WE ARE NOT ALONE – News from the Troubled Waters Network

The Water Watchers is a non-profit organization, born out of Guelph Ontario that has been dedicated to protecting water for the past 15 years. This small but mighty organization has successfully mobilized communities to take on Nestlé and challenge water taking permits in Ontario. After a 12 year battle and grassroots pressure, they not only won a moratorium on all new water taking permits in 2017, but they were also an important part of the movement to kick Nestlé out of Canada! Fast forward to today, Nestlé’s bottling operations now belong to a more dangerous predator and equity firm, Blue Triton. The fight against the privatization and theft of water is far from over. Water Watchers are taking a more proactive approach to Blue Triton and has created a dedicated committee to refresh its strategy. The issue of water theft must be viewed through an intersectional lens with the end goal of climate justice and Indigenous sovereignty. Water is a right and we cannot allow it to be commodified and stolen for profit.

— Horeen Hassan, Water Watchers – Ontario

Water Board Hearings in California Have BlueTriton Sweating

The Los Angeles Times front page story called it “a bitter feud” and the Desert Sun story cited “years of outcry…coming to a head.” Both were describing the California Water Board’s investigation and ongoing hearings this winter into BlueTriton’s controversial withdrawal of water from southern California’s San Bernardino National Forest.

Last year, the company removed nearly 60 million gallons from springs on these public forest lands to bottle as Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water. The Board is considering a draft Cease & Desist order that would force the company to either dramatically reduce—or even stop—its water take after nearly 100 years.

MCWC-partner Story of Stuff Project and others brought the Water Board complaint against BlueTriton predecessor Nestle in 2016 after it became clear that the story the company had spun for years about its supposedly sacrosanct water rights were just that—a story—and a fictional one at that!

During the hearings that began in January, BlueTriton has been on the defensive, with Water Board prosecutors and other interested parties, including Story of Stuff, poking major holes in the company’s water rights claims. The Hearing Officer’s evenhandedness has rattled BlueTriton and its team of attorneys, who are clearly used to the soft touch they often receive from regulators.

Unsurprisingly, BlueTriton’s legal team has found the Hearing Officer’s deference to public participation particularly galling, including testimony and cross-examination by local whistleblowers and non-lawyers Steve Loe, a retired Forest Service biologist, and Amanda Frye, whose volunteer research produced hundreds of historical documents that were introduced into evidence. To add insult to injury, during a site visit to the spring sites by the Hearing Officer and interested parties in March, BlueTriton was forced to “open up,” showing the vaults, borings, tunnels, pipeline and other infrastructure it uses to pipe out the public’s water, a first look for most of the advocates.

The hearings resume in late March and should conclude by late April, with an order then sent to the full board for its consideration. It’s as close as advocates have ever gotten to shutting down the operation, but despite the forward momentum they continue to press hard. BlueTriton, for its part, appears to be building a case for appeal, an acknowledgement that they’re between a rock and a hard place, specifically water regulators skeptical of their claims and citizens committed to returning
the water they bottle to Strawberry Creek where it belongs. Stay tuned!

— Michael O’Heaney – Story of Stuff – California

Unbottle and Protect Chaffee County Water, a nonprofit group based in Salida Colorado, aims to remove the big blue trident piercing their community using their own three-prong approach of –> TRUTH: researching and reporting past shady business practices –> TRANSPARENCY: watchdogging current permit compliance –> TRANSFORMATION: working toward future sustainable solutions. Currently, the company (BlueTriton/Nestle) is permitted to suck and truck 65 million gallons of water every year from Chaffee County to Denver – hundreds of miles away – where it is bottled and in single-use plastic and sold across the country as Arrowhead Brand Spring Water.

— Jennifer Swacina – Unbottle and Protect Chaffee County Water – Florida

We are Our Santa Fe River, Inc., non -profit grass roots and all volunteer organization dedicated to protect the Santa Fe River and underlying aquifer. We are located near Fort White, Florida, in a rural area of North Central Florida. Our main focus battling BlueTriton has been to attempt to stop the renewal of an expired pumping permit which allows nearly one million gallons per day. In spite of garnering nearly twenty thousand letters opposing the permit which were sent to the water management district, staging lively demonstrations, filing legal challenges and writing op-eds in newspapers, we lost the battle. The permit will expire in four more years so we are gearing up to continue the fight. We will not give up.

— Merrilee Jipson – Our Santa Fe River – Florida

Community Water Justice is a network of front-line communities against water privatization in Maine, working to protect the integrity of the commons. We are based in the western mountains of Fryeburg where we have been challenging Nestle / BlueTriton’s Poland Spring brand bottled water for the past decade. Poland Spring extracts water from 10 communities, totalling well over 1 billion gallons per year. We are continuing to block developments and have successfully prevented a 4th bottling plant from being built. Currently, the USGS will be conducting a groundwater study, which we hope will reveal the scientific explanation of why some of our surface waters are disappearing over the central part of our aquifer where Poland Spring mines water from.

— Nickie Sekera – Community Water Justice – Maine