And, they pay almost nothing to the state and some fees to private land owners
while the Flint water is still tainted and there are people who can't afford to
buy bottled water there.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2018 10:27 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] one person, one vote
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
