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TechnoratiMaine Activists Win First Victory As Nestle Water Deal Vote Is Delayed
KENNEBUNK - Kennebunk, Kennebunkport & Wells Water District trustees delayed action Wednesday on a proposal to sell water to Poland Spring after protesters gathered at district offices to show their displeasure.
The four trustees voted unanimously to postpone the decision until July 30 to allow for an independent scientific review of the data underlying the proposed deal with Poland Spring, according to water district Superintendent Norm Labbe.
He said the district also needs time to create question-and-answer sheets to give residents a factual accounting of the proposed deal.
Labbe said he is concerned that the public has many misconceptions about the deal. "We want factual information not misinformation and hype," he said.
As trustees discussed the proposal to let Poland Spring draw as much as 250,000 gallons a day from district-owned land in Wells, about 100 protesters gathered outside the district office on Main Street, some of them chanting and shouting.
Some were residents who oppose the proposed deal; others were members of outside groups that are waging campaigns against the bottled water industry and the sale of water in general.
Poland Spring approached the water district about the potential deal because the company continues to look for additional sources of water to meet the company's projected growth in the next few years.
Poland Spring Natural Resources Manager Tom Brennan, who attended the meeting, said he hoped the company would be able to reach out to the rate-paying public and address concerns about the contract.
Though the district invited public comment on Wednesday, only a fraction of the crowd could fit into the small municipal office where the meeting was held. Some people rapped on the windows in protest until it was announced that the trustees had rescheduled the vote.
The deal, which Poland Spring and the water district have been discussing for about a year, gained little attention until it was widely reported in the last few weeks that the trustees intended to approve it at their June meeting.
Labbe has defended the deal, saying the district can easily spare the water, and the expected $500,000 per year in revenue would help offset rising costs and control rates.
Opponents, led by Jamilla El-Shafei of Kennebunk, recently teamed up with members of national campaigns against the bottled water industry. A public meeting on the issue Sunday night drew more than 100 people to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Kennebunk.
On Wednesday, Erik Johnson of Hollis told protesters that he believes his town was "sold down the river" when it invited Poland Spring to build a bottling plant there. He said the rumble of Poland Spring trucks has become a constant in his life and he wishes the town had never invited the company into the community with a tax break.
Other speakers predicted dire consequences related to surrendering control of water supplies to Poland Spring's parent company. Poland Spring is a subsidiary of Nestle Waters North America.
"We're here because this multinational corporation from away is trying to come into our state and our 'bioregion' and take our water," said Emily Posner of Montville, the state leader of Defending Water for Life, a project of the national Alliance for Democracy. Posner said her campaign is organized around the idea that nobody should profit from water.
Annie Weinberg is an organizer with the "Take Back the Tap" campaign of the Washington, D.C.-based Food and Water Watch, which recently released a study claiming that water plant jobs are low-paying and dangerous. Weinberg said her organization believes the bottled water industry comes at the expense of public water supplies.
Brennan, the Poland Spring natural resources manager, said his company does not work in opposition to public water supplies and provides hundreds of good-paying jobs in rural areas of Maine. He said the company has an inherent interest in the sustainability of its product and has worked to minimize the plastic content of its bottles.
El-Shafei said she plans to have more opponents at the trustees' July meeting. "This place will be packed," she said. "I'll get 1,000 people there."
Copyright © 2008 Blethen Maine Newspapers
20 Comments so far
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Does anyone know how much water Poland Spring pulls out of Maine per Day?
Thanks
The same people are involved in energy and water sources . When I saw the name of this town it rang a bell . I read about a couple South American countries that sold some of their water rights to companies which a famous person from the Kennebunkport area is involved in . The sales in those countries caused riots . Just imagine $10.00/gal for gasoline . $5.00/glass for water . $40,000.00/Doctor's visit . The next thing will be air charge per person . Don't believe they are not thinking about that also .
About the 32 tankers per day on small town roads - Kennebunk says no problem the filling station is near the Sanford line, the hell with their roads!
