Scott Johnson

Xanterra Parks and Resorts, an operator of lodgings, gift shops and general merchandise stores at national parks from Death Valley to the Grand Canyon, makes tens of millions of dollars selling its wares and lodgings to tourists. A small portion of those sales — maybe half of a percentage point — comes from selling water in plastic bottles.

Why would it want to give that up?

Don’t get Chris Lane started. He is the company’s vice president for environmental affairs, and the word “evangelist” does not fully capture his intensity on the subject of petroleum-based plastic and the harm that he believes it does to the environment.

“This is a big issue for us, and we are trying to proactively address it,” he said in an interview for an article in Thursday’s paper on a decision by the National Park Service director to scuttle a planned water-bottle ban that park personnel, Xanterra and its fellow concessionaire, Delaware North, had spent months preparing for.

“We would like to see the ban of all petroleum-derived plastic water bottles in national parks,” Mr. Lane said.



Pausing to praise the documentary film “Tapped,” a take-down of the plastic-bottle business, he added: “We’re of the mind that the clock is ticking on petroleum-derived plastic. There should be a biodegradable alternative. It’s bad for the earth, it’s bad for the oceans, its bad for ecosystems. This is a lose-lose proposition.”

Xanterra campaigned for a ban on sales of bottled water at Zion National Park in southern Utah that took effect in 2008, a move that brought the company and the park an environmental achievement award from the national office of the Park Service.

When the Grand Canyon park decided to follow suit two years later, initially with the support of the park service’s regional office in Denver and the national office in Washington, bottlers including the Coca-Cola Company, a major park donor, weighed in.

While the beverage company is eager to help with recycling efforts, it considers bans an infringement on personal freedoms, a Coca-Cola spokeswoman said.

The park service director, Jon Jarvis, said the opposition from Coca-Cola, relayed through the director of the parks’ philanthropic arm, the National Park Foundation, had nothing to do with his decision.

In response to questions about Coca-Cola’s role and the reasons for his decisions, the park director wrote in an e-mail:

When I heard about the proposal, I wanted to better understand the servicewide implications, as this affects more than the Grand Canyon. One of my primary jobs as director is to monitor actions by the parks that set precedents for the rest of the system. The bans in Zion and Hawaii Volcanoes were much smaller-scale than the canyon, so this had broader implications. Coke raised concerns through the foundation, and we invited them to participate in a discussion with the bottling industry and some of our concessioners about how to achieve our sustainability goals.

He continued:

Coke received no special treatment. They have a strong sustainability program and are assisting the N.P.S. on the National Mall with a comprehensive recycling program. Their ideas about how to treat the entire waste stream assist us in meeting our goals. My decision to hold off the ban was not influenced by Coke, but rather the servicewide implications to our concessions contracts, and frankly, the concern for public safety in a desert park.

Concession contracts like Xanterra’s can run for as long as 10 years. But there are provisions for amending them. Would Xanterra have objected to a change that allowed them to ban plastic water bottles?

Mr. Lane estimated that the net cost to Xanterra of the ban at Zion had been $20,000 or $25,000 net. That factors in a loss of $50,000 or so on bottled-water sales, and an increase of $25,000 or so in sales of reusable water bottles. The park service then extrapolated these figures with Xanterra’s Grand Canyon business in mind; its spokesman, David Barna, said a ban there would cost the company $300,000.

Which is not nothing, but that is not the point, Mr. Lane said. “We sell bottled water, so in theory it would be a hit to our finances,” he said. “But there is an alternative. There was water before there was bottled water. Nobody was dying of thirst.”

Working with Xanterra, the Grand Canyon park put in more than a dozen “hydration stations,” essentially filling stations where fresh water is free. As Mr. Lane said, “Instead of a person buying a $2 plastic bottle of water, they can buy a reusable bottle for $7 or $5 and fill it over and over again.” Maps of the hydration stations are available, and warnings are posted at trailheads to ensure that tourists are aware of the dangers of dehydration and know where to get water.

He said there had been “a big learning curve” for the company on the environmental costs of bottled water, which makes up 30 percent of the waste stream at Grand Canyon.

“Revenue or no revenue, something’s got to be done about bottled water,” Mr. Lane said.