Drink beer, save water

Fishing, beer and water have long gone hand in hand – remember “Brewed with Pure Rocky Mountain Spring Water?” – so maybe it’s no surprise that independent breweries are some of the most enthusiastic supporters of water restoration certificates, a new model for making dried-out rivers run again. 

It’s a twist on the renewable energy credits that many companies use to offset their carbon footprints. Instead of funding green energy projects, “water tags” from the non-profit Bonneville Environmental Foundation let businesses pay to neutralize their H2O consumption. 

The money goes to the holders of irrigation rights on degraded streams who in return agree to let their allotment flow free. Montana’s Big Sky Brewing Company, for instance, is returning four million gallons to the Prickly Pear Creek near Helena, enough to offset all of the water that goes into its beer. Portland’s Widmer Brothers Brewing agreed to return nearly three million gallons to Oregon’s Deschutes River and Evans Creek – the equivalent of what it takes to brew its Drifter Pale Ale. Meanwhile, Portland’s Laurelwood Brewing Company, Lompoc Brewing and Hopworks Urban Brewery have also tapped into the two-year-old program. 

“Most people at the brewery are fly-fishermen or boaters,” says Chris Corbin, a Big Sky sales representative.  “And a lot of people choose to live in Montana because of the resources, so this makes sense.” 

The problem – the 10,000 miles of de-watered streams in the West – stems from common “use it or lose” laws that motivate water-rights holders to consume their allotment regardless of need, according to Rob Harmon, who created the program at Bonneville. Watershed trusts figured that paying rights holders to leave water untouched could accomplish more than endless litigation over fish and farming. The trusts just didn’t have enough funding, says Harmon. 

So he set about linking them with private-sector cash, in the same way he helped Bonneville design its first renewable energy credits a decade ago. “I thought, ‘We don’t need to reinvent this whole thing,’” says Harmon. “Let’s just use all the stuff we figured out with the voluntary markets for green power.” 

Each credit costs $1 and represents 1,000 gallons returned to a stream. And each credit comes with a serial number to assure customers there’s no double counting. The National Wildlife Federation selects streams whose restoration will result in the most ecological benefit. 

So far, the program is pumping water to three streams in Oregon and Montana. Bonneville says it’s developing plans to expand into Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Washington. The group is also working to attract bigger customers – computer chip giant Intel has already signed up – by promoting the marketing advantage of being good water stewards. 

But the first two breweries to get involved say it isn’t about brand image for them. Widmer Brewing hasn’t yet touted its water work on beer bottle labels because it’s wary of overselling its green cred. “We don’t do this just because it looks good on bottles,” says Ann Widmer, sustainability chair at Widmer Brewing. “The word ‘craft’ itself implies that you care about quality and authenticity.” 

“It wasn’t that we thought, ‘Oh, our customers would love this,’ ” says Big Sky’s Corbin. “We just felt it was the right thing to do. The hope is that other breweries would see this and follow our lead.” 

Now the goal is enlisting more Fortune 500 companies like Intel that have bigger water footprints and deeper pockets for funding restoration. Then Bonneville can really raise a glass in celebration.