Springfield golf course owners bottle water from underground well - KY3

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - Some golf courses are known for their water holes that intimidate and frustrate golfers, but one local golf course might become known for its bottled water.

Below Springfield's Deer Lake golf course is a well, thousands of feet deep. According to Chad Sitton, the well was originally dug in search for oil or natural gas.

When Sitton learned about the natural water source, which he said is known as one of the purest in North America, it brought back childhood memories.

"My grandfather used to take me to Deer Lake golf and we would fill up gallon milk jugs off of that deep well, because there really was a taste difference in it," Sitton said.

Sitton and his business partners decided to buy the golf course, not because they love golf but because he loves that water, and wants to bottle it and sell it. They've been doing just that since July, bottling Ozarks water, calling it OzWater.

"When you open a bottle of OzWater, you're opening a product that hasn't really been touched or tampered with in any way, and it hasn't seen the light of day in 37,000 years," Sitton said.

Straight from the source, bottling, labeling, packing and shipping all happens at the fully integrated site at Deer Lake. Sitton, the on-site manager, said that not only improves efficiency but reduces the company's carbon footprint.

"We sit on a lot of inventory to reduce transportation emissions," he said.

Sitton said OzWater comes from a trapped glacier and remains mostly untouched from the ground to the bottle. He said other brands try to market their elevated pH levels, which he, and Mercy dietitian Kathy Gardner say is unnecessary.

"It’s really a marketing ploy to talk about these alkaline things to balance our foods because it doesn’t move the needle very much at all," Gardner said.

She said it doesn't matter where we get our water, as long as we're drinking it.

"Water is the main thing we need to survive. We can live for weeks without food but days without water," Gardner said.

Sitton said, he's sure, the Ozarks has some of the best.

"We're just trying to bring that back, just go back with original, virgin water. Not chemically treated, nothing added to it, just good water for the body," he said.

OzWater is sold at Mama Jean's, Price Cutter, Classic Rock Coffee here in Springfield. Sitton said the bottled water is also sold at a couple of businesses in Branson, and in other states. The company is looking to sell in the Kansas City area.

2019-12-17 04:18:27Z
https://www.ky3.com/content/news/Springfield-golf-course-owners-bottle-water-found-in-underground-well-566265441.html