Water: The BIGGER Picture
Drowning In Facts & Innuendo
Water is one those issues that causes a lot of alarm, probably because if you run out you die. Here in Guelph, people have been talking alarmingly about water mainly because Nestle Canada Inc. has applied to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to renew its permit to pump approximately 4.7 million litres per day of groundwater from two wells, one in Aberfoyle and the other just outside Hillsburgh, near Erin.
Until a group of Guelph citizens — outraged at the selling of a shared natural resource by a Swiss-based multinational — formed the Wellington Water Watchers, few people thought about what Nestle is doing. Five years ago, when the company routinely applied to renew the same permit, there was a mere handful of public “complaints” registered with the government. This time, there are, so far, about 3,000.
(The deadline for registering a complaint is this Friday.)
A Big, Fat Target
Attacking Nestle will not work, this time anyway. The company isn’t breaking the law. The law says that all those billions of litres can be freely pumped every year in exchange for about $3,000 in license fees.
That said, Nestle is the obvious target because the issue needs to be addressed. Most people would rather lash out at a big corporation than get mired in protesting government policy.
But that policy, and in fact the entire subject of how we use water, has been nicely opened up by the Wellington Water Watchers and for that they deserve thanks.
While the Ministry of the Environment might well dismiss the vast majority of those 3,000 protests for being scientifically or technically invalid, it will be clearly noted by the Government of Ontario that water is on the political radar.
And Guelph is leading the charge.
What You Should Know
To understand the importance of water, and where Nestle sits in the whole water-usage landscape, you need to understand what the City of Guelph is doing, who the largest users of groundwater are, and how growth is likely to affect long-term supplies.
The Americans: Already Eyeing Our Rivers
Maude Barlow was in Guelph on May 2, thanks to the Wellington Water Watchers. Her Council of Canadians tracks water issues, especially as they relate to Canadian sovereignty. She has just written her second book on the subject. She knows the global situation, and in many places it’s dire.
There is a finite supply of fresh water on Earth — called the hydrosphere — and industrial contamination has rendered much of it useless. Rising demand is also outstripping supply. Apparently, 80% of China’s drinking water is fouled beyond use, while industrial growth is exploding and the country’s population continues to climb. Australia too is running out. Many developing nations are already have so little water than people are suffering.
Water will cause war and maybe even peace. Israel, according to Barlow, is looking at peace dialogues around the sharing of precious water in the Middle East. Less comforting, is the fact that the United States is looking with hungry eyes at Canada’s northern rivers. Under the Security and Prosperity Partnership, an innocuously named set of emerging agreements, the U.S. is already examining “long-term corridors” to channel our rivers to their under-watered regions. Gulp.
To get the full story, visit the Council of Canadians at www.canadians.org
Guelph’s Water Supply Master Plan: No Pipe
The word “Nestle” doesn’t appear in the city’s Water Supply Master Plan. And thanks to a recent vote by city council, the word “pipeline” no longer appears. The city’s options for increasing the supply of drinking water as we grow begin with improved conservation, which is the cheapest way to handle growing demand, followed by, in order of priority: getting more water from existing wells, drilling new wells, finding new surface water supplies locally (like Guelph Lake), and finally, finding surface sources regionally.
The City on Nestle: Okay For Now, But Maybe Not Later
Last week, the Guelph city council was told by staff experts and hired hydrologists that the Nestle operation does not presently compete with our city for water. But it could in the future. While we share the same aquifer, the aquifer is gigantic, underlying much of this part of the province. We apparently don’t share the same direct source. Because of that, Guelph city council — which has no political power over the Aberfoyle operations of Nestle — voted not to object to the Nestle permit renewal, but to recommend that it be renewed for two years not five. In doing so, they sent a fairly strong message to the province: water taking is a cumulative practice and both demand and the quantities available over time are not accurately known. We just don’t know how long our groundwater sources will serve our city. If we need more, drawing from aquifers to the south is a natural tactic. Then we will be competing with Nestle.
So is Nestle having zero effect on Guelph?
No. Waste is an issue.
