The federal government has backed up California state regulators in ordering the company that bottles Arrowhead water to stop drawing from the San Bernardino Mountains.
Though BlueTriton Brands draws from springs in the mountains that have been used for bottled water since 1906, environmental activists have claimed the removal of that water is harming wildlife, particularly Strawberry Creek.
For decades, water has been siphoned from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains and piped downhill to be bottled and sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water. After a years-long fight over the bottled water operation in the San Bernardino National Forest, California water regulators ruled Tuesday that the company must stop taking millions of gallons through its pipelines.
A 1,000-mile-wide atmospheric river that’s forming in the subtropics will brush San Diego County with light rain Friday and Saturday and bring heavy precipitation to the rest of Southern and Central California, further aiding reservoirs and muting the risk of wildfires, the National Weather Service said on Monday.
The storm is part of a major pattern change that also is expected to produce a second warm, moist atmospheric river that will flow through roughly the same areas on March 14, possibly bringing heavier rain to San Diego, which is experiencing its first wet year in three years.
California water officials on Friday issued a draft order telling Nestlé to “cease and desist” taking much of the millions of gallons of water it pipes out of the San Bernardino National Forest to sell as Arrowhead brand bottled water.
The order, which must be approved by the California Water Resources Control Board, caps years of regulatory probes and a public outcry over the company’s water pipeline in the San Bernardino Mountains, where opponents argue that siphoning away water harms spring-fed Strawberry Creek and the wildlife that depends on it.
After one of the driest Februaries on record across much of California, the first day of March brought a dash of rain and a dusting of fresh powder to the parched landscape.
The storm, which rolled into Los Angeles County on Sunday afternoon, dropped less than one-tenth of an inch of rain on the coast, while higher elevations saw between one-quarter and an inch of precipitation.
Snow Valley Mountain Resort in the San Bernardino Mountains reported a foot of snow from the system, while Frazier Park in Kern County received a 3-inch dusting, said John Dumas, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
A California dam could fail during an extreme storm and send water flooding into Mojave Desert communities that are home to about 300,000 people, authorities said Friday.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it has changed its risk characterization of the Mojave River Dam from low to high urgency of action. The Corps says it estimates that only 16,000 people in those communities would be affected by flooding.
