A growing industry in Ohio is calling on local, state, and federal officials to take a serious look at water quality issues. Craft brewery owners say their business completely hinges on safe drinking water.
Several craft beer companies gathered at Land Grant Brewing in Columbus to urge government leaders for help in protecting the waterways.
As Colin Vent with Seventh Son Brewing explains, most microbrews need about five to seven gallons of water in order to produce one gallon of beer.
“We’re all really small, we don’t have the infrastructure, the space, or the money to have our own, on-site nitrate cleanup and leach fields and so on and so forth so we’re completely at the mercy of municipal water,” Vent says.
The group hasn’t taken an official stance on Gov. John Kasich’s new farming regulations to reduce chemical runoff into the Lake Erie watershed, but they say they’re for a comprehensive approach to clean water initiatives.