[daflip]

Of course it will have at least some environmental impact if the water stops being directed in to plastic bottles and instead is left flow along on the land. 3 gallons a second is still a pretty significant flow of water - at least enough to power a small stream or creek. Nothing in the broader scheme of things of course, but you can't say there's zero environmental impact "whatsoever".

[Cerium]

For perspective - 3 gallons a second (180 per minute) is a 2-3" pipe at maximum possible flow rate. In other words, a decent sized fire hose.

[gamblor956]

For perspective, Strawberry Creek is surrounded by desert or semi-arid biomes, so 3 gallons/second is a lot of water for the area.

[lazide]

3 gallons a second is not enough to power a small stream or creek. It’s roughly ‘rivulet’ or ‘wet spot’ territory, and only roughly 10x garden hose flow rates at typical household water pressures.

I’m honestly shocked they could run a commercial bottling operation off that. That’s only 180 gpm, or .4 cubic ft/s.

A typical 5000 gallon commercial water carrier truck is going to take about 30 minutes to fill off that, and that isn’t much water by natural standards.

For instance a 100 ft diameter pond, 3 ft deep (quite small) holds 176,256 gallons, and due to soil absorption and evaporation might never fill up from that source. Even if plastic lined and in a non-desert environment (this one isn’t) that’s over 40 hrs at full flow rate to fill it.

[Ekaros]

On other hand calculating it in roughly 0.5 l bottles make numbers seem tad more sensible. 1 gallon is what 8 0.5 l bottles. So 1440 bottles a minute or 24 per second. And total would be 800 million bottles a year. Which actually seems not unreasonable number to run factory on. Gallon is not 4 litres, but less, still it is not that slow rate if you think of how much waters go to each bottle.

[justinclift]

Apparently Nestle bought the operation, and it's been using the water for something other than bottled water:

    ... "for months BlueTriton has indicated it has bottled none of the water taken,”
    while also significantly increasing the volumes extracted.

Sounds like they've been up to something shady.