Steve Rowell
Arrowhead
2015
In 1988, a crucial permit issued by the US Forest Service to Arrowhead Puritas Waters Inc. for the extraction of spring water from the finite resources of the San Bernardino Mountains expired. Despite the expired permit, Nestle Waters of North America (owner of Arrowhead Puritas Waters, Inc.) has continued to pay an annual usage fee of just $524 for what amounts to unlimited, unregulated water extraction. Millions of gallons are siphoned from the small springs that once fed Strawberry Creek, then transported by truck to their Ontario and Morongo plants where the water is bottled and distributed across the state. When a critical public resource is tapped without proper permits, the requisite state or federal oversight and monitoring simply evaporates.
This lack of official scrutiny is mirrored by a raw, ethical reaction on the ground. While conducting fieldwork for this project, I encountered a small group of activists at the base of an eary 20th "Indian" statue—a promotional gateway pointing toward the abandoned Arrowhead Springs Hotel and hiking trail. There, in that historic parking lot, they were conducting a ritual protest, what they termed a "corporate death curse" against Nestlé. This act of performative outrage, staged at a site layered with promotional history and indigenous reference, underscores the intense public scrutiny—and spiritual condemnation—focused on a global conglomerate seen as profiting from California's deepening water crisis.
Even less is known about Nestlé’s operation at the Morongo Reservation. This enterprise operates on land held as sovereign since a time before memory, yet its effects ripple into California's contested future. The operation remains shrouded in opacity—the volume of water extracted from the mountain springs, the specifics of the access fees paid to the tribal council, and the final destination of the millions of gallons bottled remain largely confidential. Critically, because the Morongo Reservation is sovereign land, this agreement grants a global corporation permission to extract water without the regulatory scrutiny or input required from the state or federal government—and without the involvement of other Californians. Retail prices for a single half-liter (16.9 oz) range up to $2 per bottle. While the bottled water industry’s water use is small compared to urban applications and pales next to the billions of gallons used in California’s agricultural areas, the existence of this unchecked extraction is a profound moral and ethical challenge. During a period of unprecedented and catastrophic drought, it forces us to confront the reality that water is the most important, and most threatened, resource on Earth for life.
This extraction, authorized on land with a claim to time immemorial, heightens the existential tension over this precious public good. For how much longer can we treat water as a profitable commodity rather than a right, especially as it becomes ever more finite and contested? The easy flow of water into plastic today foreshadows a future of deepening scarcity, political instability, and perhaps even wars fought over the last viable springs. Should the people of California allow global conglomerates such as Nestlé to profit from our most precious, publicly-owned, and increasingly finite natural resource when its loss threatens not just our ecosystem, but potentially, peace itself?
Premiere: October 26-November 15, 2015
Shanahan Center Gallery, Harvey Mudd College (HMC)
The installation investigates the spatial conditions around this issue and coincides with the commissioned tour, Arrowhead Fountainhead, held on October 24, 2015. That tour and this project deal, in general, with the issue of drought in California, and more specifically, with sites on the landscape that represent controversial exploitation of public water resources. Rather than an exhaustive survey of the state, or even Southern California, this installation focuses on specific sites and contexts in the San Bernardino Valley and environs which evoke the larger issue. Also featured are two remote sites – Desert Shores at the evaporating Salton Sea and the Zzyzx abandoned health spa deep in the Mojave Desert – both of which simultaneously serve as relics of an optimistic past as well as omens of a future landscape of drought and squandered resources.
Single channel 4K aerial drone video downscaled to HD with two-channel audio, 19 minutes (looping), inkjet prints (3D satellite images) yellow cordage, T-pins, active PA speakers, projector, pedestals.
