What does a Swiss multi-national food and beverage corporation, a private equity firm, and the town of Erin, ON have in common? They all want unfettered access to the precious water stored in the local aquifer.
For years, Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage corporation, has been extracting and bottling water from Wellington County located around the city of Guelph in Southern Ontario.
At its three sites in Erin (Hillsburgh), Elora, and Aberfoyle (Puslinch) – which is home to the bottling plant — Nestlé has access of up to 6.3 million litres of water per day which puts these communities at risk of water shortages.
That’s why Wellington County has been saying no to Nestlé and demanding a moratorium on provincial water taking permits long before climate change grew into a full-blown crisis.
On October 10 at 7 p.m. Water Watchers (WW) will be hosting a evening of learning and sharing around protecting water as part of the public commons at Bela Farm.
In March 2021 Nestlé succumbed to pressure from groups across North American including WW and sold their water assets to One Rock Capital Partners, LLC in partnership with Metropoulos & Co for over $4 billion.
The 19-year-old Nestlé Waters brand changed its name to Blue Triton Brands – a nod to the Greek god of the sea. The private equity firm’s website maintains its, “mission is to sustainably provide fresh water to communities throughout North America.”
The site also claims that Blue Triton Brands is a guardian of sustainable resources and provider of fresh water with a commitment to sustainability and high-quality products and service.
Unfortunately, when sustaining shareholder interests is the company’s main motivation, human rights and the public common are usually sacrificed in the name of corporate profits.
“Water privatization is anti-democratic,” Arlene Slocombe, Executive director of WW, told rabble.ca via email. “Water is a unifying source of life that connects all of us together. It should not be negotiated away behind closed doors or exploited by corporations for profit. It’s time for the Ontario government to protect the waters here for future generations.”
In July 2010, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly recognized clean drinking water as a basic human right. The UN requires each government provide citizens with safe, sufficient, accessible, and affordable water.
Canada has not legislated the right to water. However, in 2012 it recognized the UN declaration on the human right to safe drinking water. Quebec remains the only jurisdiction in Canada to enshrine the right to water in legislation.
Six Nations of the Grand River, located along the Grand River in Southwestern Ontario, is the largest reserve in Canada by population and the second largest by land mass. Yet, over 91 per cent of households have no access to clean potable water. Instead, many households spend upwards of $2,500 annually buying bottled water.
The Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy Council of the Grand River Territory and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy delivered a cease and desist order to Nestlé Waters Canada in 2019.
The order demanded the multinational corporation stop taking 3.6 million litres of water per day from their lands which are covered by the Haldimand Proclamation and the 1701 Nafan Treaty.
Nestlé ignored the order as did Blue Triton when it acquired the water taking permits as well as when it applied for a 10-year renewal of Nestlé’s former permit to take water from Wellington County in 2021.
Ontario Ministry of Environment and Parks extended the permit for five years in the towns of Erin and Aberfoyle, but there was no extension for the Elora site.
“For 16 years, Water Watchers has led campaigns to support the need for the prioritization of water permits for essential uses as we enter an era of increasing water uncertainty. With all of the negative environmental and social implications of the bottled water industry, many in Ontario want to see permitting for for-profit water bottling curtailed,” Slocombe shared via email.
In addition to commissioning polls, like the one preceding the 2018 provincial election that found 68 per cent of Ontarians support phasing out permits to bottle water in this province, WW has been collaborating with communities in Maine, Michigan, Colorado, California, Florida and Vittel, France.
That’s because community ‘water wars’ have been forced unwillingly into the realm of ‘water futures’ trading which puts human rights, and lives, at risk around the globe.
Corporations like Blue Triton promise local jobs and offer assurances that they will function in a sustainable and environmentally ethically manner.
Yet, over time, communities realize that mechanization means there are few jobs. Then, there’s a trail of environmental degradation and an ensuing uphill battle to regain access to water that should always have remained in the public commons.
Blue Triton’s continued mining of the local aquifer puts communities like the City of Guelph — the largest community in Canada that relies almost completely on groundwater – at risk of running out of water for their own needs.
According to the City of Guelph’s website, water supplies are taking longer to replenish and are more vulnerable to overuse.
The entire globe has been experiencing longer droughts, more wildfires, and depleted aquifers. But placing restrictions on local residents doesn’t make sense as long as corporations have unlimited extraction rights during local water crises and the escalating global crisis.
Robert Case is Associate Professor in Social Development Studies at Renison University College, Waterloo. Case has been talking with activists fighting Nestlé and Blue Triton in Colorado, Maine, California and Ontario.
Case is looking for clues about what activism strategies work and where the water struggle fits in with other environmental and social struggles.
At the WW meeting, Case will be speaking about Troubled Waters — a loose network of communities fighting corporate groundwater mining for bottling all around North America.
Case will share what he has learned about Blue Triton’s playbook as well as the road blocks and paths to success that communities face when addressing the issue of water extraction for profit.
“My aim is to equip the Erin group with information on what’s been tried elsewhere, where the points of resistance are, how the corporation tries to undermine opposition and that kind of thing,” Case told rabble.ca via email.
Case went on to say, “since 2014, Water Watchers has been a partner and participant in academic research on the dynamics of grassroots opposition to corporate water bottling here in Ontario and beyond. Through our participation in research, our hope is to have our story told, to learn and grow stronger through critical analysis of our experiences, and to share insights from communities across North America and around the world about how communities can come together to effectively challenge state and corporate power and realize our long-term goals of ecological sustainability and social justice.”
In addition to Case, Slocombe will provide an overview of the Theory of Change, while Jan Beveridge, from the town of Elora, will share how community engagement stopped the renewal of Nestlé’s permit for water extraction in that town.
RSVP for the free event here.
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