One person, one vote. So just when does the "one vote" over rule
thousands of opposing votes? The answer is, Super Person! Super
Person can jump higher than the Space Needle and never needs a
telephone booth in which to change clothes.
Here's a couple of articles that demonstrate the might of corporate
Person-hood.
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis
*****
Bottled water is packaged for shipment at the Nestlé Water bottling
plant in Stanwood, Mich.
Steven M. Herppich /AFP/Getty Images
In a much-watched case, a Michigan agency has approved Nestlé's plan
to boost the amount of water it takes from the state. The request
attracted a record
number of public comments — with 80,945 against and 75 in favor.
Nestlé's request to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
to pump 576,000 gallons of water each day from the White Pine Springs
well in the
Great Lakes Basin was "highly controversial," member station
Michigan Radio reports.
But despite deep public opposition, the agency concluded that the
company's plan met with legal standards.
"It is very clear this permit decision is of great interest to not
only residents in the surrounding counties, but to Michiganders across
the state as
well," MDEQ Director C. Heidi Grether said in approving the permit.
"In full transparency, the majority of the public comments were in
opposition of the permit," Grether added, "but most of them related to
issues of public
policy which are not, and should not be, part of an administrative
permit decision."
Under the plan, Nestlé will be approved to pump up to 400 gallons of
water per minute from the well, rather than the 250 gallons per minute
it had been
extracting. The company first applied for the new permit in July 2016.
"The state says Nestlé has to complete a monitoring plan and submit it
to the DEQ for approval," MR reports of the
58-page final memo
from the Michigan agency.
Water is a complicated and sore subject in many areas, but in few
places more so than in Michigan, where a crisis has raged for years
over
high levels of lead
and other dangerous heavy metals in the water in Flint. And back in
2014, Detroit resorted to
shutting off water
to thousands of customers as it fought bankruptcy.
With that recent history as a backdrop, Nestlé's plan to boost the
amount of water it takes from the Great Lakes State drew attention and
added another
dimension to a debate over whether water should be seen as a
commodity, a commercial product — or a human right.
Nestlé's well is in western Michigan, near the town of Evart, as
Michigan Radio's Lindsey Smith reported on
The Environment Report podcast.
The company bottles the water for sale under its Ice Mountain label.
To get through the massive and unprecedented public response for
comment, Smith said, the state's environmental quality department
created categories of
responses, after reading several thousand of them. The resulting
themes dealt with a range of ideas, from the potential environmental
damage of the water
plan to calls for a public vote on the increase.
"The interesting thing to me," Smith said, "was the top three themes —
by far — are: [one,] corporate greed versus people and the
environment; two, water
is not for profit; and three, worries about privatizing water."
Smith added, "about 40,000 people wrote about each of those concerns."
Even with those comments taken into consideration, the Michigan agency
was still bound to make its final determination on the legal merits of
Nestlé's
request.
"And that's the end of it," the agency's source water supervisor, Matt
Gamble, told Smith last month. "We don't have the power to say no
arbitrarily. We
can't just say no for reasons that aren't attached to the law."
The agency can't say no, Smith added, "even if the vast majority of
the public wants them to."
*******
Protests continue over Nestle pumping and sale of ground water
By
Marc Montgomery
|
27 November, 2017 ,
Permit expired, but pumping continues
People in and around the west-central Wellington County in Ontario
held a protest this weekend at the controversial Nestle wellsite of
the Middlebrook
Rd. property in Central Wellington, near Guelph.
The site had been sought by the county for its own needs and put in an
anonymous bid for the property, but Nestle which operates other
extraction sites
in the area, had a previous conditional offer on the property and when
learning of the bid, exercised its right of first refusal and
purchased the Middlebrook
property.
group start A large group marched to the Middlebrook well site in
Central Wellington, Ontario, to demand the province not issue a permit
for commercial
water bottling, and that it be bought back from Nestle and given to
the community for their water needs. © Wellinton Water Watchers
A large group marched to the Middlebrook well site to demand the site
never be used for commercial water bottling, and that it be bought
back from Nestle
and given to the community for their water needs.
group end
The group of citizens, environmentalists, farmers and others has long
been concerned about commercial extraction of vast quantities of
acquifer water by
commercial operations in the province..
The vast amount of water is extracted for pittance amounts of permit
fees, and then bottled and sold in plastic containers that usually end
up as waste
littering the landscape, lakes, and oceans.
group start Protest posters on the gates of Nestle’s contested
purchase of a well property in Middlebrook. ©
saveourwater.ca
Protest posters on the gates of Nestle’s newly purchased well property
group end
Previously the fee was a mere $3.71 per million litres of groundwater.
Strong public protests resulted in the provincial government putting a
temporary
moratorium on new or expanded permits and raised the fee to $503.71,
per million litres, which most people still consider to be far too
low. Most groups
in fact would like such commercial extractions stopped altogether.
There are currently nine expired contracts with seven extraction
companies in the province, which are still in operation and which can
extract up to 7.6
million litres per day, although the Ontario environment ministry says
they only pumped about half that amount.
One billion litres extracted on expired permits.
Nestle alone can pump some 4.7 million litres out of Ontario
acquifers, every day.
Today the Nestlé operation will bottle its one billionth litre of
water since the permit for the Aberfoyle well expired last year on
July 31st , 2016.
Another well permit in Erin, expired on August 31 of this year.
Various concerned groups say the government is allowing continued
extraction even though the permits are expired.
The government says it is giving the companies time, up to 18 months
to amend their renewal applications in order to be compliant with new
rules.
The Canadian Bottled Water Association says they’re being unfairly
targeted as they only take 0.2 per cent of all groundwater.
Meanwhile Nestlé is coming under fire for something called “bluewashing”.
In October, Nestlé announced it was planning to certify 20 factories
with the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) in Africa, Asia, Canada,
Europe, Latin
America, and the United States.
“It’s outrageous and laughable that Nestlé is claiming that its water
bottling is sustainable,” says Maude Barlow, Honorary Chairperson of
the Council
of Canadians. “Nestlé is not only a member but also a founding partner
of the Alliance for Water Stewardship, which Nestlé is seeking
‘certification’ from.
Certifying Nestle makes the whole AWS scheme essentially meaningless.
I think communities around the world will see right through Nestlé’s
blue-washing:.
sources
Water Association