On the Pentagon web site there is planning out 15 years for fighting wars over WATER - WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!
Beware! Nestle will suck your wells dry. You must have one heck of an aquifer if you can afford to lose 250,000 gallons of water a day and still be able to supply your own present needs as well as any future projected needs for further developing your area on a sustainable basis.
I use the word "lose" advisedly. I used to live over a self sustaining, direct recharge sand and gravel aquifer that supplies a a couple of towns. It was self sustaining because a good deal of the water drawn from it was returned to it through onsite septic systems. Some was lost through a municipal sewage treatment plant that discharged into the river but the overall effect was that its recharge was sufficient to maintain an adequate water table depth. If you start drawing large amounts out on a daily basis that are not returned to the recharge basin, make no mistake, your water table will lower throughout the area of influence of those wells, and, if the drawdown is rapid and continuous enough may well change underground flow directions in your area. If your wells are not deep enough to accommodate the drop - oops, dry wells. Even if they don't go dry one has to wonder about potential water quality issues .... And then, of course there's always those pesky dry spells that happen periodically. And who knows what evolving climate changes will do to your rate of recharge. Are you ready to have to buy your own water back?
As they say - one doesn't appreciate the worth of water until the well runs dry - and then its too late.
So, what would Poland Spring earn daily on 250,000 gallons of water, or on 91 million gallons per year?
I hope the town trustees are well taken care of to encourage the to give away the town resource and the town's peace and quiet so cheaply. Ten cents a gallon would bring the town $9 million and help repair the roads the trucks tear up.
A few years ago my (Maine) peace group showed a film about water commons which featured Vandana Shiva and another woman devoted to fighting the corporate ownership of water. I can't remember her name, but I did remember something she said that I think is important: the best way for an individual to resist the corporate takeover of water is NEVER BUY BOTTLED WATER. I am lucky to live on land with a good water supply, but it's still tricky to do this when I travel. However, I have really tried to put it into practice since gaining this knowledge and found it is possible.
Key elements are collecting good containers (being aware of safety issues with various materials) & planning ahead. Or, to put it another way: get a good canteen for yourself, carry it along everywhere, and be on the lookout for refill opportunities. When you travel, bring big containers along if you can -- empty & collapsible if by air, full of good water if by land or sea.
Is this an action we could all agree on?
As my wife and I live in Lebanon,ME which is the next town over, we will be attending the July meeting. This will be stopped. We stopped a local man from building a transfer station near the watershed source and now he is going to build a wood pellet factory instead. Much better for everyone. Nestle must be stopped. Water is the basis for life and cannot be privately owned beyond personal use. Privitization is stealing commonly owned properties or services. We must own our utilities and commodities. Direct action is the only thing that works. Perhaps I should pack a gun in July?
Water is the last and most fundamental domain, to be quarantined from corporate exploitation at all costs.
The defenses of the corporate spokespersons and their lobbyists are odious beyond belief. (Akin to that of the Zionist lobby.) Makes one's flesh crawl. One can't argue with such tosh because the rules of argument (debate) imply well intent on the part of all parties. You can't argue with / debate lies.
A good friend of mine sacrificed a chunk of his life working (unpaid) to preserve a lot of land in the watershed that feeds that water district for the area towns. Here is a recent article that describes the latest addition to a long series of land conservation work done there:
http://www.kkw.org/aboutkkwwd/archive/071127a.html
The conservation work was done, in part, to provide plentiful and unpolluted water to those towns.
It is very disturbing to read about Poland $pring'$ plans to steal water from land which was specifically protected for the people and environment of that area. It IS stealing. I am tempted to suggest that the landowners there bill KK&W for the amount of water that their land provides to recharge the aquifer that feeds KK&W. My friend's conserved land exceeded 170 acres, and almost all the rain that fell on it would eventually find its way to the water district. For each inch of rainfall, that equates to 4.7 MILLION gallons headed to the district after soaking into the ground or running downhill. The whole impetus behind the conservation effort had nothing to do with profit for anyone. I would like to see some serious punitive litigation follow if this comes to pass. At the very minimum, P.S. should be required to buy outright - and place into conservation - the amount of land required to catch the rainfall volume they are pumping and bottling. Even that can set a dangerous precedent because, in theory, they could buy up almost all of the land that would normally supply household water in the area.
