High waters at Eklutna Lake are seen on Aug. 29, 2023. Anchorage’s water utility and a group of bottled water companies are in a dispute over the bottlers’ access to the utility’s treatment plant near the lake. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
An intense, year-long feud between Anchorage’s public water utility and private bottled glacier water businesses came to a head this week, with a multiday public hearing before state utility regulators.
The city-owned Alaska Water and Wastewater Utility in January asked the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, or RCA, for permission to cut off the bottlers’ access to the utility’s main treatment plant, near Eklutna Lake and downstream of the Eklutna Glacier.
That’s where the bottling companies can currently fill their tanker trucks with water that’s been disinfected but not yet chlorinated and fluorinated.
AWWU cites risks to safety and security from allowing bottlers to access its treatment facility, saying that its infrastructure could be the site of a possible “physical attack” and that bottlers’ truck drivers aren’t “thoroughly vetted.”