Waste: We Are Paying To Dispose of Their Bottles
While Nestle is not apparently hurting Guelph’s water supply, it is most definitely contributing to our waste problems. Of the millions and millions of PET plastic bottles Nestle sells, hundreds of thousands of them end up in Guelph as waste. It’s unclear what percentage are recycled, maybe 30%. But as a convenience package often carried around by people who are away from their recycling bins, most become garbage. (Even recycling takes effort and energy and, with PET, doesn’t pay its way). Why should we have to deal with, and pay for, the disposal of Nestle’s packaging or, for that matter, any other packaging that benefits marketers? Good question.
Nestle’s Take: Significant or Not?
It sounds like an almost unbelievable amount: 4.7 million litres every day. But Nestle isn’t the largest industrial water user in the area by a long shot. Many industries use large amounts of groundwater, pumped freely, to clean or cool in their processes. Power plants use huge amounts to cool generators. Gravel companies use huge amounts to wash gravel. Nestle itself, we are told, uses 41% of the water it draws for its processes at the bottling plant. Guelph draws 14 times what Nestle draws daily. Much of that is flushed down toilets, pumped onto lawns and golf courses in the summer, or used by hundreds of businesses. Nestle also argues that at least much of the water it takes ends up inside thirsty people, as opposed to down the sewer or onto a lawn. The bottom line: Nestle’s pumping is more symbolic than significant. But, if water gets scarce, people will find it less and less palatable to have a big company drawing millions of litres from our shared resource to sell it elsewhere, whatever percentage they are taking.
The Impact of Growth: Coming Fast
Guelph’s water supply is already under pressure, especially during hot, dry summers when the Arkell wells run low. As our population grows, the pressure grows. Over the past seven or eight years, we’ve gone from 95,000 residents to 120,000. Over the next 20 years, Guelph could, according to provincial projections, grow to 230,000 residents. With that, will come more water-using industry. And because there is no locally produced electrical power this side of Milton, the province will soon issue requests for proposals (RFPs) for the construction in this area of power plants, which are major water hogs. The cumulative impact is not known, but we do know that Guelph will have to find significant new sources of drinking water.
Nestle’s Other Issues
The effect of Nestle’s pumping operations on Mill Creek, a creek that runs by its Aberfoyle plant, are unclear. The Wellington Water Watchers talk about “reverse flow” when the pumps are on. There’s another opinion that the flow actually increases near the Nestle plant and it’s cold water, meaning ground water coming to the surface. Not knowing is the real problem. We all need the facts, not from Nestle and not from Nestle detractors, unless they have irrefutable evidence. One issue Nestle does have is all the trucking of water from Hillsburgh to the Aberfoyle plant. It is said that 80 tractor-trailer loads a day get hauled. That’s a big source of pollution and greenhouse gas. As for the matter of getting this natural resource for almost nothing, nobody pays for water. The permitting process has been about giving access to those who need it not preventing them from taking it.
Where Do We Go From Here?
What IS clear in this otherwise murky tale is that water is fast becoming a governance issue, and the Ontario government cannot continue with business as usual. How does this “problem” with Nestle relate to the next problem with water vulnerability, volume, quality, and contamination? What are the top ten water problems and where does Nestle sit on the spectrum? Which ones do we start with? Where do we get accurate information? What is the province going to do?
We believe three strategies are appropriate now:
Keep up the pressure on the Ontario government to get answers to these important questions.
Keep talking about water. The dialogue has started thanks to the Wellington Water Watchers. It is now on our collective radar. People are getting educated fast.
Pressure Nestle to help solve the real problems of waste handling and trucking.
We need effective public processes to find opportunity in this situation — even if we can’t stop corporations from drawing groundwater and selling it in plastic bottles, for now.
Want To Register a Complaint?
The Wellington Water Watchers is an organization member of the Guelph Civic League. If you want to register a complaint online with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment before tomorrow’s deadline, please visit the Water Watchers web site — www.wellingtonwaterwatchers.ca— for their position on the issue and instructions on how to make your opinion known to the government.
Know more: www.guelphcivicleague.ca.