Editor’s note: Here is a FULL LIST of all Nestle products to boycott! We strongly urge you to do so (as I’ve been doing for 25 years since working for a green non profit in my teens, when they taught me just a fraction of the atrocities at Nestle.
We have all come to expect this type of behavior from companies like Nestle but that doesn’t mean that writing stories like this gets any easier: multinational company Nestle has just outbid a small (and fast growing) community in Ontario for a safe drinking water supply- for an undisclosed amount. The site at Middlebrook will be a “supplemental well for future business growth” and a backup for its plant in Aberfoyle.
A Nestle spokesman claims they had no idea that the other bidder was the Township of Centre Wellington. Sure.
(Check out the video below to understand just how evil this company and CEO is and how little they care for you or the earth we are ALL supposed to be sharing. It should make your blood boil. It should also make you boycott their products.)
From the article:
“Township Mayor Kelly Linton said Nestle dropped its conditions, including a pump test to determine if the well met its quality and quantity requirements, after it learned of the competing bid. The municipality wanted to purchase the well to keep its water supply “safe from commercial water taking” long into the future, added Linton.
“When water taking is solely within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, the only role we really have as a municipality is to comment to the ministry, and it issues all the permits,” he said.
“So purchasing the well would automatically give us control, and that’s what we were looking for, control of our water source and not just the ability to comment.”
Currently, Nestle is taking water from its well in Aberfoyle while the ministry reviews their application to renew its water-taking permit, which expired in July. And water-taking permits have only recently become a thing; in Ontario, the permits allow municipalities, mining companies, golf courses, and water-bottling companies, to take a total of 1.4 trillion litres out of the surface and ground water supplies every day. Every. Day.
However, the reason this is an issue is because the province is only charging $3.71 for every million litres of water. (In British Columbia they charge $2.25 per million litres -after previously giving it away for decades- and in Quebec they charge $70 per million litres.)
More from the article:
“The Council of Canadians, a non-profit social action organization, said the Grand River watershed, where Nestle’s well and bottling plant are located, is a fragile ecosystem feeding into Lake Erie that must be protected.
“The Nestle well near Elora sits on the traditional territory of the Six Nations of the Grand River, 11,000 of whom do not have access to clean running water,” said council chair Maude Barlow.
Only about 2,000 people in Six Nations are hooked up to the community water system while many residents use cisterns for drinking water and/or receive deliveries from provincially regulated, off-reserve water providers. This is unfair to them and makes no sense. Unless you don’t think access to clean, free water is a fundamental right.
Thankfully outrage against Nestle is growing, as they continue to make millions of dollars off of British Colombia’s most precious resource, and all currently for free (millions of litres of water every day).
Council of Canadians chair, Maude Barlow, said, “Allowing a transnational corporation to continue to mine this water is a travesty, especially given that most local people can get clean, safe and affordable water from their taps.”
We will continue to watch this story and update you should Nestle’s request be denied.
Source: The Globe and Mail
