A judge in New York ruled on Wednesday that Danone must face a lawsuit challenging its “carbon neutral” claim on bottles of Evian spring water.
Consumers in the proposed class action said they would not have bought Evian had they known that Danone’s manufacturing process allowed the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or otherwise caused pollution.
In a 30-page decision, U.S. District Judge Nelson Roman in White Plains, New York, called “carbon neutral” an ambiguous term that confuses consumers, and said Danone “expects too much” for them to learn what it meant from Evian’s labels.
The plaintiffs, Stephanie Dorris of California and John Axiotakis of Massachusetts, said they paid premium prices for Evian in 2022, mistakenly believing that the “carbon neutral” claim meant the water was more environmentally friendly.
Roman said the plaintiffs may pursue fraud, unjust enrichment and breach of express warranty claims, and claims under California and Massachusetts consumer protection laws.
He dismissed claims under comparable New York laws, but said the plaintiffs may amend their complaint.
Neither Danone nor its lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment. Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to similar requests.
Danone’s products also include Dannon, Oikos and Activia yogurt.
The lawsuit is among hundreds of proposed class actions filed annually against food producers, often challenging the precision of their labels.
Dorris and Axiotakis had cited Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defining “carbon neutral” as “having or resulting in no net addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.”
Danone said its use of the term reflected a certification from the independent Carbon Trust, and that the plaintiffs’ view defied science and common sense.
Roman called it premature to decide who was right.
“Rather than possessing a common, everyday meaning, the term ‘carbon neutral’ is more technical and scientific,” he wrote. “Consumers thus may reasonably become confused … if it has not previously been explicitly defined for them – as in, before seeing it on the product’s label.”
Danone is based in Paris. Its North American headquarters are in White Plains.
The case is Dorris et al v Danone Waters of America, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-08717.
Even though water covers most of the earth’s surface, potable water is harder to come by, and it’s becoming more scarce as climate change warms the planet.
We need this liquid gold for drinking, sanitation, and watering crops and livestock, but the infrastructure to make this happen is aging in developed nations. In other places, it’s lacking altogether, and the United Nations says intense water scarcity could displace around 700 million people by 2030.
“Scarcity is a predominant theme in the water space, as demand is expected to exceed supply by (around) 40% by 2030, and in fact, only 1% of water on the globe’s surface is usable for human consumption,” says Jean-Hugues de Lamaze, managing director and senior portfolio manager at Ecofin.
Deiya Pernas, co-founder of Pernas Research, says the convergence of pollution and unpredictable weather patterns driven by global warming make access to clean and usable water more difficult, even as water demand continues to increase from industry, agriculture and a growing population.
Combined with aging infrastructure, there is “immense potential for companies involved in addressing these pressing water-related issues,” Pernas says. “Their solutions have a substantial runway for growth, which can translate into higher returns on capital for investors who choose to allocate their funds to this sector.”
Pernas likes this company, which is the largest listed water and wastewater utility in the U.S., serving about 14 million people. The company has regulated operations in 24 states, and long-term military contracts add stability to its base of residential, public and commercial customers.
“We believe the company will continue to grow its dividend at close to 10% through continual synergistic acquisitions and growth capital expenditures,” Pernas says.
Valmont makes irrigation systems for watering crops, and it says it has more than 250,000 of them around the world. The company also uses technology that can help farmers view their system of pumps, pivots and crops to make decisions more efficiently.
“By utilizing advanced technology like precision pivots and drip irrigation, Valmont helps farmers conserve water resources, reduce operational costs and enhance crop yields,” Pernas says. “The agriculture industry is (a) heavy (user) of water, and scarcity challenges will continue to see Valmont’s solutions gain wider adoption.”
Beyond agriculture, the company also makes telecom equipment, energy grid infrastructure and light poles.
This multinational distributes products to the water, sanitary sewer and stormwater management industries and counts water sewer authorities, utility contractors, public works contractors and heavy highway contractors as customers.
The company is the largest holding in the Ecofin Global Water ESG Fund (EBLU), an ETF that mandates that included companies get at least half of their sales from water industry-related activities or at least 40% from the water industry itself.
The company is involved in both residential and non-residential markets, which can provide some cushion when one is doing better than the other.
In Ferguson’s fiscal first quarter, U.S. residential sales dropped 7% and civil/infrastructure sales fell 1%, but those declines were somewhat offset by 2% growth in commercial sales and a 3% jump in industrial revenue.
This water technology company clocks in at No. 2 in the Ecofin fund. It has utility, industrial, commercial and residential customers around the world.
Last year, Xylem completed a $7.5 billion acquisition of water treatment company Evoqua, giving Xylem greater scale.
