VICTORY IN THE GRAND CANYON! WELL, MAYBE

By Stiv Wilson on December 15, 2011

After an article surfaced in the New York Times concerning Coca-Cola's meddling into National Park Policy regarding the ban of single-use plastic water bottles in Grand Canyon National Park, 5 Gyres started a petition on Change.org to urge Jon Jarvis, National Park Director, to not cow to corporate interests. What's at issue is that Coke is a large donor to The National Park surface, and when the NYT piece came out, both Coke and The National Park vigorously denied that Coke's opposition had anything to do with Jarvis's top down suspension of soon to be implemented water bottle ban in the park. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, activists obtained emails between Coke and Director Jarvis which clearly showed that Jarvis was indeed influenced by Coke.

The petition received 100,000 signatures and through our advocacy efforts working virally in the digital medium, we effectively forced Jarvis's hand and he circulated a memo to his park superintendents yesterday (12/14/11) allowing superintendents to allow bottle bans. But there's a catch-- Below is a cut from the policy that Jarvis sent concerning bottle bans to his superintendents. You can read the full text here:

The proof is in the policy as they say, and if these new regulations prove to be too onerous or cost prohibitive for parks to act, then what we're really witnessing is a bait and switch. Time will tell.