Tell National Parks Superintendents To Stay Bottled Water Free!

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Dear superintendents:

Our national parks have an unmatched legacy of conservation and sustainability. The growing movement of national parks going bottled water free and increasing access to tap water in parks reaffirms the notion that our parks are models for progress when it comes to protecting the environment.

But the bottled water industry has been lobbying Congress for years in an attempt to roll back Policy Memorandum 11-03, which outlines how parks can implement bottled-water-free policies.

Now, just weeks after Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt (fresh from his tenure at a law firm with close ties to Nestlé) was confirmed, the bottled water industry is finally getting what it’s been pushing for all these years: rescinding commonsense Policy Memorandum 11-03.

But this does not need to mean the end of the line for parks eliminating bottled water and increasing access to tap. Now, more than ever, we need your leadership to ensure the preservation of the natural and cultural resources of the National Park Service, by providing what park visitors are asking for -- sustainable alternatives to bottled water.

I call on you to resist the bottled water industry and the Trump administration’s corporate agenda: Continue upholding the National Park Service’s legacy of sustainability and make your parks bottled-water-free.

Sincerely,

(Yellowstone National Park/Jacob W. Frank)

For years, national parks across the country have phased out the sale of bottled water and installed hydration stations -- an alternative that reduces plastic waste in some of our most cherished outdoor spaces and encourages the use of public tap water. Last week, the Department of the Interior rescinded the National Park Service policy outlining how national parks can go bottled water free.

This happened just weeks after the Trump administration appointed a deputy secretary of the Interior with deep ties to Nestlé, a water-bottling giant that has pushed to stop parks from going bottled water free for years. This is just one more extreme example of corporations wielding their power to protect profits at the expense of people and the planet.

But this does not mean we have reached the end of the line for parks eliminating bottled water and increasing access to the tap. Send this message to our national park superintendents across the country asking them to resist the bottled water industry's profit-driven agenda and continue to make national parks bottled-water-free.

These are our parks. We must make it clear that water, like our national parks, is a public good, not a commodity.