As water levels of the Floridan aquifer continue to drop, and the flow of the Santa Fe River continues to decline, Nestle’s false claims of sustainability fall flat. The river is sick and in recovery and pulling more water from it can only delay the return to its normal healthy state. Nestle is doing this to make money at the river’s expense. Nestle’s product is not needed, we have good tap water and we don’t need Nestle’s plastic pollution.
Read the original article here at this link to the Sun Sentinel.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
-A river is like a life: once taken, it cannot be brought back-
It’s our water. Many are outraged that Florida gives it away to corporations. | The Buzz
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL
Florida at risk of water supply strain over next 50 years, report warns »
And why would regional water managers — appointed by the governor — consider giving away fresh water to a bottled water conglomerate?
They shouldn’t.
Instead, they should listen to a growing chorus of voices from across the country that’s growing louder, protesting this terrible idea. Thousands of people have filed protests and many more have signed an online petition in opposition to the deal.
Next month, the Suwannee River Water Management District board, based in Lake City, [Ed. Note: Live Oak] is scheduled to vote on a request for a permit to extract more than a million gallons of fresh water a day, for the next 20 years, from Ginnie Springs north of Gainesville, near the Santa Fe River. The permit application is from Seven River Springs, [Ed. Note: Seven Springs Water Co.] which supplies water to Swiss conglomerate Nestlé.
The cost of the permit: $115. That’s it. The water itself is free.
So for no more than the price of dinner for two at a nice restaurant, Nestlé stands to reap a handsome profit by bottling water from Ginnie Springs and selling it back to you at your local supermarket in little polyethylene bottles that will be around for hundreds of years.
“Don’t let Nestlé pillage community water and churn out more plastic garbage,” says one online petition that claims to already have more than 75,000 signatures.
Here’s how you can add your voice….
The clear blue water of Ginnie Springs has attracted visitors for generations, the Florida Springs web site says. The spring is part of a park that’s popular with open-water divers and cave divers due to the clear water, sand and limestone bottom.
This is hardly the first time a Florida water management district has had a request from a profit-making corporation to suck water from our springs. In fact, Seven Springs’ application is actually a renewal of a 20-year permit that was initially granted in 1999.
But a recent op-ed in The New York Times brought Ginnie Springs to national prominence. That appears to have spurred a real awakening, and that’s as refreshing as an ice cold glass of water on a hot Florida day.
Nestlé took exception to the Times piece. A company official called it deeply misleading, and said: “It would make no sense to invest millions of dollars into our local operations just to deplete the natural resources on which our business relies. It would undermine the success of our business and go against every value we hold as people and as a company.”
The company offers its answers to frequently-asked questions about its use of Florida water, including its contention that Seven Springs’ withdrawals are a tiny amount of the water in Ginnie Springs.
Perhaps so. But we need the water more than Nestlé does.
Can we go to live oak when voting?? Protest ?? When and where plz!👍☮️🙏🏼🐟
They say everything is fine, yet I walk on algae-laden banks, so thick you can’t see the limestone rock underneath. No natural vegetation growing in the river because it is smothered by the slime. Our river is sick and growing sicker by the day, and it breaks my heart that we seem unable to stop the destruction.
No one has the right to monopolize what the Earth has freely given to us. We must protect it!
I am horrified Nestle is invading my home and stealing what is everyone’s. They have to go. Water is life.