into a town and set up a pumping facility that a local protested because his well had dried up. This is actually a common affect when a larger extraction facility (such as Nestle) uses an aquifer in the same area as a smaller extraction facility (such as a local with a well). Extracting water causes the water table to drop, meaning that those that are not capable of digging as deep as others will no longer be able to reach water. Building a well or pump also causes something called a cone of depression, which is an area of even lower water level surrounding the extraction area, which means that anything nearby will need to be almost as low to reach the water. Because of this Nestle setting up extraction plants where communities already exists not only disrupts the community above ground, but also depletes or entirely removes the water available for any other use that can't keep up, such as local agriculture, wells, and even groundwater extracted for household use. 

Other effects of lowered water tables due to depleted aquifers include lower water levels in rivers, wetlands, and lakes, as the water from these bodies flows into the dry earth to recharge empty aquifers. Many natural ecosystems depend on these bodies of water for survival, and as water levels fall these ecosystems shrink, causing local plants and animals to die out or be displaced from their natural habitats. The droughts resulting from these lowered water levels not only kill the plants and animals that live in the wild, but also livestock and agriculture consumed by humans. 

This also removed water from the natural water cycle, which decreases rainfall which is necessary for most plants to survive, and dampens the surface area of land. Both the dryness of land and the decreased plant coverage add to global warming. Plants are a reflective surface of radioactive light and increase the albedo (amount of light reflected back into the atmosphere) of the earth's surface, and without these reflective surfaces this radiation is able to penetrate Earth's surface and warm it. Dryness of land leads to deaths which result in decomposition which releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and leads to fires which further decrease plant cover and release carbon into the atmosphere through burning. Both of these things increase the amount of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere, which are broken down by ultraviolet radiation which releases chlorine into the stratosphere, which then breaks down ozone molecules. (source) 

These may sound over-complicated, but it's the simplification and minimization of environmental effects that has allowed the depletion of aquifers to go as far as it has. 

Speaking of which, below is a chart and map of the depletion volume of the United States' major aquifer systems.

Cumulative net groundwater depletion in major aquifer systems or groups in the United States, 1900-2008 (Konikow, 2011).

(source)

Notice some of the worst depletion (in red) in California, which is a victim of recent droughts and of much of Nestle's ground water extraction.

The degradation of aquifers is happening all over the United States, and the leading cause of depletion is the over-extraction of water faster than aquifers can be recharged. As the United States' leading distributor of bottled water Nestle is one of the main contributors. 

But it's not just a matter of how much water is being extracted, due to the effects on locals and the heightened vulnerability of drought in some areas versus others (California), location is a key factor in how ethical, or rather, unethical the extraction of ground water by the Nestle corporation is. 

Sources:

Perlman, Howard. “Groundwater Depletion.” Groundwater Depletion, USGS Water Science, The USGS Water Science School, water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html.

Solomon, Susan. “Stratospheric Ozone Depletion: A Review of Concepts and History.” Reviews of Geophysics, vol. 37, no. 3, 1999, pp. 275–316., doi:10.1029/1999rg900008.

“USGS Groundwater Data Go to Times Square.” USGS Groundwater Information: USGS Groundwater Data Included in Times Square Visualization, The USGS Water Science School, water.usgs.gov/ogw/times-sq/.