LYNCHBURG—Move over, Perrier. The next designer bottled water may come out of Lynchburg, courtesy of the late Jerry Falwell.
Liberty University, the school founded by the fundamentalist Baptist evangelist who died May 15, has announced that it will bottle water drawn from a spring near the campus, according to the Lynchburg News & Advance. Liberty Mountain Natural Spring Water apparently was one of Falwell's last projects before his death.
“He saw it as sort of a souvenir,” Jerry Falwell Jr., the evangelist's son and Liberty's new chancellor, told the newspaper. “He thought it was a memento that people could take home after visiting Liberty.”
The 16.9 ounce bottle of water will be taken from a spring on university property once owned by the late Carter Glass, a Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia who died in 1946. Falwell bought the estate and founded his university there in 1971.
The Glass family used the spring to provide water for its mansion, which now serves as administrative offices for the school's chancellor.
The spring had been out of operation for at least 35 years until about six months ago, when the senior Falwell had it brought back into service.
Water from the spring currently is directed into a concrete reservoir, but health regulations will require sealed plastic tanks to replace the reservoir.
“We'll have to run a battery of tests on the water to make sure it's safe,” Lee Beaumont, Liberty's director of auxiliary services, told the News & Advance.
Eventually, the water will be processed by Grand Springs bottling company near Danville, which will filter the water, bottle it and apply the Liberty Mountain label.
“We'll distribute the water at the Jerry Falwell Museum, the visitor's center here at the university and possibly at athletic and church events,” Beaumont said.