Zimmie said:
"I hope people realize that when the corporations finally own all the water, they will next go after the air we breathe. Then, they will devise a plan to charge us for the sunlight. And then, gravity."
I agree, and I will keep my feet firmly planted on the ground in defiance of their owning gravity if it comes to that. Like an apple standing by the water, I will not be moved.
Capitalism indeed wants to commodotize *everything*, as the earlier posters observed - personally, I'm surprised they haven't found a way to make us pay for orgasms.
Oh, wait...
Water is a 'common' - it shoud be owned only locally, for the common local good, and not sold to corporatiions who make money on nature's product. There will be droughts and then they will still demand the water and the public will be dry - and have to BUY its own water! Many people worldwide are starting to see that corporations like Nestle, Coca Cola (esp. in India!) and other firms are acquiring tremendous water rights and making a bottom line for the company but not caring about the people who lose the water, and in many countries cannot even afford to buy it at their prices. One blogger above is absolutely right - corporations will extend their grasp to water, sunshine, air, even gravity, if only they find a way to do it and local officials LET them. Protest!
All good comments. Water used to be and should be free. I had to pay to have my well drilled but I would be ashamed to ask payment from anyone asking for a glass of water. I suppose Nestle would argue I have a right to recoup my investment?
This is a sick society and it's only going to get worse as long as we allow greedy capitalists to ride roughshod over human rights. Now I believe with someone above, that private property really is theft.
Whoever suggested they might try to charge us for air, gravity, and sunlight---I hope you were not being sarcastic. You had better believe that they will declare themselves the owners of anything and everything. Why stop at ownership of the labor of the working class?
Hey George, what would Jesus do?
what the hell, we've sold the multinationals our politicians; why not sell the rest of the country.
Water is Mother Earth's gift to all her creatures. With the possible exception of capitalists who try to "privatize" it for commercial gain. This is the movement we can really win, and must. Like the people did in Bolivia, driving out Bechtel. And like they did in India fighting coke and pepsi. It's about what Vandana Shiva calls water sovereignty
http://www.navdanya.org/earthdcracy/water/index.htm
After the forces of evil (that were trained at Enron) have completed their exploitation of the energy and food futures markets at our expense, they will start cornering the world's water supplies. The best congress that money can buy will continue to deregulate everything, thereby providing endless opportunities for the ex-Enron villians to fullfill the evil mission they established during the 1990s.
Re-regulation of the financial industry to New Deal Standards is the only way to stop the runaway market manipulation we are experiencing.
Ludicrous. The 'bottled water' scheme is a capitalist wet dream. Why can't we just get safe drinking water? Because the snake salesmen have been raking in over $15 billion a year while local water sources are contaminated and overdrawn. Millions of empty water bottles clog the recycle stream.
The resources belong to the people, not to the corporations.
Corporations are not people and do not deserve the rights or the resources.
Stand up, people.
Good on you !!!
Sterling, Massachusetts just fended off a Nestle proposal that involved taking water from a site in their town that was actually deeded to another town (Clinton, MA) in the 1800's for municipal water. What if we end up with a drought like Georgia? You can never get it back. Nestle doesn't tell you about the huge tanker trucks that travel over the roads 24/7.
Fight On, Maine!!
I hope people realize that when the corporations finally own all the water, they will next go after the air we breathe. Then, they will devise a plan to charge us for the sunlight. And then, gravity.
Property is theft.
Jamilla is a great organizer and I hope she can get 5000 there in July. I fear this will be rubber stamped by the Labbe crew. I would say it is time to fine a good lawyer this will end in court.
Also it is time to TAX each drop they take our of the ground!!