While Flint waits, Nestle pumps Michigan water on the cheap.
Why does Nestle get to make billions of dollars off of essentially free water while residents of Flint, Michigan, continue to wait for clean water?
“That is the question of the hour: Why is it essentially free?” says Liz Kirkwood, executive director of FLOW (For Love of Water), a Great Lakes water law and policy center.
“It’s because the state has not addressed the issue about bottled water.
In the state’s water withdrawal law of 2008, bottled water is an exception.
As more people lose trust in their local municipal water systems, the more people turn to bottled water, which becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy for water giants like Nestle.
“Nestle has indicated on their website that they have contributed to the Flint disaster by donating bottled water, but the rise of bottled water in this century is unprecedented.
It has a lot of deleterious effects, not only in eroding trust in public infrastructure but the whole ecological impact of using plastic, fossil-fuel-based bottles that end up in our landfills.” This isn’t the first time Nestle has landed itself in hot water over ground water.
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Ads by Kiosked Vijayawada: Water contamination may hit the city this summer, in addition to possible scarcity as the water level in River Krishna dipped by four feet.
While the water contamination is something to do with people fitting motor pumps to municipal taps in many areas, the water scarcity is associated with 33 per cent evaporation loss in reservoir which has already receded.According to official sources, the water level in reservoir is eight feet at present.
Highlights: Water level at the reservoir current stands at 8 feet Water contamination reported at different places Though this level was just four feet same time last year, the clear water may not lost for long.
Officials are optimistic that the monsoon may touch the State by June first week.They are also hopeful on groundwater which is available at 60 feet.
If this calculation goes wrong in summer, the problem arises.
On the other hand, if the water is drawn from low level of the reservoir, it contains dead things or bacteria.
It also has odour which is difficult to treat.
The other source of water getting contaminated is excessive use of motors fitted to pipelines to draw water from supply lines.
As many as 67 reservoirs at different places are supplying water to people according to a specific schedule.
The wastage accounts for 10 per cent of the supply.An official at VMC said that they have been chalking out plans to mitigate water problem in slums and other localities.

BLOG ROUND-UP: Are pumps killing fish or ammonia from water treatment plants?, Evading dam nation, headwaters, Trump and the EPA, and more ….
A group called “Families Protecting the Valley,” recently used this and a 2008 story from another newspaper to once-again emphasize that the fish problems inherent in the Delta are not because of the large pumps that move water from the Delta near Tracy to San Luis Reservoir, but are likely caused by ammonia brought on by municipal wastewater plants flushing the collective toilets of large cities into the Delta.
Recent storms “exposed problems with Sacramento-area wastewater systems that failed to contain sewage.”: Families Protecting the Valley writes, “We have been saying for a long time that too much emphasis is being put on how much water farmers use and too little time spent on how much sewage is flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Recent storms “exposed problems with Sacramento-area wastewater systems that failed to contain sewage.” Fish First, Then People!
The Cosumnes is the only river draining the western Sierra Nevada Mountains that has no major dam.
… ” Read more from the California Water Blog here: Evading Dam-Nation to build a working floodplain on the Cosumnes River Why the headwaters matter for natural infrastructure: “When most people think about water infrastructure, they picture reservoirs, canals, and levees.
… ” Read more from the American Rivers blog here: Why the headwaters matter for natural infrastructure The Changing Conversation in the Sacramento Valley: The Northern California Water Association blog writes, “The Northern California Water Association (NCWA) last week celebrated its 25th Annual Meeting at the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico with a focus on The Changing Conversation in the Sacramento Valley.
But there is, as yet, little agreement about what specific investments should be made.
… ” Read more from the Pacific Institute Insights blog here: National Water Infrastructure Efforts Must Expand Access to Public Drinking Fountains Sign up for daily email service and you’ll never miss a post!
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Dartmouth College Installs ‘Pump And Treat’ System To Treat Water Contamination.
This weekend, residents of a Hanover neighborhood near a Dartmouth College hazardous waste site went to check out a system designed to clean up their groundwater.
The pump and treat system went online in early February.
It was designed specifically for the Hanover contamination of the chemical 1,4-dioxane, a probable carcinogen which has been found in local drinking water.
The chemical was left over from a mid-century hazardous waste burial site where Dartmouth research labs had previously dumped materials.
Currently, the system pumps over 1,400 gallons of contaminated ground water a day – but that will likely increase in the future.
Jim Weick is a water geologist and the manager overseeing the project.
He explained to neighbors how the $2 million system will work over the next five-plus years.
“It’s a filtration type of system,” Weick said on the Rennie Farm property recently.
“The media that is in it — a synthetic resin — passes through that material … [it] is capable of filtering out the 1,4-dioxane where it’s difficult for a lot of other media to do it.” Weick and Dartmouth are exploring the possibility of creating a second pump and treat system to mitigate the plume, which has reached about a mile away from the original waste site.

Nestlé Will Pay 13,500% More to Pump Ontario’s Water for Bottling.
Today, Nestlé pays just $3.71 per every million litres of water the company pumps out of the ground in Ontario, so that it can bottle it and then and sell it back to thirsty customers for profit.
But that won’t last for much longer.
Nestlé is licensed to pump 4.7 million litres of water per day from two sites in Ontario, meaning that the company will now pay $2,367 for the water it takes every day, instead of the paltry $17.50 it pays now.
In October, feeling the pressure, the province proposed a two-year moratorium on any new or extended water-taking permits.
But the larger, unanswered question is: should water be a commodity to begin with?
“There’s an economic issue here, yes, and if water is being used as a commodity then it should be priced accordingly,” Scharper said.
“But the larger question is whether water for bottling purposes should be for sale at all.” “If this decision leads to an acceptance of water as a commodity instead of a basic common good, then that might be a problem,” he continued.
Scharper’s perspective is one that goes back to the first enclosing of communal farming lands by the wealthy to create private property in the 1700s, creating a class of landless labourers.
“The industry pumps water out of the ground, and spews out a plastic bottle for every 500 millilitres—we get water, which we can get anyway from public sources, and we’re left with garbage.” Nestlé is expected to release a statement on the increase later today, and we will update this piece when we hear from the company.