Go take a look around your kitchen. Is there a bottle with a mountain on it somewhere in there? Ah yes, the familiar branding: a snowcap, a pine forest, a clear stream running over stones. Now look just beneath the brand name for the smaller words ‘spring water,’ ‘purified water,’ or maybe the more vague wording that’s gaining traction lately: ‘from a municipal source.’ That one line carries more than a century of public health history, a very specific federal definition, and a marketing strategy that trained people to pay for something already flowing from the tap.
And if you’ve been following our recent historical reviews of witchcraft, Indigenous healing traditions, and the industries that were created by attempting to erase or control those ancient practices, you can probably guess what happened next. By 1880, “industry” (once again, the capitalist-imperialist titans enter the picture!) had arrived, pumping so many wells for soda gas that many springs stopped flowing, until New York finally passed a law against it in 1908.
The question we keep coming back to in all these well-documented but rarely discussed stories about our planet’s vital resources is: Who decided? So this week’s inquiry is, “Who decided what counts as ‘pure’?” The answer may surprise you. The legal meaning of “spring water” actually comes from a 1995 FDA rule, and spring water can still be treated. “Purified” water can come from a city system, and the whole truth about how we got here is muddy before it's clear.
Sacred Waters as Old as the Earth
For most of human history, springs were sacred. At Bath, England, people in Roman Britain dropped handwritten prayers into a hot spring they believed was home to the goddess Sulis Minerva [1]. At Aquae Sulis, the Roman temple and baths in what is now Bath, England, people rolled up about 130 small lead and pewter prayers and threw them into the Sacred Spring, asking the goddess Sulis Minerva for justice [2], [3].
Ancient Greeks sacrificed horses to Poseidon at a freshwater spring rising from the sea near Argos, and Bali’s Tanah Lot sea temple was built on one. In what's now Saratoga Springs, New York, the Mohawk “believed the springs had special healing powers and protected their sacred waters,” according to New York State Parks.
In 2015, researchers at the University of Glasgow and the University of Hawaii found evidence that water has been part of Earth since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. The WWF estimates that there is more than 30 times as much groundwater as all lakes, rivers, and streams combined, and it can take tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years to move through an aquifer before rising as a spring [4].
But ancient doesn't automatically mean pure. The U.S. Geological Survey notes that very old groundwater is more likely to carry natural metals and radionuclides from long contact with rock formations. One Namibian hot spring trusted locally as clean carries about 13 mg of fluoride per liter, far above the UK drinking water limit of 1.5, the hydrogeologist Heike Wanke reported.
An Arizona State University study of two decades of satellite data found that 75 percent of the world’s population lives in 101 countries that have been losing freshwater, with 68 percent of land water loss coming from groundwater [5], [6]. In January 2026, a United Nations University report declared an “era of global water bankruptcy,” warning that its costs fall hardest on “smallholder farmers, rural and Indigenous communities, informal urban residents, women, youth, and downstream users, while benefits have often accrued to more powerful actors.” As Utah’s Great Salt Lake shrinks, geologists studying freshwater rising under its lakebed continue to urge caution against tapping into its fragile ecosystems.
When Did Water Become Merchandise?
It’s hard to imagine this today, but bottling water actually began as a healing practice. The earliest record of spring water bottled in Britain dates to around 1622, at the Holy Well in Malvern. Into the early 1900s, bottled water was still sold mainly as a remedy, often in pharmacies [7]. At Saratoga, demand turned into extraction. More than 200 mineral wells were drilled, mostly to capture carbonic acid gas for fountain sodas, and the “extraction process inevitably ceased the flow of many springs.” By 1908, New York passed anti-pumping legislation, and a state reservation soon followed to protect what remained [8].
Perrier’s own history says that, as legend has it, Hannibal drank from its spring in 218 BC on his march toward Rome. In the late 1970s, the French brand launched a U.S. ad campaign narrated by Orson Welles to convince Americans to buy bottled water. Sociologist Daniel Jaffee writes that by 1988, ten companies controlled more than half of a U.S. market once made up of local, often family-owned springs By 2016, bottled water outsold soda by volume [9], much of which begins at a municipal tap. PepsiCo agreed in 2007 to print “Public Water Source” (translation: tap water!) on Aquafina labels, as reported by NBC News.
