Best Buy apologizes after Texas store charges $42 for cases of water.
Image: Larry W. Smith/Epa/REX/Shutterstock Best Buy apologized after a store in Cypress, Texas overpriced packs of bottled water on Friday as then-Hurricane Harvey began to unload a historic amount of water on a large swath of the state.
The Texas’ southeast is dealing with three feet of water and counting from what has proved to be an unrelenting storm, forcing residents to flee their homes for shelter.
Part of that flight involves stocking up on necessities such as water, and someone noticed that a Best Buy in Cypress was selling its bottles at a steep price — up to $42.96 per pack.
One Houston resident sent me a pic of water he saw being sold for *$42* at a nearby Best Buy.
"As a company we are focused on helping, not hurting affected people.
We’re sorry and it won’t happen again."
Charlson explained that Best Buy doesn’t generally sell cases of water, and "the mistake was made when employees priced a case of water using the single-bottle price for each bottle in the case."
Multiplication led to an inflated figure.
Residents had sent around 500 claims of price-gouging to Paxton’s office as of Monday, including reports of water cases sold for nearly $100, gas going for $10 a gallon, and hotel room prices three-four times their regular cost.

Harvey: Bottled water donations being collected in Miami Valley.
The Dayton Foodbank and Sinclair Community College are teaming up to collect donations of cases of bottled water for Harvey victims in Texas.
The cases will be collected at The Foodbank’s warehouse and at Sinclair’s downtown campus.
Riley said as soon as 22 skids are collected, enough to fill a semi, a truck will be on the road to the Houston area.
Collections are scheduled through 2 p.m. Friday.
Ohioans have been generous in supporting victims of past disasters and many are again asking how they can help, Riley said.
“When people get their heartstrings tugged, it’s important to coordinate that as fast as possible,” she said.
“Our hearts go out to the people of Houston impacted by this disaster,” Johnson said.
“Sinclair is all about people coming together to support the resolution of local and global challenges.” How to donate water Commercially-bottled water accepted only in case-sized packaging.
56 Armor Place, Dayton, OH 45417 Through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sinclair Community College 444 West Third Street, Dayton, OH 45402 Tuesday, 4-6 p.m. Wednesday through Thursday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., 4-6 p.m.

PITTSBURGH – The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority issued a precautionary flush and boil water advisory Monday night for customers in the northern neighborhoods of the city, as well as the Borough of Millvale and Reserve Township.
The advisory affects about 18,000 homes in its service area.
The impacted areas are shown on this map.
Residents who do not know if their property has lead water pipes or solder, it is recommended to first flush your lines by running water from your tap for at least one minute before boiling.
Pittsburgh Public Schools in the impacted areas will remain open.
Students will still be able to wash their hands in the bathrooms.
Food for breakfast and lunch will be prepared off-site by the school’s food service contractor.
If you cannot get to a water buffalo, city residents can call 311 for help.
Only provide pre-boiled PWSA water or bottled water.
Impacted customers will be notified by PWSA through automated robocalls.The boil water advisory will remain in place until further notice.

This Texas hotel started nearly tripling room prices.
“Because people are calling to take rooms,” the clerk said, according to KXAN, adding that “we need to (inaudible) the price.
I don’t have any control on the price.” The next morning, the TV crew again confronted a hotel clerk.
And the clerk also confirmed that 18 other hotel guests paid the much higher rate of $289 before tax, just like the TV crew.
While interviewing Attorney General Paxton on Sunday, the KXAN TV crew handed over the invoice the hotel had given them, which Paxton had his office start looking into.
“We had a team go out immediately and we found out there was some truth to the claim that there was price gouging going on at the hotel,” Deputy Attorney General Jim Davis told KXAN on Monday.
Best Western Hotels & Resorts told KXAN that it told its hotels not to price gouge, and was working to resolve the problem.
Forecasts show the Houston and Galveston areas reaching rainfall totals of 50 inches before the system leaves the coast.
Here’s what Texas looked like on Sunday following Hurricane Harvey Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, on Friday as a category 4.
Forecasts show the Houston and Galveston areas reaching rainfall totals of 50 inches before the system leaves the coast.

