22 March 2016

Cherry juice and bottled water

At the InterLake, Seaborn Larson reports that the juice of retail reject cherries will be bottled in a warehouse on Finley Point this summer. Known as culled cherries, the rejects are the cherries damaged by weather. At least I hope that’s all they are. I would not want to drink juice squeezed from wormy or bird pecked cherries

The operation will produce approximately 150,000 of the 8.5-ounce bottles of juice in 2016 — approximately 10,000 gallons of juice — but has the potential to produce a million bottles of juice (66,000 gallons) in the future. It’s not clear whether the bottles would be plastic or glass.

Whether plastic or glass, the bottles will be washed. Still, it doesn’t seem like a lot of water will be required even at full output. An acre-foot of water is 43,560 cubic feet, or 326,000 gallons.

The principal water quality concern probably is nutrients from the cherry pulp leaching into Flathead Lake.

Compared to the water bottling plant proposed near Egan Slough, the cherry juice plant does not seem to raise serious water quantity issues. The bottled water plant would consume 710 acre feet a year, which is approximately 230 million gallons of water a year. Overall, the Montana Artesian Water Company would use approximately 1.2 gallons of water for every gallon of water bottled.

Provided all environmental concerns can be met satisfactorily, the cherry juice operation would be a small but welcome addition to Lake County’s economy.