In its latest quarterly report, the company raised its revenue guidance, saying it is expecting full-year 2023 revenue of $7.3 billion, a 32% increase over 2022. Its third-quarter earnings and revenue exceeded its previous guidance, with orders up 43% on a reported basis while backlog grew 5% percent organically to $5.2 billion, including $1.3 billion from Evoqua.
Investors who don’t want to pick individual stocks can turn to ETFs, which offer multiple stocks under a single ticker symbol, providing diversification.
This fund is passively managed, and its website says it “is comprised of companies across the globe and throughout the water cycle that we believe are positioned to benefit from the pursuit of solving the water supply/demand imbalance.”
It has an expense ratio of 0.4%, compared to the ETF Database category average of 0.54%. That means you’ll pay $40 in annual fees on an investment of $10,000.
This well-established water ETF tracks an index of companies that derive a substantial portion of their revenues from the potable water and wastewater industry.
FIW contains a healthy allotment of utilities, which are generally considered defensive plays because of their steadying effect during economic downturns. After all, people are going to drink water and take showers regardless of economic conditions.
And as you might expect from a water ETF, the fund has a large percentage of industrials stocks. These types of companies tend to do better when the economy is performing well, or is expected to.
The fund has a 0.53% expense ratio and yields 0.7%.
This leading water ETF invests in companies that create products that conserve and purify water for homes and businesses.
“Both First Trust Water and Invesco Water Resources are ideal ETFs that provide … exposure to water utilities, wastewater treatments, testing, and even pumps, pipes and valves – the backbone of the non-sexy water infrastructure,” Pernas says. “FIW probably wins out given its slightly lower expense ratio, lower exposure to (American depositary receipts) and more concentration.”
HAMPTON N.H. – Streets turned to rivers in Hampton, N.H. along Hampton Beach.
The storm left behind a stream of damage of partly flooded homes and cars.
“I’ve seen a flood, but I’ve never seen anything like this and I lived here for 35 years,” Hampton resident Susan McGee said.
McGee lives on Nudd Avenue. She decided to wait this storm out, but found herself stuck in her third floor apartment.
Her three story home was completely surrounded by water.
“I think it is amazing. Seriously this is like amazing,” she said.
Many of the houses are summer homes so they are currently empty, but there are plenty of families who live here year round, like Gabe Bailey who we found walking in the flood waters waste deep.
He lives on Bittersweet and Brown Avenue.
He too decided not to evacuate and now a few of his neighbor’s homes are flooded.
“They’re under water, yea there’s water. I just talked to a neighbor down there and they got water inside their whole house. So, they lost everything,” Bailey said.
But like a good neighbor he’s doing his part, collecting trash cans and whatever he can find.
“I got some stuff to rescue. I got the neighbors trash barrels, and recycle barrels and a piece of fence. I try to return it to their properties,” he said.
Iconic fishing shacks in Portland, Maine, were washed away on Saturday when the coast saw record water levels, as storms sweep across the country.
Water levels at the Portland tide gauge set a new record just after noon, surpassing the previous record set in 1978. The gauge registered 14.57 feet MLLW (mean lower low water), breaking the record of 14.17 feet MLLW set at that location on Feb. 7, 1978. Records at the Portland gauge extend back to 1912.
Amid the flooding threat, all three fishing shacks at Willard Beach were “completely destroyed” in the storm, the city of South Portland said in a Facebook post Saturday afternoon.
Work had been ongoing in recent years to preserve the historic shacks, which were the only three remaining from the region’s fishing heyday during the 1800s.
“Sad day for our community,” the South Portland Historical Society said in a Facebook post while sharing photos of the destroyed shacks.
Crews were assessing “significant damage due to flooding” in South Portland, the city said.
Among the areas impacted, Bug Light Park will be closed until at least Tuesday due to “major damage” to the path leading to the lighthouse, the city said.
Flooding was also seen in other coastal towns, including the streets of Boothbay, Maine, north of Portland, during peak high tide Saturday.
Coastal flooding has been inundating many communities along the Northeast coast in the wake of a major storm, with much of New England seeing significant coastal flood impacts due to the high tide.
The National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, had earlier issued a rare flash flood warning related to coastal flooding, saying: “We have taken the extra step of issuing a Flash Flood Warning for our vulnerable coastal communities to highlight the increasing threat for major impacts around the noon high tide.”
Almost every single U.S. state was under some form of weather alert Saturday morning — from flood watches in the east to blizzard warnings in Iowa to wind chill warnings for over a dozen states in the central U.S.
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Low water levels on the lower Mississippi River are likely to persist through at least January despite expected above-normal precipitation across the southern United States this winter, forecasters with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Thursday.
