ZEPHYRHILLS, FL -- The natural spring that fills millions of Zephyrhills brand water bottles is actually a couple miles south of its namesake city. A Swiss owned company, Nestle, has the right to pump and bottle about 750,000 gallons of water from "Crystal Spring" in Pasco County every day.
Nestle hydrologist Kent Koptiuch says the bottler carefully guards the health of the spring, employs about 350 people locally and contributes some $80 million dollars a year to the local economy. Nestle also makes a lot of money. That’s one reason the Department of Environmental Protection recently proposed what they call a 'severance fee' which would charge companies like Nestle six cents a gallon for the use of an increasingly precious resource.
Nestle doesn't get access to Crystal Spring for free. They have to pay millions of dollars every year to the family that owns the land, though they declined to say exactly how much. But when it comes to local government, all Nestle pays to The Southwest Florida Water Management District for the use of this water is 750 dollars for a 10 year permit. Last year Nestle pumped close to 200 million gallons from Crystal Springs. And though it's estimated the fee might add just a penny per bottle for the consumer, Nestle fought it hard.
Koptiuch said the fee could put Nestle in a situation where they’d off to lay off people. “We can produce water in many places. We have 26 plants scattered across the country and if the price to produce water in Florida goes up and we can produce it cheaper in Georgia and ship it to Florida, then we'd have to look at this.”
Koptiuch also claims that the amount of water taken from the spring is much less than the city of Tampa’s pipes leak on a daily basis, though a Tampa water official told us no study he knows of has measured that.
Phil Compton of Friends of the Hillsborough River concedes that may be true and added, “Maybe that six cents per gallon could go toward helping the city of Tampa repair its leaky pipes.” Compton also maintains that because Crystal Spring flows into the Hillsborough River, every bottle shipped by Nestle is water that doesn’t flow into Tampa's reservoir. The city owned utility, he claims, then needs to purchase that water from Tampa Bay Water or other sources to make up the loss.
Nestle believes their company being unfairly singled out by those who want to charge them a per-gallon fee. “The other users don't pay for the water they take out. Nobody in the state of Florida pays for the water”, said Koptiuch.
But our investigation found bottlers of other beverages do pay when they use city water. The Pepsi Cola bottler in Tampa paid over a million dollars last year to the city's water utility for the 235 million gallons it used. Cott Beverage Company paid a water bill of just under $420,000.
The Southwest Florida Water Management District, or SWFWMD approved a new 10 year permit for Nestle in February. Hernando County Board Member, Judith Whitehead says the agency has the authority to make sure Nestle’s not over-drawing or otherwise harming the spring, but they can’t force Nestle to pay for water. “The state is the only one that has the right to impose taxes or do something of that nature” said Whitehead.
The governor himself supported the six cent a gallon fee but even with a huge budget shortfall, the plan that could have raised an estimated $66 million dollars a year never even got a hearing in the State Legislature.
