I don't understand how bottling plants can come under fire for water problems.
I think it's just perception.
I think that drinkable water is the most necessary and just use of water resources on the planet. It is also an efficient use of water, no matter how wasteful people say nestle is.
It does not matter that it is for profit.
I think it should be allowed, like in the constitution allowed, say "the allocation of drinking water shall not be abridged" or something.
If you look at water use by people drinking water is overwhelmingly and completely dwarfed by other uses.
RO filters use more water than they produce - should they be restricted in some way? no.
Shower, toilet and lawn care are vastly more "wasteful" uses of water.
Food production is hugely less efficient. Golf courses.
Even rainfall and sewer systems "waste" probably millions of times the water that nestle does.
>A key contract from 1909 said the Arrowhead source would supply a bottled-water company with seven train cars of water per week. Nestlé, which bought those rights, said that tank cars from that era could hold 15,000 gallons. But Amanda Frye, a local activist, thought something was amiss, so she did some digging. After sifting through archives, she found buried in legal documents evidence that the actual train cars used carried 6,500 gallons—less than half what Nestlé claimed.
>If the state water board is successful, it’s possible that Nestlé would only have rights to 2.36 million gallons of water per year, a far cry from the reported 58 million gallons last year.
Am I missing something? The discrepancy seems to be on the order of 20 times, but the misestimation of train car size is only on the order of 2 times - where does the other factor 10 come from?
So, the longer complaint alleges that not only did Nestle take twice as much as they were theoretically allowed from specific sources, they also took a significant amount from sources from which they were not authorized to take anything (at least according to the State).
I dont see the the exact 58 million gallons number, which apparently refers to a specific year, but on page 12 it says "The average annual extraction was 189 AF from 1947 through 2018", which is ~61 million gallons.
Doing the actual math on the number of train cars per week it seems like they simply misplaced a comma in the 2.36 million number, which should be 23.6 million - underestimating the amount of water Nestlé has rights to by 10x and making the situation seem much worse than it is.
Team America World Police has a comedy sketch where the UN threatens North Korea with a strongly worded letter [0]. That's what a cease and disist is after all...
Bottled water should be banned, even if just for the amount of plastic waste it generates. There's also research that shows the water can be contaminated with high levels of microplastics. Research on microplastics is fairly new but you can research that for yourself.
"If the order is upheld and goes into force, Nestlé face fines up to $1,000 per day or ten-times that amount if a drought is declared."
Interesting article, but a pretty transparently toothless punishment.