Each facility is privately owned and operated, controlled by boards of directors in distant cities with a distant appreciation for the circumstances that allow these plants to operate. They are staffed by local employees, with management often dispatched from the corporate centers in Chicago, Atlanta, and other massive corporate hubs. They employ an average of two hundred workers per plant. An average of seventy-five line operators, fifty machinists, thirty quality control specialists, ten marketing and branding engineers and specialists, ten accountants, ten managers, fourteen janitorial staff, and one operational security manager. In other words, one person responsible for controlling the security of each plant that processes tens of thousands of bottles of drinking water for tens of thousands of people. Every day. Of every week. Power plants, airports, train stations, and even bus stations have more robust security than bottled water facilities. Even reservoirs and waste water plants have local government buy-in and oversight, motivated by a belief that drinking water and water supplies are inviolable and vital to local and national security.
