Brewery stops canning beer to bottle water for Harvey victims

CARTERSVILLE, Ga. - The Anheuser-Busch Brewery stopped canning beer this week to can drinking water to ship to areas hard hit by Hurricane Harvey.

A spokesperson for Anheuser-Busch said more than 50,000 cans of emergency drinking water were packed up to be sent to Baton Rouge and on to families who may not have safe drinking water in the storm's aftermath.

The water will be used at Red Cross shelters and distributed by volunteers.

“Throughout the year, we periodically pause beer production at our Cartersville, Georgia brewery to produce emergency canned drinking water so we are ready to help out communities across the country in times of crisis. Putting our production and logistics strengths to work by providing safe, clean drinking water is the best way we can help in these situations,”  Sarah Schilling, Brewmaster, Anheuser-Busch Cartersville Brewery was quoted as saying in a statement sent to FOX 5 News.

Anheuser-Busch provided video and photos to FOX 5 News of the operation.

In the past few years, the Cartersville plant has canned water for flooding victims in Texas and Oklahoma, victims of Hurricane Matthew along the Florida and Georgia coasts, firefighters working wildfires in Washington state, and those devastated by Hurricane Sandy.