California 'raw' water fans pay $9 a gallon for Oregon tap water

When people in central Oregon's Madras, Culver and Metolius turn on their taps, untreated spring water flows forth. It costs them less than a penny per gallon.

A company in California buys that same water and sells it in big glass jugs for up to $8.60 a gallon around Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The jugs are flying off the shelves.

"The water's been doing really well," said Edwin Diaz, manager of Erewhon Market in Calabasas, a small city northwest of Malibu. "It's kind of a specialty item."

Fans are quenching their thirst for "raw water" – water with no chemicals or other treatment that passes federal regulations because it's clean at the source.

"It's a no-brainer," said Lee Sayer, a musician in San Francisco and anti-fluoride activist who has been drinking raw water for months. "You have water that's processed through the earth through natural processes – it's cleaned. And being that water has memory, it has a memory of tumbling through the rocks. It has micronutrients and I believe it's alive."

But don't look for raw water in Oregon stores.

Only a few companies are selling untreated bottled water in the United States and their sales are small. The supplier that uses the central Oregon spring water touts its natural probiotics to promote a healthy digestive system, but doesn't yet offer it here.

Industry watchers don't foresee untreated water becoming a new trend in bottled water, which surpassed sales of carbonated beverages in 2016 and accounted for about $37 billion in sales last year, according to Beverage Marketing Corp.

"We view it as a bit of a gimmicky fad," said Gary Hemphill, the marketing group's managing director of research.
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2018/01/california_raw_water_fans_pay.html