To the Editor,
Re: Nestlé protest just doesn’t hold water, Opinion, July 23.
Nestlé pays a toonie and a quarter for a million litres of our B.C. fresh water, pours those litres into plastic bottles and sells them to B.C. residents who owned the water in the first place but now have to buy Nestlé’s bottled water because their wells have run dry.
But in the equation there’s the necessary middleman like the store that had a manager’s special last month of $4.99 on cases of Nestlé water trapped in plastic bottles that used to be bubbling free in our mountain streams.
For every case of that bottled water sold, Nestlé can now legally buy two more million litres of B.C. water because the Liberals in Victoria say that’s just fine with them. Maybe that’s a bit harsh – the middleman needs his cut so it’s $2.50 for the store and $2.50 for Nestlé. But that’s still another million litres of B.C. water on their way into Nestlé’s plastic prisons with a quarter back in change.
Edwin TurnerNanaimo
To the Editor,
Re: Nestlé protest just doesn’t hold water, Opinion, July 23.
As a representative of WaterWealth, I sincerely apologize to the columnist if he took the words “suck B.C. dry” literally and mistook the opening comment for the whole conversation. Feedback we have received indicates that the public went well beyond that opening comment to understand the broader issues that the petition was about – primary among them being to ensure that the Water Sustainability Act is sufficiently funded to be fully implemented.
The review of rental rates under the act, that the petition sought and that the province promised even before the petition was delivered, is but one more step in the ongoing work to ensure that the public’s voice is heard in development of strong regulations for the Water Sustainability Act, the first major update of B.C. water law in over a century.
Ian Stephencampaign directorWaterWealth Project
To the Editor,
Re: Nestlé protest just doesn’t hold water, Opinion, July 23.
One jug of ice-cold, good Nanaimo water poured on the hotheads. Nice one. Keep the common sense coming.
Charles ReidNanaimo
To the Editor,
Re: Nestlé protest just doesn’t hold water, Opinion, July 23.
The columnist may have missed the main point as to why people are protesting in the first place. I agree with him wholeheartedly; let’s fill our water bottles and put them in the fridge. “Fight the corporations,” as he says.
The argument, however, between Nestlé and the public isn’t centred around having enough drinking water for everyone; the reckless ability and power these big companies have goes far beyond what little power the public has.
I’m not arguing that Nestlé should reduce its outputs, but it should be paying much more for the privileged access to water. The ‘protest’ against Nestlé is really a protest at how much our resources can be exploited by big companies: regardless of whether or not Nestlé does “suck B.C. dry.”
Branden ChaseNanaimo