As part of a controversial plan to ban the sale of plastic bottles, the park installed water filling stations. Photo: Tina Manley/Alamy

The National Park Service was going to rid itself of an environmental threat — until its corporate donors intervened.

by Steve Knopper

The view from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is stunning. Red-striped cliffs extend for miles. Tendrils of the Colorado River wind throughout the landscape. What you can’t see from this pristine vista is the trash — nearly 3,000 tons of it — produced by the 4 million people who come to Grand Canyon National Park each year. Thirty percent of that waste (887 tons) is plastic water bottles. That’s nearly 34 million containers, which, laid end to end, would stretch from the park to the Arctic Ocean.

To address this problem, in 2009, then-park superintendent Stephen Martin proposed a ban on the sale of plastic water bottles in the park. The move was part of a comprehensive National Park Service (NPS) initiative to eliminate waste and reduce the carbon footprint of the parks. It was a bold idea, considering that authorized vendors in Grand Canyon rake in $400,000 from water sales every year, but it wasn’t unprecedented: Utah’s Zion National Park had banned plastic water-bottle sales in 2008, removing 60,000 bottles from its waste stream and winning an NPS award as a result.

Pressing forward with the plan, Grand Canyon spent eight months and $300,000 installing water-filling stations throughout the park, and vendors began selling reusable bottles. But last December the green initiative was abruptly canceled, after reps from Coca-Cola, which has donated $13 million to the National Park Foundation and, through vendors, sells its Dasani water in the Grand Canyon, learned of the ban.

“We wanted to be part of the dialogue,” says Coca-Cola spokeswoman Susan Stribling. “The national parks are actually our customers. When a customer has a concern, we want to be able to address it and work collaboratively.” The company suggested a “broader solution” more considerate of consumers: Instead of banning bottles, the park should let visitors choose between hydration stations and bottled water.

Coca-Cola’s clout led the NPS to reverse the ban immediately. “I was not convinced that banning water bottles in a park where people die of heatstroke was a well-thought-out idea,” NPS director Jonathan Jarvis says of the reason for his about-face. But in an e-mail to senior NPS staff, uncovered after an environmental group filed a Freedom of Information Act request, he wrote of the ban, “There [will] be consequences since Coke is a major sponsor of our recycling efforts.”

Word that the Park Service had bowed to corporate interests prompted a swift and vocal public outcry. Over 100,000 people signed a petition drafted by an anti-plastic organization urging the NPS to allow the Grand Canyon to ban bottled-water sales.

Five weeks after news of the NPS’s backroom dealings broke, thanks in part to public pressure, Jarvis reversed himself, signing a national policy that allows superintendents to enact a ban — after they perform a cost-benefit analysis and provide written proof that their parks meet a long list of guidelines governing visitor health and safety. “[The National Park Service] must be a visible example of sustainability,” Jarvis said in a statement.

Grand Canyon, which had already undertaken many of the steps now required to meet the rigorous standards of the NPS, expects to receive approval to ban bottled-water sales early this year.