Michael Phelps joins campaign to help all of us have clean water.
But the Olympic swimming champion and Paradise Valley resident realizes not everyone is fortunate enough to have sufficient clean water for everyday necessities, let alone enough to swim in.
That’s why he’s teaming with Colgate to help raise awareness about wasting water.
“Water is the Earth’s most precious resource, but without realizing it we often take it for granted,” Phelps said in a written statement.
The 23-time Olympic gold medalist is lending his voice and image to a documentary series called “Tales of Two Minutes.” The name highlights the fact that people can waste as much as four gallons of water in the two minutes it takes to brush their teeth if they leave the water running.
The short films, which appear on Colgate’s YouTube channel, showcase stories from across the nation that can change the way we view water.
The first film in the series highlights the extreme water scarcity at St. Michaels Association for Special Education, the only special-needs school in St. Michaels, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation.
Due to a lack of clean drinking water at the school, students and faculty needed to bring bottled water not only to drink but for basic hygiene and to clean the medical equipment needed by some of the students and adults who attend.
Efforts to improve the situation are starting to pay off.
“As a result of this project, eventually we’re going to have a total water-filtration system for the entire school.

The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority issued a precautionary flush and boil water advisory Monday night that will affect an estimated 18,000 homes in the city’s northern neighborhoods and in Millvale and Reserve.
PWSA issued the advisory after determining deficiencies in the cover of the Lanpher reservoir could affect the quality of its water, the authority said in a news release.
Those areas include: Millvale Manchester Reserve Marshall-Shadeland Allegheny Center North Shore Allegheny West Northview Heights Brighton Heights Perry North California-Kirkbride Perry South Central Northside Spring Garden Chateau Spring Hill – City View East Allegheny Summer Hill Fineview Troy Hill Herr’s Island Customers who use water for drinking — including for pets, making ice, washing dishes, brushing teeth and preparing food are advised to flush their lines by running water from the tap for at least a minute before boiling vigorously for another minute to kill bacteria.
Water should be cooled before use.
Schools Pittsburgh Public Schools and Shaler Area School District, which includes Millvale and Reserve, said that all of its schools will remain open Tuesday.
Schools in areas affected by the advisory have taken precautions, according to school officials, including receiving daily deliveries of bottled water, covering kitchen/utility sinks and water fountains, and notifying students to not brush their teeth or drink from uncovered bathroom sinks.
Affected schools in the Pittsburgh Public Schools district include: Allegheny K-5 Allegheny 6-8 Clayton Conroy King PreK-8 Manchester PreK-8 Morrow PreK-8 Oliver Citywide Academy Perry High School Schiller 6-8 Spring Hill K-5 Spring Garden Early Childhood Center City Connections – North City Connections- CCAC and an early childhood center in the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh on the North Side are district programs also affected by the advisory.
Additionally, The Nutrition Group, our food service contractor, will be preparing all food for both breakfast and lunch off site,” the district said in a statement.
Water stations to be announced On Tuesday morning, the city is scheduled to announce the locations of water stations.
The Lanpher rising, as it is known, serves 40 percent of PWSA customers, including on the North Side.

And sure enough, the waters were still rising all across the Houston area when the first such calls were heard.
We now need some method of rationing that limited and scarce supply.
When the municipal water supply is knocked out and people are dependent on bottled water, Worstall proposes: “We now need some method of rationing that limited and scarce supply over that increased demand.
Rationing by price is always the efficient way of doing this.” He argues that raising the price will encourage suppliers to flood the market (so to speak) with bottled supply.
Throw in that, with the electricity out, she might not even have access to cash at an ATM.
She might very well value that water at $7 a bottle, in principle.
If there’s no physical way to get a new supply of bottled water into some part of Houston, then allowing unrestrained price increases won’t produce a larger supply.
Retailers lucky enough to have a few cases in the back room when the crisis hits, however, will reap a windfall.
Another argument in favor of removing crisis-stage price controls is that they fail to accommodate the higher cost of getting a scarce commodity such as water or gasoline into the stricken market.
Perry and Worstall and other defenders of price-gouging would eliminate all controls, especially in disasters.

