Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

CHEROKEE, NC - The trucks started rolling in and out of Cherokee beginning on Friday afternoon, December 29, and did not stop until 1:30 Sunday morning. At the end, forty-two truckloads of Cherokee Bottled Water were headed to victims of the Christmas ice storm in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Last spring, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and its bottled water program, became one of the primary suppliers of bottled water for disaster relief in the Southeastern United States. As part of the contract, Cherokee Bottled Water agreed to produce and warehouse 4.3 million liters of bottled water that would be available for immediate shipment once a disaster occurred and a need for bottled water determined.

To fulfill the contract, Cherokee Bottled Water began producing 1.5-liter bottles in June at bottling plants in Long Creek, South Carolina and Hendersonville, North Carolina. Once the project was completed in early August, 260 truckloads of bottled water had been stored in the old Barclay Building on Acquoni Road in Cherokee.

“We began this project with the knowledge that the water would probably support victims of a hurricane somewhere along the Atlantic or Gulf coasts,” said Greg Duff, manager of Cherokee Bottled Water. “While the last hurricane season proved uneventful, we felt that all of the water would be during 2001. The opportunity to help people in Oklahoma and Arkansas was a nice surprise that not only reduced our inventory, but also allowed us to experience a rapid load-out. I was very pleased about how we responded and feel good about our ability to handle a larger operation that could last several days.”

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians started Cherokee Bottled Water in 1998. It is distributed throughout Western North Carolina in both single-serving and 5-gallon sizes. The tribe hopes to complete a new distribution agreement in the next few weeks that will allow its product to be sold in parts of Missouri, northern Arkansas, southern Illinois and western Tennessee and Kentucky.