The severe to exceptional drought choking the lower Mississippi River valley is expected to improve this winter as the El Nino weather pattern brings better rains to the region, NOAA said in its U.S. winter weather outlook.
But lingering drought in the upper Midwest and forecasts for normal to below-normal precipitation across basins that supply tributaries like the Illinois and Ohio rivers could slow the Mississippi River’s recovery.
Low water has slowed export-bound barge shipments of grain from the Midwest farm belt for a second straight year during the busy fall harvest season, making U.S. exports of corn and soybeans less competitive in the world market.
“We are expecting improving drought conditions for the lower to middle Mississippi Valley during the next few months. But for the hydrological impacts such as low river levels and low ground water levels, that will be a little slower to recover,” said Brad Pugh, operational drought lead with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
“The hydrological impacts could linger beyond the end of January,” he said.
The Mississippi River fell to an all-time low on Monday at the Memphis, Tennessee, river gauge, eclipsing the previous low water record set nearly a year ago, according to National Weather Service data.
Shallow river conditions prompted barge shippers to restrict the amount of grain they haul to avoid getting stuck in the drought-parched waterway.
Still, areas of the lower Mississippi River have been closed to navigation at times over the past several weeks following vessel groundings or as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers crews dredged low spots to deepen the channel.
COJATA, Bolivia (Reuters) – The exposed cracked floors of parts of Lake Titicaca, South America’s largest body of fresh water and the highest navigable lake in the world nestled amid the Andes mountains, are an alarming sight for local farmer Manuel Flores.
His crops are parched, nearby water wells have dried up amid a long spell of drought, and his livestock are struggling. Like many who live on or around the lake, he used to get around easily by boat. Now he walks across the dried-up lake bed.
The lake, once seen as a deity by the pre-Columbian people that lived on its shores, is an important ecosystem for wildlife and a water source for millions of people, including in the city of El Alto, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the east.
But its water levels are now reaching record lows, worsened by the El Nino weather phenomenon that means less rain in the area, compounding a long dry spell and rare high temperatures.
Scientists say such extreme weather is becoming increasingly common globally because of climate change, which also intensifies the effects of El Nino.
“I am 50 years old. Never before has Lake Titicaca dried up like it is now. This affects us, because there is no more food for our livestock and we cannot travel by boat,” said farmer Flores. “Now we have to walk and our crops no longer exist because it hasn’t rained since last year.”
The drought is approaching critical levels for the region’s agriculture, farmers and experts said. If it does not rain by early December there will be no planting of potatoes, one of the food staples for Bolivia’s rural communities and cities.
Around the lake, especially in the smaller and shallower “Lago Menor,” the waters have receded from the shoreline, partly due to the lack of rains, high temperatures and receding of the Andean glaciers, whose melt water normally feeds the lake.
Experts say many of the factors contributing to the shrinking of Lake Titicaca could be linked to climate change.
“Ninety-five percent of the water loss from the lake is due to evaporation, which shows that this is totally or almost totally caused by climate change,” said Xavier Lazzaro, an aquatic systems specialist with French research institute IRD.
‘GOING DOWN CENTIMETER BY CENTIMETER’
According to MapBiomas Agua, which has monitored changes in surface water bodies in the area for two decades, Bolivia overall has seen a 39% drop in its natural surface waters, such as rivers and lagoons, between 1985 and 2022.
The decline comes with global temperatures hitting record highs, which has impacted rivers, lakes and glaciers from the United States to Asia.
“There are many factors, many causes,” said Rodney Camargo, an official at local NGO Friends of Nature Foundation (FAN).
“On one hand we have local causes that we know about: deforestation, fires, human activity, large dams, which have an effect. In global terms we have climate change, and phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina, which cause floods and droughts.”
Back at Lake Titicaca, Fredy Aruquipa, the person in charge of monitoring the lake’s water level, watches it decline daily.
“The water is going down centimeter by centimeter,” he said.
BARCELONA (Reuters) – Water bills will rise sharply in Barcelona and neighbouring cities due to a long-running drought in Spain’s northeast as the costs of desalination and water purification rise, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area said on Tuesday.
Bills will increase by 11-16% in 23 municipalities, including Spain’s second-largest city.
Since September last year, rainfall in Spain has been around 17% below the 30-year average, and some reservoirs in Catalonia in the northeast and Andalucia in the south are only 15% full.
The southern cities of Sevilla and Malaga have already announced water bill hikes this year, while charges in the Barcelona area had remained mostly unchanged in recent years.
As Catalonia endures its worst recorded drought, officials announced last week that part of the region, including Barcelona, was entering a pre-emergency phase.
