Canada should not be "giving away" its water to be bottled and sold abroad, activists said as they celebrated a partial victory Thursday against Nestle Canada Inc., over its plan to tap a southwestern Ontario community for 3.6 million litres of water a day, every day, for five years.
While Ontario's Environment Ministry did renew Nestle's permit to take water from a well near Guelph, Ont., it reduced the term of the deal from five years to two. The ministry said it considered 3.6 million litres a "sustainable" amount for Nestle to take daily.
Activists questioned the logic of letting an international conglomerate take 1.3 billion litres of water a year for only the cost of a $3,000 application fee. As of Jan. 1, 2009, Ontario law will also require that companies pay $3.71 per million litres as a conservation fee but activists said that amount is still paltry.
But they were encouraged that the province ordered increased monitoring and testing to ensure that the public water supply isn't threatened by Nestle's business, and the company will be on the hook for the costs.
The case is "probably the best example" of groundwater conflicts that could emerge in the years ahead as cities grow beyond their means and have to compete for resources with commercial interests, said Gord Miller, the province's environment commissioner.
"We see increasing competition in a very small part of the landscape for groundwater uses ... and there's a lot of anxiety around that," said Miller.
The bigger question, he said, is whether Canada should be exporting bottles of water at all.
"It is illegal to export a tanker truck of water and sell it, say, in the U.S., but if you put that same amount of water in 20-litre containers and put it in a tractor trailer it's completely legal to export that as bottled water."
Nestle can appeal the reduced term of its permit and the public can seek leave to appeal if it doesn't agree with the government's decision.
Nestle's permit application was posted onto the provincial Environmental Bill of Rights registry last April and received over 6,000 submissions commenting on the company's plans, which the ministry said was a "significant response."
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Just to give us a perspective 3.6 million liters of water per day for 5 years would amount to 6,574,500 cubic meters of water. In our area this much water would cost $5,259,600. At 50 cents per liter this much bottled water would fetch about $3,287,250,000 (three billion two hundred eighty seven million two hundred fifty thousand dollars). And you say money is in gasoline!!!
Even the reduced permit of two years will fetch a substantial income being $1,314,900,000.
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