Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 8, 1994 TAG: 9405070012
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MUSTOE LENGTH: Medium
Jack and Stan Norman began searching the Appalachian Mountains for a spring to buy after oil drilling ruined Jack's well water in Spencer, W.Va., two years ago.
``I had to go to a spring to get water and bring it home,'' Jack Norman, 55, said. ``I thought, there has to be money in selling water because people are running out of it.''
The brothers plan to begin selling their bottled spring water in June.
He read articles about how water was scarce in western states and that Mexico was buying water from a company in Alaska because its water system was so deteriorated.
``We're running out of water, and in a few years nations will be going to war over water,'' Norman said.
They wanted to tap a spring in West Virginia, but a geological map of the mountains showed the best prospects were across the border. There are six springs in northern Virginia, Charlottesville and suburban Richmond where water is put into five-gallon jugs and sold, primarily to businesses, but none are in the mountains, Stan Norman said.
Quibell bottles water in Roanoke that comes from a spring a few miles across the border in Sweet Springs, W.Va.
Jack Norman, who sold his restaurant and was looking for a new business venture, visited 16 springs in Virginia before coming upon a thermal spring in Highland County a few miles up the road from Warm Springs.
After the Civil War, two hotels were built near Bolar spring and people bathed in the water for its reputed health benefits. But as the use of spas generally declined this century, the hotels were closed and eventually crumbled.
Jimmy Schwartz owned the spring and had a concession stand for local residents and campers who came for a dip in a pool attached to the spring. But he abandoned the attraction after the flood of 1985 damaged the buildings and water lines.
``Bolar Spring didn't get the fame of Hot Springs (home of The Homestead resort and spa) but it was quite a hangout,'' Jack Norman said.
The Normans bought the spring last year after hiring an engineering company to analyze it. A report by Satterwhite and Associates of Philadelphia, Pa., said water from the spring at the base of Jack Mountain flows at the rate of 3,500 gallons per minute.
Annual reports from state geologists that began in 1917 show the water, warmed by deep volcanic activity, has remained a constant 74 degrees.
``This is the first teapot spigot before Warm Springs and Hot Springs,'' Jack Norman said.
They tapped the spring with a well about 50 yards away from where it comes out of the ground and 350 feet deep because new federal regulations require water distributors to eliminate any possibility of surface pollution.
At the International Water Tasting Competition in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., Bolar Spring water tied for fourth place among more than 50 entries from the United States, Italy and France.
Jack Norman said they may never get as big as Quibell, a private company with annual sales in the millions and a bottling capacity of 250,000 gallons a day.
But bottled water sales grew 7 percent last year, according to Helen Berry of Beverage Marketing Corp. in New York, and Bolar Spring has the about the same water flow as Quibell's spring.
``This will always be here,'' he said of the spring. ``For my children's children and their children. And we're going to need water more in the years ahead.''
by CNB