BOTTLE BABIES
Published in the August 30, 2025 issue.
America is a thirsty nation and Crystal Geyser want to help slake that thirst.
The bottled water giant is planning a major expansion of its Olancha water operations, adding a 124,000 square foot building that will house two “bottling lines” and warehouse space. That’s on top of several buildings covering roughly 300,000 square feet in Olancha currently treating and bottling millions of gallons of Inyo County’s “natural alpine spring water,” as the Crystal Geyser marketing tagline proclaims.
In a bit of twist, maybe even a lemon twist, the new plant will also produce some “flavored mineral water.” That idea has been quietly lurking for 20 years and first gurgled up the corporate ladder in 2005, when a similar plant was approved by Inyo County, but never built.
Apparently, flavored water was an idea too good to let dry up and blow away.
Crystal Geyser Roxanne has submitted its plans to Inyo County and is requesting, once again, a number of fairly routine land use maneuvers and permission to ship water out of the county (the ghost of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power hovers over all water-related issues in the county). The county has hired a consultant to complete the Environmental Impact Report for the project.
The “new” water plant will be fed natural alpine spring water from existing groundwater production wells on the site that are currently idle. Any groundwater pumping raises eyebrows in Inyo County, which watches LADWP ship out hundreds of thousands of acre feet of Owens Valley water to Los Angeles a year. Crystal Geyser estimates the new plant will only use about 410-acre feet a year. An acre foot is roughly 326,000 gallons of water, so we’re talking close to 134 million gallons of water. The math whizzes amongst us can figure out how many 12-ounce bottles of water that will supply.
Once the plant is up and running, the company estimates it will need an additional 45 employees, with some seasonal variation in total workers. About 40 semi-trucks a day will rumble out of the new plant, the company estimates.
The Grant Ranch Project, as Crystal Geyser calls it, will also include about 64,000 square feet of paved roads, parking lots, truck loading and staging area, the company notes in the project description submitted to the county. The new operation will be located on a 104-acre parcel at the former Grant Ranch and the mostly invisible community of Grant, thus the name. Duh.
Now the bureaucratic nitty-gritty. Crystal Geyser applied for and received various land use and zoning approvals and completed an EIR for this plant in 2005. However, the plant wasn’t built and the approvals and EIR lapsed. The company is asking for the same land use changes: a General Plan Amendment, rezoning of the parcel to Light Industrial and Conditional Use Permit for the plant itself. Plus, a Conditional Use Permit will be required to allow the company to ship water out of the county.
Inyo County recently approved a $475,000 contract with Helix Environmental Planning, Inc., to prepare the EIR. Crystal Geyser has agreed to pay the county $545,000 to cover the contract and all other county costs for the EIR.
No timeline has been provided for completion of the EIR or construction of the new plant. If it is built, it will bolster Crystal Geyser’s profile in Inyo County, where it began operations with its first plant in Olancha in 1990. The local operation has expanded numerous times while the company also expanded nationwide. Crystal Geyser is among the top four Inyo County property taxpayers, alongside LADWP, Xanterra’s Death Valley lodging and commercial operations, and Coso Geothermal.
