What is bottled water?

     Bottled water is any water that is sold by the bottle.  The bottle might be as small as 4 ounces or as large as 5 gallons.  Most bottled water comes in plastic bottles.

Where does bottled water come from?

    We visited the Mountainwood Spring Water Company.  They sell spring water to other bottled water companies like Culligan.  We found out that spring water is a big business.  The spring at Mountainwood is part of a 75 acre, wooded property and has been used for its spring water for the past twenty-five years. The owner said that the spring water comes from a very deep aquifer under his land.  The water came naturally to the surface and was there when he bought the land.  
    The spring runs through some rocks into a little shed.  In the picture on the left, the pipe is used to suck the water up into a larger pipe so that it can be pumped to a building farther away.  The metal disk is put there so that sand and rocks don't get sucked up into the pipe, too. 
     Then the water goes to the main building.  The water is filtered [like our experiment] and ozone is added to it there.  Ozone burns up bacteria and only stays in the water for a few hours.  We didn't know that spring water was treated before it was bottled.  We found out that samples of the water are sent to a testing laboratory twice a year even though the Department of Environmental Protection says it has to be done once a year.  A bacteria test is done three times a week.  They make sure that the water is safe to drink.
     Then the water is pumped at 120 gallons per minute into a 5,000 gallon tank.  The water is held in the tank until it is bottled or pumped into tanker trucks.
     Bottling was interesting.  Many times, 5 gallon bottles are reused.  These are the kind that are used in water coolers.  The first step is for a 'Sniffer' person to smell any bottles that will be used again.  He is smelling for things that don't belong there because people might store other liquids [like gasoline] in them before they are returned.  If a bottle like that was put into the bottle washer, it would ruin the whole load of bottles.
     The bottles get washed and are put on a conveyor belt that takes them to be refilled with water.   The picture to the left shows the line of water bottles being filled.  The picture on the right shows the bottles being capped.  After that, the bottles are stamped with a date.  Now the water is ready to be sold. 
           The filled bottles are put back in the tractor trailers that brought the empty bottles.   It seemed that there was a lot of bottle reuse with the 5 gallon bottles.
    The owner of the company loves the land and respects the water on it.  He is careful to protect it so that it is safe to drink.