by Sarah Nixon
The Township of Centre Wellington has lost its bid for ownership of a major well that taps a freshwater aquifer to Nestlé Waters Canada. The sale of the well to Nestlé has resulted in rising controversy over the province’s management of an increasingly scarce and precious resource.
Although Nestlé already extracts water to supply its bottled water productions from a nearby well in Aberfoyle, Ontario to the tune of 3.6 million litres — approximately one and a half olympic pools — per day, the company made a bid to purchase the Middlebrook Well in spring of 2016 in order to expand its operations. When members of the Centre Wellington community learned of this development, they acted to secure their own freshwater supply by submitting a higher bid for the well with no conditions attached.
Unfortunately for community residents, Nestlé had negotiated the right to respond to any competing bids and defeated the township’s bid by making a higher counter-offer and promising to abandon its usual tests for quality and quantity of water. In August, Nestlé’s offer for the well was accepted.
The Middlebrook Well lies nearest the community of Elora within the Township of Centre Wellington, with a population of approximately 27,000. However, this population is expected to expand rapidly in the coming decades, estimated to reach 50,000 by 2041 according to the township’s mayor, Kelly Linton. Therefore, members of the township have a critical interest in securing a reliable freshwater supply.
Robert Case, member of local community advocacy group Wellington Water Watchers, explained in an interview with the Leveller that the struggle against Nestlé “is about how groundwater is managed 50, 100 years into the future.” Many residents of Centre Wellington have responded by calling for a boycott of all Nestlé products. The call for boycott has also been taken up by the Council of Canadians and has spread across the nation.
Mark Calzavara, Regional Organizer of the Council of Canadians, explained the organization’s stance on Nestlé and their call for boycott: “Nestlé has a long history of buying up access to water in the face of community resistance,” he noted. “Nestlé’s money and power come from our purchases. A boycott will remind them of that.”
However, controversy raised by Nestlé’s purchase of this well extends beyond community opposition to the transnational corporation’s greed and profiteering. “Bottled water is frivolous and wasteful for the vast majority of Canadians who have access to clean, safe, public drinking water,” Calzavara explained. As such, the Council of Canadians is calling not only for a boycott of Nestlé products but a boycott of bottled water altogether.
This call stems from opposition to the commodification of a substance essential to human and non-human life. Case echoed this sentiment, explaining that the Nestlé case is “not an anomaly.” Instead, it can be seen as an example indicative of the opposition between public good and private profit inherent within a free market economy.
Case called for the negotiation of a two-year phase out process spearheaded by the provincial government, which would see Nestlé close down water bottling operations incrementally while transitioning its employees toward jobs in other fields.
Case took on the popular argument that targeting Nestlé means targeting its employees’ livelihood and persecuting a major job creator in the province, referring to the extraction of water from aquifers as a “sunset industry” and noting that “Nestlé will eventually realize the well is no longer viable and discard those jobs anyway.”
Case also emphasized that Nestlé should be judged “not by how many jobs it creates but by what those jobs are worth in regard to climate resilience” saying that “a minimal number of jobs are being provided and we get something that we already have” – fresh water but at a much higher financial and environmental cost.
The Middlebrook Well is situated on traditional Six Nations of the Grand River territory. In September, Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow noted an estimated 11,000 members of the Six Nations cannot access potable running water. Inability to access clean water plagues Indigenous peoples on reserves across the province, while the government of Ontario massively subsidizes the cost of water for multinational corporations like Nestlé.
“Over one hundred First Nations reserves are on boil water notices – some have been for decades. At a certain point, we must recognize that this is the unofficial policy of the federal government and the continuation of colonial policies meant to destroy (or at best, assimilate) aboriginal peoples,” Calzavara explained.
At present, the Ontario government allows industry to extract one million litres of fresh water for $3.71, a price which leaves the province operating its water quality management infrastructure at a massive deficit. A report released on Nov. 3, 2015, by then Ontario Environmental Commissioner Ellen Schwartzel, cited that Ontario recovers a meagre 1.2 per cent of its operating costs through this $3.71 fee. Meanwhile, bottled water companies resell this resource at exponential rates of profit, individually packaged in plastic bottles that all too often end up in landfills or oceans.
Case summarized this perplexing situation by describing the water bottling industry as “very climate change intensive,” from “manufacturing of the bottles, trucking to and from the well, to shipping out to market.” All the while, water bottling companies reap profits while the communities in which they are situated pay for upkeep of the roads upon which water is trucked and management of the waste which the industry produces, often while suffering the consequences of groundwater depletion.
In Centre Wellington, Case noted that residents of nearby Aberfoyle were “deep in a drought” when Nestlé’s five-year permit expired in July 2016. Yet, the provincial legal framework allows industry to continue extraction past the expiry of a permit, until the provincial government responds by approving or rejecting an application for permit renewal. As such, Nestlé continues to extract water from its Aberfoyle well without an active permit. Case noted “even though that is the law on the books, we say that it shouldn’t be.”
Case also criticized the provincial water extraction five-year permit system as a whole, saying, “in five years, a lot can change in terms of development pressure on water systems, growth and climate change,” yet a permit provides a free pass for industry to operate solely in the interest of generating profit and without any requirement to mitigate extraction of water during periods of drought.
Case emphasized that it is a mistake to solely blame Nestlé for water insecurity and environmental degradation that result from the water bottling industry, saying that Nestlé is simply “taking advantage of what the law allows for.” Calzavara called the permit regulation system “weak and poorly enforced – largely due to corporate influence over government.” He called the $3.71 charge “completely unreasonable” yet he went on to explain that “even if this fee was raised to $10,000 per million litres, it would still only be one penny per litre – for a product that often retails for more than one hundred times as much. While the ridiculously low fees are a lightning rod for public concern, raising them is not the solution. The Ontario government must place a moratorium on bottled water takings across the province.”
“The global water crisis is here and we must prioritize water for communities and ecosystems,” Calzavara explained. “In the meantime, we are asking people to boycott bottled water and also to boycott Nestlé products.” Case also urged people across Ontario to contact their Members of Provincial Parliament and Premier Kathleen Wynne’s office to voice their opposition to the renewal of Nestlé’s water-taking permit.
Ultimately, Calzavara explained, “we have to shake off the idea that ‘the government’ is some sort of benevolent, parent-like entity that can be trusted to do the right thing. Then, we must educate ourselves about the issues and organize with other people to hold our governments accountable. If even 10 per cent of the population decided to spend an hour per week actively engaging in issues they cared about – it would cause a revolutionary shift in our society.”
Nestlé products are sold on both Carleton University and University of Ottawa campuses. More information on the Nestlé boycott is available at canadians.org/nestle.
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 9, No. 2 (Oct/Nov 2016).
