Photo by Ethan Sykes on Unsplash — you should look at a glass of water like you look at life. It’s worth something, and it’s worth more than gold.

Chop Wood, Carry Water

When the taps stop flowing, maybe we’ll realize what it’s really worth.

Water is life, this much we know. I live in a beautiful little mountain town in far northern California (so far north than when people say “San Francisco”, we laugh because that cute little city is four hours south of the wild west where I live). My town is situated at the base of a 14,180 foot mountain, and the water coming from the taps in this town is untreated spring water.

UNTREATED WATER!!?!??!?

Yes, untreated, which is the reason why we’re consistently under siege from water bottling companies. Nestle tried several years ago, but thanks to a lot of concerned citizens and some very educated environmental professionals, they didn’t take hold then. Crystal Geyser Roxane’s got a plant in the town next door, bottling and shipping water all the way to Japan, and for the past five years a related subsidiary (both fall under the umbrella of Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, a massive Japanese drug company) has been trying to open a plant here in Mt. Shasta as well.

They own the building already, a plant that previously held a failed attempt by Dannon to bottle here too — when they tried, surrounding residential wells filled with gravel or went dry altogether. The plant sat vacant for quite a few years…