You Have The Best Water, Too

Louisville, you get your water way too cheap. Look at your bill, it shows you’re paying $2.68 for every 1,000 gallons. Basically, if you filled up a 20-ounce container, it would cost you way less than a penny.
The rest of the world is going to be paying much, much more for your aqua soon. Eldorado Artesian Springs Inc. sees a whole lot more value in your water, which comes straight from South Boulder Creek. It plans to bottle and sell your tap water for about $1.50 for a 20-ounce bottle. Eldorado, a 25-year-old company known for packaging spring-fed water that drips from the foothills, thinks Louisville’s water is pristine enough that it can make a hefty little profit.

Apparently everything is good in Louisville. Money Magazine recently tabbed it the third best city in the country to live in. Maybe that ranking had a little to do with the water. Eldorado knows a lot about it already having a 38,000-square-foot bottling plant inside city limits.

Under an agreement reached last month between the city and Eldorado, the company can bottle 75 acre-feet of Louisville tap water annually for the next five years. Beyond getting paid, the city gets the added benefit of keeping the plant in Louisville, something that was far from guaranteed if Eldorado wasn’t allowed to tap into city supplies. It remains to be seen what the water will be called and whether it will be labeled with Louisville’s name. Mayor Charles Sisk says he’d love to see it called Louisville water or have some notation, although it was never pushed in the negotiation process. “We’d love it,” he says. “I’m sure there are ways that Louisville will get recognized.”