Permitted water consumption was reduced to 210 litres a day per resident from 230.
Fresh water now requires more treatment because rivers have become sluggish, and the output of costly desalination plants has been boosted.
Arrangements are being made to allow deliveries by ship if necessary, and new desalination plants are to be built.
(Reuters) – The Biden administration announced a proposal on Thursday which would require water systems across the U.S. to replace lead pipes within the next ten years, an issue which has been previously called a public health crisis by Vice President Kamala Harris.
The proposal, announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), includes a series of additional regulatory actions such as lowering the lead action level and improving sampling protocols utilized by water systems, the agency said in a statement.
The White House has made removing every lead pipe within 10 years in the United States a centerpiece of its plan to address racial disparities and environmental issues in the wake of water contamination crises in recent years from Newark, New Jersey to Flint, Michigan.
The administration announced $15 billion in funding to remove such pipes as part of the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package President Joe Biden signed in November, 2021.
DUBAI (Reuters) – The U.S. state of New Mexico on Tuesday used the COP28 talks in Dubai to announce a plan to divert wastewater from the oil and gas industry to water-intensive clean energy projects such as electric vehicle and solar manufacturing.
New Mexico is the second-biggest oil and gas producing state, behind Texas, and it brings enormous amounts of water to the surface, most of which is put back underground, as it produces oil and gas.
Diverting some of the water to manufacturing could take pressure off the arid state’s dwindling water supplies, and also relieve its reinjection wells, which researchers say are at risk of filling and triggering earthquakes.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham told Reuters in an interview she was launching the program, described as a first of its kind, at the climate talks to inspire other countries with similar issues.
“If we do it, it will happen other places,” she said.
She said she has had conversations with counterparts in Australia and Taiwan and has seen interest from policymakers in the Middle East.
Lujan Grisham said New Mexico intends to spend $500 million to buy treated drilling wastewater, along with with brackish water from underground sources, to build a strategic water supply, and would seek deals starting early next year.
The governor said the brackish underground water could potentially be treated for public consumption, while the produced water from drillers would be made fit for use in clean energy manufacturing.
The manufacturing industry, including the clean energy sector, uses huge amounts of water, typically either as an ingredient in products or the chemical processes to make them, or to cool equipment.
Lujan Grisham said she hoped the program would help New Mexico attract new clean energy manufacturing business.
Over 2 billion barrels of produced water were generated by New Mexico’s drillers in 2022, of which 1.2 billion were reinjected, according to the governor’s office.
Climate-driven droughts have worsened the state’s water supplies. In Albuquerque, for example, the Rio Grande went dry for the first time in four decades in August 2022, and climate models predict up to a 25% reduction in available water across the state, the governor’s office said.
Lujn Grisham said New Mexico will offer long-term contracts to potential water sellers, who would be required to clean up the water using the best technologies.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire has agreed to make upgrades at its largest fish hatchery as part of a proposed settlement following allegations that the facility was polluting nearby waterways, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday.
The state will take action to reduce phosphorus in its discharges from the Powder Mill State Fish Hatchery to the Merrymeeting River. As part of the settlement, the state agreed to construct a new wastewater treatment systems. It also agreed to reconfigure the facility’s tanks to promote the settling of solids containing phosphorus so it can meet permit limits by Dec. 31, 2025.
“This settlement demonstrates that the Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency are committed to addressing risks to water quality in our nation’s rivers and streams,” Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim, of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement. “This settlement will lead to significant reductions in phosphorus discharges to the Merrymeeting River and downstream ponds and help reduce risks to anyone fishing or coming into contact with these waters.”
David Cash, the regional administrator for EPA’s New England office, said the settlement also addresses concerns about harmful algal blooms which are on the rise in the region.
The settlement comes nearly four years after the Conservation Law Foundation sued the state over the issue. In its federal lawsuit, the foundation accused the state Department of Fish & Game, which owns and operates the hatchery, of degrading the Merrymeeting River with fish waste it discharges, leading to harmful algae blooms, decreased property values and limited recreation.
The state Department of Fish & Game and Environmental Services had argued that the hatchery has been in compliance with its permit that was years overdue for an update.
The state has implemented short-term changes to improve discharge including changing to lower-phosphorus fish food, moving some fish to other hatcheries, and storing waste for land application as fertilizer instead of putting it into the river.
Michael Garrity, a spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office, said the announcement “memorializes the State of New Hampshire’s commitment to continue its significant progress over the last several years to reduce phosphorus discharges at the Powder Mill Fish Hatchery and achieve compliance with its lowest-in-the-nation phosphorus concentration limit imposed by EPA in late 2020 to protect water quality in the Merrymeeting River.”
