Dear Editor:
Municipalities prosper when they have adequate resources and healthy tax bases. Without these, they cannot attract new industry nor hope to become vibrant communities for population growth.
A case in point is the urban area of Fergus and Elora, which is mandated under the Places to Grow legislation to double its population by 2041.
Recently, the provincial government spent almost $1 million on a Tier 3 Water Budget Study and found that Centre Wellington’s municipal water supply is at a significant risk level and is incapable of providing sufficient drinking water to residents and industry beyond present-day use. Our changing climate could potentially add to the shortage.
In order for Centre Wellington to achieve the goals placed upon it by the legislation, government needs to protect the resources of these communities by refusing a permit request from Nestlé Waters Canada to take 1.6 million litres of water daily from its Middlebrook well, located just west of Elora. Failure to do so would compromise the expectation of strong economic growth.
For close to five years the community has opposed Nestlé’s proposal and township council has declared that it is not a willing host community to large volume water extraction for commercial water bottling purposes under any circumstances. Nestlé would be contributing virtually nothing to the local economy while taking millions of litres of diminishing groundwater every year.
Forty years ago the bottled drinking water industry did not exist. Now foreign companies are taking millions of litres of Ontario groundwater every year and bottling it in non-biodegradable plastic. The irony is that the energy needed to produce bottled water is up to 2,000 times the energy needed to produce the equivalent volume of tap water.
For years Nestlé and its competitors have done very little to respond to environmentally concerned citizens’ complaints about the volume of plastic waste that is generated and ends up in our oceans and waterways. It is estimated that globally 10 metric tons of synthetic polymer enter our oceans annually, a large percentage of which is plastic water bottles.
Water is essential to life. It is a public right and must be treated as such.
Government needs to recognize the threats that privatization of our groundwater and the reckless production of non-biodegradable plastic bring to society. Water is finite and needs to be protected.
Mike Shackleford,
Belwood
