I live in California, where we’re suffering from the worst drought in the history of the state. The Governor has declared a state of emergency, and Californians like me are doing everything we can to use less water by taking shorter showers, letting lawns dry up, even flushing toilets less often.

Meanwhile, Walmart is bottling up the last of California’s water, and then selling it for more than 600 times what they paid for it -- and they have no intention of stopping.

As this drought becomes more dire by the day, many of us have been trying to conserve water at home. Not only as an act of conscience, but with the threat of hefty fines for excessive water usage. Dramatic measures -- even water allotments in some areas -- are being taken by water companies across the state along with a mandatory 25% reduction in urban usage imposed by an Executive Order by Governor Jerry Brown.

So you can imagine how angry it makes me to find out that Walmart is not only bottling the last of California’s water, but they’re gouging consumers in the process: for every $1 Walmart pays for water, they turn around and charge Californians $658 to buy our own water back under the brand name “Great Value” -- and that’s when they don’t ship it out of the state altogether.

I urge you to sign my petition to demand that Walmart stop bottling water from California immediately, where we’re suffering from the worst drought in 500 years.

Bottling water at all is hugely wasteful -- it's estimated that bottlers use up three gallons of water to put just one on the shelf. So the fact that Walmart is doing this in the middle of the worst drought in the history of the state is almost unthinkably irresponsible.

If we can build enough pressure, even a big company like Walmart has to respond.  Just recently, because of angry consumer backlash, Starbucks was pushed to shift the sourcing for their brand of bottled water from California to Pennsylvania. Let’s tell Walmart to do the same, and get water from parts of the country that actually have some to spare.

We need every drop of water we can spare -- but Walmart is only concerned about squeezing every last dollar they can for their insidiously labeled “Great Value” brand of water. Demand that Walmart immediately stop bottling up the last of California’s water and to source it elsewhere.