The sketch on the ocean-blue labels wrapped around bottles of Aquafina drinking water looks just like a snowcapped mountain range.
But the water, which is bottled by Pepsi-Cola Co. and has rocketed up the sales charts of an industry whose overall sales are exploding, does not come from a mountain spring at all. It's not even from a country well or a flowing stream.
It's filtered tap water from 11 cities across the country - including Houston, Wichita, Kan., and Fresno, Calif. - whose supplies may not spring to mind as the most pristine or refreshing.
As the public's passion for bottled water continues to heat up, a debate over the sources of the more than 3 million gallons sold last year in the United States has taken center stage.
The water merchants, ranging from Pepsi-Cola and Perrier to a Georgia landowner who adds clove and licorice flavoring, look for ways to make the water seem special and increase sales at the same time.
They argue about the value and popularity of minerals, the merits of reverse osmosis and ozonation, the advantages of having one water source or several, and the challenges of rising production.
Competitors complain that Pepsi-Cola is misleading consumers with the mountain sketch on bottles of "purified" Aquafina. The leading brands are also keeping a close eye on the fast growth of newcomer Dannon, which plays up its brand name (same as the yogurt) rather than its sources.
Neighbors of a Great Bear spring in Pennsylvania charge that Perrier, which owns that regional brand and several others, including Poland Spring and Deer Park, plans to expand production so much that their trout streams and wells could dry up.
"People here see this bottled water as a luxury for yuppies vs. something they need to flush their toilets and take a shower," said Jerry Centofanti, regional program manager for water supply management at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Some bottlers say many of the "natural spring waters" are not all that natural because the water is trucked around and then shot with ozone and ultraviolet light to kill bacteria before it is bottled.
The trick for bottlers is to sell their brands in a wide area - possibly the whole nation - without drowning in high transportation expenses that can far exceed the cost of the water itself, often as little as a few cents per bottle.
U.S. sales of bottled water, including water cooler jugs, shot up 8 percent last year to 3.1 million gallons, or 11.7 gallons a person, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp. of New York. That includes a nearly 25 percent jump for plastic bottles holding 1.5 liters and less.
"It fits in with today's healthier lifestyles," said Gary Hemphill, vice president of Beverage Marketing, adding that bottled water has increasingly become an alternative not just to tap water but also to soft drinks.
The sales and per capita consumption levels for bottled water have more than doubled over the past 10 years - faster growth than any other beverage category except iced teas and sports drinks. The industry even managed to overcome the discovery in 1990 that traces of cancer-causing benzene had been found in some bottles of Perrier sparkling water. Perrier temporarily halted bottling at a plant in France and launched a worldwide recall.
Much of the growth in bottled-water sales over the past two decades has been in non-sparkling, or non-carbonated, water, which represents more than 85 percent of U.S. sales.
In fact, Perrier, long identified with its bubbly water in green bottles, has gobbled up regional brands of non-sparkling water across the country in recent years, from Zephyrhills in Florida to Arrowhead in California. Perrier Group of America, whose Paris-based parent company is controlled by Nestle of Switzerland, now grabs more than 26 percent of U.S. bottled-water sales.
But even Perrier is frustrated that it can't afford to distribute its very popular and fast-growing Poland Spring brand much beyond the Northeast. The brand, founded in 1845 in Poland, Maine, focuses its marketing on its sole use of wells tapping into an underground reservoir amid 400 wooded acres.
"I would love to be selling Poland Spring in California, but I would have to sell it at a price that's higher than all of the other domestic waters because I am bringing it 3,000 miles across the country," said Jeff Caso, vice president of marketing at the Perrier Group in Greenwich, Conn.
In contrast, the Deer Park brand has spread from its original source in Deer Park, Md., to springs in New Tripoli and Valley View, Pa.; Freedom, N.H.; and Montverde, Fla.
Critics say using more than one source is cheating.
"Water is a living thing, so if you are using more than one source, it's not the same water each time," said Bill Mimnaugh, U.S. managing director for Spa Monopole Corp. in Greenwich, which imports bottled water from the town of Spa in Belgium. Spa has been exporting water for more than 400 years.
After complaints that images of glaciers and waterfalls on labels were misleading consumers, the Food and Drug Administration tightened labeling rules for bottled water last year and more clearly defined each type, including artesian well, mineral, purified and spring water. The FDA also expanded the list of contaminants that bottlers must test for, to 83.
Executives at bottling companies, who realize that image still counts for a lot, are extremely sensitive when it comes to questions about sources.
A U.S. spokesman for Danone Group, the Paris-based company that markets Evian, double-checked with executives before revealing that another brand the company owns, Dannon, uses two sources: a spring in Piedmont, Canada, and AquaPenn Springs in Graysville, Pa., which is owned by an outside bottling company.
Unlike its' strategy with Evian, marketed as untreated, unfiltered water from a legendary spring in France, Danone is depending on the reputation of Dannon yogurts to market Dannon water.
Meanwhile, Perrier is rolling out a brand called Oasis that will use several spring sources across the country, and wants to make it a national brand. Aquafina, by Pepsi-Cola, is also going national. And it doesn't bother with springs at all.
Bottlers say American tastes contrast sharply with those of Europeans, who prefer bottled water with much higher levels of minerals such as magnesium and calcium despite the stronger taste. In Europe, Vittel, for instance, has 20 times the mineral content as Poland Spring. The version of Vittel imported to the United States has half the levels of the European one, though.