Communities Speak Out: Nestle, Stop Stealing Our Water

Corporate Accountability International. Posted April 10, 2009.

We have scenic rolling fields, wetlands with graceful sand hill cranes and herons.  We have foxes.  We have coyotes and even on rare occasions a transient bear.  What we think of as technology and business here consists mostly of an infrequent tractor or a milk truck on our narrow town roads and the last thing we ever dreamed of was a sprawling bottling factory and massive wells sucking down our ground water level. 

So, how did this happen?  Nestlé, which was then called Perrier Group of America muscled itself into our community.  It foresaw $1 million a day sales of a product that cost the company essentially nothing and that was bottled so-called spring water.  Nestlé promised to bring jobs to the area and they kept repeating the philosophy that development equals progress.  It looked like our local zoning might be up for sale.  However, many citizens when they found out what was happening, they valued our natural setting and they saw through all the corporate lies and they were insulted by tactics such as offers of money to local officials and an offer of money to the PTO of the little tiny school in the area. Nestlé also bought the prize calf at the county fair and got their picture in the paper.  This was really insulting to people. 

However, the issue divided neighbors and even families because some of them apparently stood to gain financially but others of us would lose our beautiful environment.  Now Nestlé, to make it brief, they abandoned their efforts only after we had massive grassroots action here.  We realized that Nestlé was really after something that was very precious to us. 

So, what we did included creating and distributing two videos.  We garnered the support of many environmental organizations particularly from Madison and the rest of Wisconsin and we had four years of grants from foundations that Concerned Citizens of Newport got. 

Finally, as part of our public education project, we got legal assistance, a lot of it was pro bono and this delayed Nestlé's quest for profit sufficiently that Nestlé turned away from Wisconsin.  We regret that our so-called success was to Michigan's detriment because what they did was they went to Michigan. 

Now, our grassroots group here in Wisconsin, Concerned Citizens of Newport, is continuing to monitor Nestlé's efforts because they repeatedly show up on the Wisconsin State Board of Ethics website as sustaining lobbyists in our state capital and their intention is to influence our ground water legislation which sounds very ominous to us and so that, in a nutshell, is what happened in Wisconsin.

Deborah Lapidus:    Great.  Thank you, Arlene.  On that note, we will move over to Terry in Michigan.

Terry Swier:    Hi, Debra.  What Arlene said kind of makes me think that she's talking about Michigan because the same thing happened there and as Deborah said, I'm Terry Swier, the president of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation.  We're a grassroots environmental group with over 2,000 members.  Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation continues its fight to protect the waters of the Great Lakes Basin for today and for generations to come. 

Over eight years ago, MCWC organized, stood up to and challenged a large corporation, Nestlé that wanted to bottle our spring water and ship it to other states and countries for its own profit.  Our lives have changed since Nestlé came to Michigan with plans to pump 720,000 gallons per day of spring water from a private hunting preserve, pipe it to its plant, bottle it and ship it out of the Great Lakes Basin for its own profit.  Nestlé's pumping has lowered a stream, two lakes and adjacent wetlands. 

MCWC, Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, has spent over a million dollars in court cost and lawyer and environmental expert fees.  Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation has taken Nestlé to court to prove that water belongs to the people and ask for adjustment of Nestlé's pumping levels to prevent environmental impacts.  Nestlé has continued to run communities dry in more ways than one.  MCWC is again heading back to circuit court in July 2008 to ask the judge to adjust Nestlé's pumping limits.  Friendships had been severed as people took sides in the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation versus Nestlé battle.  Nestlé did interrogative telephone polling, asking questions about MCWC and its president.  Nestlé sent private investigators to homes of people who had signed MCWC's referendum asking intimidating questions.  Nestlé has threatened a potential strategic lawsuit against public participation known as a slap suit against my son.

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