Bottled Water Blues

The residents of Mecosta County and the surrounding areas in central Michigan regard water as central to their identity. They fish for trout and watch ospreys and eagles feeding in the streams. They spend warm days by the ponds and small lakes that dot the woodlands. And of course the Great Lakes, which hold a fifth of the world's fresh water, are a constant presence. So when a huge multinational bottled water company decided to move in and start pumping over half a million gallons of water a day out of the springs that feed their lakes and streams, the residents took it personally.

To meet the exponentially growing demand for bottled water, in the late '90s Perrier subsidiary Great Spring Waters of America sought to open a major pumping and bottling operation in the Midwest. First the company tried to set up shop in Adams County, Wisconsin, but they were driven away by intense opposition from residents and local government.

So in 2001 Perrier, which has since been bought by Nestle Waters North America, was welcomed with open arms by then-Michigan Gov. John Engler, who allowed the company to open up a plant for a licensing fee of less than $100 per year and offered millions in tax breaks to boot.

Construction started on the plant even before all the necessary permits had been obtained. For the past year and a half, the plant has been pumping 100 to 300 gallons per minute out of an aquifer on a hunting preserve in Mecosta County and piping the water 11 miles away to a bottling plant in Stanwood, where it is prepared for shipping and sale around the Midwest as Nestle's Ice Mountain brand.

Shortly after the pumping plan was announced, a grassroots movement of local residents and activists coalesced to oppose the plan, on the grounds that not only would the pumping have harmful effects on the environment and quality of life for residents, but it would also set a chilling precedent in selling off the area's natural resources to a multinational company.

This coalition has used both legal and direct action approaches to raise awareness of the issue and try to stop the pumping plan. Among other things, the group Sweetwater Alliance, which has coordinated much of the grassroots opposition, staged a "canoe-in" along one of the streams fed by the spring.

n the fall of 2001 the group Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC) along with four individual local residents filed a lawsuit in Mecosta County Circuit Court seeking to prevent the pumping, arguing that it was not a legally defined "reasonable use" of water and violated state and federal regulations regarding water rights. The case is currently being heard by Judge Lawrence Root, with an outcome expected by mid-June. The result will determine whether Nestle can keep pumping there or even increase its withdrawals from about 150 gallons a minute to as much as 800 gallons a minute. And even more than that, the case will set a precedent for Michigan and possibly other states in deciding whether and how companies are allowed to extract water for profit.

"This is a precedent-setting case about how our common law water rights will be defined and what folks can do with those rights," said Scott Howard, an attorney working on the case. "Can folks take that water, bottle it and sell it for profit?"

In Michigan there are few regulations relating to the use of groundwater; it is essentially seen as part of the property it is on. "Ice Mountain paid $75 to $85 to the state for a permit application fee and with that it can essentially gain billions by selling [the water]," Howard said. "There's no other industry that gets to do that -- timber and mining industries don't get to do that."

Howard notes that under Michigan law, one can make "reasonable use" of water on the property they own, but the water can't be diverted. The suit argues that the pumping of water to sell all over the Midwest is clearly a diversion.