A NEW WRINKLE IN THE NESTLE LEGALIZED THEFT OF OUR GROUNDWATER

Pigs at the trough comes to mind. So do the words raping and pillaging our mutual natural resources. Trees and logging have long been battlegrounds in Canada but now water resources are up for sale. Sale is too strong a word. Basically our water is being given away by our governments for profit to private corporations. The irony is that while wood has been a product for use in construction and homebuilding literally for thousands of years, bottled water isn't really needed. While I disagree with Maud Barlow's contention in today's Waterloo Region Record article titled "Nestle outbids small Ontario municipality to buy well for bottled water", namely that tap water is perfectly safe; nevertheless she is correct in that somewhat tested and treated tap water is readily available. I carry a plastic bottle of water with me when I am on my bicycle. That said the plastic bottle will last me a season and I simply refill it indirectly from my tap after running it through a Brita filter. That and a single case of bottled emergency water in the basement is how little I support the bottled water industry.

The new wrinlke in the well being purchased by Nestle outside Elora is that the municipality of Centre Wellington submitted an offer to purchase the well. They wisely decided that it was in their constiuents' interests to have that well and water availble for their local use rather than availble for Nestle to pump and bottle and sell wherever. The original owner the Middlebrook Water Company are named after the road the building and well sit beside namely Midlebrook Rd. which runs from Highway #86 at West Montrose north to Elora. It is necessary for municipalities to pump groundwater for residential use. Bottled water is a somewhat trumped up demand based upon citizens appropriate skepticism of the claims of municipalities that their tap water is just dandy. Chlorine isn't just dandy and the taste of it can sometimes mask other odours and tastes in the water. Sometimes it's just the taste of chlorine necessary to kill bacteria (think E.Coli & Coliforms) but nevertheless it's not pleasant or healthy over a lifetime of ingestion.

Municipalities built up their wellfields decades to nearly a century ago long before industrialization sprinkled our groundwater with industrial solvents and more. Since then industry grew up around these wellfields and government inaction and corruption allowed companies to discharge their liquid wastes into the same ground that we pump our drinking water from. I dare anybody to show me groundwater in any southern Ontario city that isn't polluted with industrial chemicals. That is the sad reality. Hence bottled water companies allegedly and probably drawing their water from rural areas hopefully still unpolluted have sprung forth. Keep in mind that many rural areas themselves have issues with excess nitrogen (nitrates & nitrites) as well as phosphorous from agricultural use on fields and crops. Also let's not forget the rampant use of pesticides in agricultural practices. Add to this manure mismanagement including our city sewage treatment plants disposing of "bio-solids" on farmers' fields and you can see the potential for problems. Maybe Maud has a good point. Should we trust private corporations more than our own governments? Hell they both lie like dogs. Pick your poison.