Anheuser-Busch halts Cartersville beer production to replenish emergency water supplies
Heavy demand for emergency drinking water after California wildfires and Hurricanes Florence and Michael led AnheuserBusch’s Cartersville Brewery last week to temporarily halt beer production to can emergency drinking water.
The demand for clean, safe drinking water exhausted existing stocks the company donates to the American Red Cross during times of natural disasters, company officials said on Oct. 22.
“Recent donations to disaster relief efforts have depleted our inventory of emergency drinking water. We need to be ready to help next time the Red Cross requests our assistance,” said Bill Bradley, vice president of community affairs at Anheuser-Busch.
“We’ve made a commitment to be there for American communities in times of need, and we are following through on that promise.”
Throughout the year, the Cartersville brewery schedules periodic pauses of beer production to can drinking water. The water is staged locally, ready to be shipped at a moment’s notice once the brewer receives a request from the American Red Cross, a longstanding partner.
At the request of the Red Cross, Anheuser-Busch has provided more than 800,000 cans – or 16 truckloads – of emergency drinking water so far in 2018, prompting today’s unscheduled run to replenish stocks.
For the past 30 years, Anheuser-Busch has partnered with the American Red Cross to provide emergency drinking water for disaster relief efforts. Since 1988, Anheuser-Busch and its wholesaler partners have provided nearly 80 million cans of water to U.S. communities affected by natural disasters nationwide.
In September, AnheuserBusch introduced the water canning capability to its Fort Collins, Colorado, brewery -- doubling its production capacity and enabling the brewer to more quickly help communities in need from coast to coast.
“This program is made possible by our employees at the Cartersville and Fort Collins breweries, and our wholesaler partners who never hesitate to go the extra mile when American communities are facing difficult times,” Bradley said.
To learn more about Anheuser-Busch’s disaster relief efforts, please visit https://www.anheuserbusch.com/betterworld/ community.html.
Anheuser-Busch has operated for more than 165 years. It owns and operate 23 breweries, 29 distributorships and 23 agricultural and packaging facilities, and has more than 18,000 workers across the U.S.
The black bear population has been growing across North Georgia to the point of spilling over into Northeast Alabama.
Researchers at Auburn University have determined a growing black bear population that is located around the Little River Canyon can be traced through DNA samples to bears that have been harvested in Northwest Georgia.
“In the four years we studied the population it seemed to double in growth,” said Professor Todd Steury. “We didn’t actually catch as many bears as we would have liked.”
By “catch,” Steury was referring to the recovery of hair samples from snares that were set up across a large area primarily in DeKalb and Cherokee counties.
Chuck Waters, the Georgia Department of Natural Resourced Region One Game Management supervisor said the information from Alabama was not surprising at all.
“We share a lot of Southern Appalachian black bears with Tennessee and North Carolina, too,” Waters said.
The research team did report that anecdotal evidence, primarily from game cameras that were also placed around the study area, suggests that the recorded bears did seem to be very healthy.
“We are seeing a lot of three and four cub litters,” Steury said. “Sometimes from the same mother multiple years in a row. We only see that when bears are doing really well.” He said it is much more typical to see two cub litters.
Steury said the bears do seem to be very concentrated in a relatively small area. Another graduate student is still analyzing data relative to habitat use.
The state of Alabama renewed the grant for another four or five-year period and Steury said the next study would focus on denning behavior, cub survival and cub dispersement.
Waters said literature indicates an adult sow can have a “home” range of close to 10,000 acres.
“I don’t think the radio collars that we put on some adult males last long enough to give us a good idea of their range,” Water said.
At this point, Alabama does not have an open bear hunting season.
In addition to the Little River Canyon population, Alabama does have another significant bear population in the Mobile River Basin of southwest Alabama.