The price of the source tells us even more. In July 2026, The Observer reported that Coca-Cola pays England’s Environment Agency about 5p for every 1,000 litres of spring water it draws for Smartwater, while households on water meters pay about £2.70 for the same amount of tap water. Furthermore, the springs themselves have become contested ground.
In 2023, California regulators ordered BlueTriton, maker of Arrowhead, to stop unauthorized diversions from springs in the San Bernardino National Forest. In Ontario, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council of Six Nations of the Grand River sent BlueTriton a cease-and-desist demand in 2021, saying the community never consented to Nestlé or BlueTriton taking water from its territory, where many residents buy drinking water [10], [11]. And this week, Danone-owned Harrogate Spring Water in England said it will appeal a council decision refusing its expansion into a woodland local people planted, after more than 1,000 residents objected.
Why don’t we hear more about the resistance to resource extraction? To this day, Indigenous communities like Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, where many residents buy their drinking water, are still demanding an end to extraction from their territory without consent.
Chlorine, Fluoride & the City Tap
Then there’s the bottle. A 2024 Columbia University study found an average of about 240,000 plastic particles per liter in bottled water from three U.S. brands, roughly 90 percent of them nanoplastics. What that means for health is still being studied.
On September 26, 1908, Jersey City, New Jersey, began continuously chlorinating its public water, an effort led by physician John L. Leal [12]. As filtration and chlorination spread, it was reported that typhoid deaths fell sharply. Nearly 40 years after those experiments on our drinking water began, in January 25, 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first city to adjust fluoride in its public water to reduce tooth decay, and in 1974 the Safe Drinking Water Act gave the EPA authority to set national standards for tap water.
Water’s history is still being written. In 2014, Flint, Michigan, switched to Flint River water without the corrosion control needed to keep lead in old pipes, and young children's blood lead levels rose [13]. In April 2025, the HHS Secretary directed an end to the federal recommendation for community water fluoridation, and the EPA began a new review of fluoride science. Both Utah and Florida banned community fluoridation that year [14], [15], and state policy is changing quickly, so check where yours stands to make informed decisions.
The 1995 Rule That Defined ‘Spring Water’
‘Spring water’ is defined by an FDA regulation, not an act of Congress: the bottled water standard of identity, published November 13, 1995, and in effect since May 13, 1996 [16].
What’s under it [17]:
Read the Label & Listen to Water Protectors
Going back to the source doesn’t mean drinking untreated water. During the 2018 “raw water” fad, CBS News found one brand selling unfiltered spring water for more than $16 a bottle drew from the same spring that feeds the city tap in Madras, Oregon. To understand what you’re drinking, start with these simple three steps:
- Look past the picture. Mountains are art direction. Find the water type and source.
- Know what “purified” means. It’s a term that describes processing, not origin.
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Read your tap’s report card. Public water systems publish an annual Consumer Confidence Report (check for local reports here).
Keep in mind that a label only tells you so much, and a federal report is only one voice. To check your tap against health guidelines that are often stricter than legal limits, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group lets you search by zip code here.
For generations, the people who knew water best were the ones who lived beside it, and many are still leading the way. Autumn Peltier of Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory became the Anishinabek Nation's Chief Water Commissioner in 2019, taking up the role once held by her great-aunt, the late Grandmother Josephine Mandamin. On the Navajo Nation, where about 30 percent of families still lack a sink or toilet, the Indigenous-led Navajo Water Project brings running water home by home. In Ontario, Wellington Water Watchers stand with Six Nations of the Grand River against permits for bottled-water extraction. In Michigan, Flow Water Advocates works to keep groundwater in the public trust.
Tapping into the source starts with relationship, as does tending the body. As we’ve said many times before, modern science and ancient wisdom can coexist, as long as we know how to read the fine print, and don’t stop trying to. That means looking past the nature-y picture on the bottle and digging into the natural roots of what we drink, steep, and share every day.
Going Back to Source: Plants As Daily Nourishment
Water is the original source of life. Plants are how many Indigenous lineages have historically carried it, steeped and shared. These are the botanicals we sit with when we want to come home to the land.