GCC Bottled Water Market to Reach a Volume of Around 23 Billion Litres by 2022: Growth in the Travel Industry Coupled with the Expanding Food Service Sector to Drive Growth – Research and Markets.
DUBLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The "GCC Bottled Water Market: Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2017-2022" report has been added to Research and Markets’ offering.
In the GCC region, the market for bottled water has been expanding as an increasing number of consumers shift towards bottled water.
Bottled water provides consistent quality, purity and taste as compared to tap water, which can easily be contaminated.
Moreover, bottled water is convenient to carry and use, and makes it easier to measure water intake.
One of the major factors driving the market growth is the rising health consciousness among consumers which has boosted the demand for bottled water as opposed to carbonated soft drinks and other beverages.
Some of the other factors include increasing population, rising disposable income, rapid urbanisation and premiumisation.
The report has segmented the GCC bottled water market on the basis of type covering still water, carbonated water, flavoured water and mineral water.
On the basis of country, Saudi Arabia represents the largest market for bottled water in the region.
Key Topics Covered: 1 Preface 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Introduction 5 Global Bottled Water Industry 6 GCC Region Bottled Water Industry 7 Market Breakup by Product Type 8 Market Breakup by Distribution Channel 9 Competitive Landscape 10 Saudi Arabia Bottled Water Industry 11 UAE Bottled Water Industry 12 Others Markets in the GCC Region 13 Bottled Water Manufacturing Process 14 Project Details, Requirements and Costs Involved 15 Bottled Water Manufacturing Plant: Loans and Financial Assistance 16 Project Economics For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/fn6lnq/gcc_bottled_water Contacts Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 Related Topics: Bottled Water

Concerns expressed as bottled water program to end this week in Hoosick Falls.
"I just don’t trust the water…" Lifelong Hoosick Falls resident Richard Gorman says he’s been picking up the gallons of water provided to him for free as a village resident, despite water filtration systems being intact.
"I can’t really see it ending because a lot of people i talk to aren’t going to touch the water," Gorman said.
“There’s a level of mistrust with a lot of different entities involved," Dawson said.
“Really the program, we feel, shouldn’t end until there’s a new water source."
The village’s mayor, Rob Allen, says he knows, even though science says it’s safe, it can be hard to believe.
Allen provided us with this statement, saying in part, “We understand the concerns that some people continue to have regarding the possible presence of PFOA in our water.
Fortunately, the GAC filters have been operating successfully since they went online, and the finished water has always tested below the detection limit for PFOA (under 2ppt).” Allen says the bottled water program was actually slated to end months ago – as part of a consent order between the state and the companies – but it was extended until now.
Dawson says despite the additional expense, her water source won’t be changing yet.
"Once the program ends, I’m going to be buying it – I won’t drink from the tap again.

Cheers to Beth, jeers to plastic bottles.
The one thing I will always remember about Beth Carvey and her lifetime of work at Rock Island’s Black Hawk State Historic Site is a time she talked to me about the American Indians towns in the area that is now the Quad-Cities.
She chuckled a bit and said her use of the word "towns" was her way of making a statement, a way of pointing out that, subconsciously, people in general assign less importance to "villages" than to "towns" and that the places where Indians lived were every bit as important and legitimate as the towns of European settlers.
And thanks for your 36 years of giving tours and talks to perhaps a half-million school children, making sure history is not forgotten.
And made more special by people like her working there.
PLASTIC BOTTLES BACK IN NATIONAL PARKS: During a vacation swing through the five national parks in southern Utah a couple of years ago, I became aware of something I considered very wonderful: Water in plastic bottles was NOT for sale in the gift shops.
As with the example of Beth Carvey above, there was a point being made here.
Having to go to a water fountain and fill up my container made me feel proud of my country.
But now plastic bottles are back.
Just recently the Trump Administration reversed the six-year policy that allowed parks to ban the sale of plastic water bottles.