Bottled Water at Issue
in Great Lakes
Conservation and
Commerce Clash
By Kari Lydersen
Washington
Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 29, 2008; A07
CHICAGO -- Even as a 10-year
campaign to block wholesale export of Great Lakes water came to a successful
conclusion in Congress last week, some legislators and environmentalists vowed
to continue their fight to close a "bottled-water loophole," a campaign that
taps into a national debate over sales of H2O in disposable
containers.
A provision of the Great Lakes
Compact allows water to be diverted from the basin if it is in containers
holding less than 5.7 gallons. The question is whether bottling water from the
aquifers that feed the lakes, the largest repository of fresh water on Earth,
should be seen as ordinary human consumption, commercial production, or export
of a treasured natural resource.
In August, Nestle
Waters North America was granted permits for a new well and pipeline at its
Ice Mountain facility in Mecosta County, Mich., where it bottles 700,000 gallons
a day. Nestle also recently renewed permits for its plant in Guelph, Ontario.
Both have sparked vocal opposition from those who say the industry is
privatizing a public good and harming the environment.
Americans drank 8.8 billion
gallons of bottled water in 2007, up 7 percent from 2006, according to the
Beverage Marketing Corp. But bottled water has drawn increasing criticism,
leading San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Ann Arbor, Mich., among other
municipalities, to ban buying bottled water with city
funds.
Nestle spokesman Brian
Flaherty said the industry is being unfairly singled out, since it is only one
of many commercial sectors that use and export water. More Great Lakes region
water goes into soda and beer cans, he said.
"How do you define a product?"
he asked. "Water goes into beer in Wisconsin and radiators in Detroit. Why would
you have a separate standard for bottled water versus
soda?"
Bottled water accounts for
less than 0.02 percent of groundwater withdrawals nationally, according to a
2004 University
of Maryland study cited by the International
Bottled Water Association. Fourteen times as much bottled water is imported
into the Great Lakes basin than is exported, a U.S.-Canadian commission reported
in 2000.
But opponents of bottled water
say soda and beer are different because the water is consumed in making
something else, whereas they view Nestle as taking a public good, paying very
little for it, and making a profit on it.
They also fear that since the
compact officially treats water as a "product," the door could be opened to
further commercialization and sale. It was such fears that in 1998 launched the
process that led to the compact, after the tiny company Nova Group obtained a
permit from the Ontario government -- later withdrawn -- to ship up to 158
million gallons of Great Lakes water per year to Asia.
Rep. Bart
Stupak (D-Mich.), who led opposition to the compact because of the
bottled-water loophole, has requested comments from the Office of the U.S. Trade
Representative and the State
Department about how international trade issues will play
out.
"Call me all wet, but I say,
why don't we get the answers? Why are we rushing this?" he
said.
Anu Bradford, a University
of Chicago law professor, said international trade law cannot force a
country to extract its natural resources -- such as water "in its pristine form
in a lake." But once it is bottled and becomes itself a product, she said, trade
agreements would prevent a ban on exports.
"How do we decide when water
is a product?" she asked. "Under the WTO
and NAFTA,
there is no obligation for a state to extract its natural resources. The
difference comes when it makes the decision to allow an entity to commercialize
it and they do commercialize it. Then it is a product and you can't ban the
export."
Doug Roberts Jr., director of
environmental and energy policy at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce,
agrees.
"We think it's critical that
you are able to make products and ship them all over the world," Roberts said.
"That's what you do in a free-market economy. We were very concerned groups
would target one product and say that product can't be shipped. What's the
difference between bottled water and beer or cherry juice? Those all have water
in them."
Nestle is the biggest water
bottler in Michigan but not the only one. PepsiCo
and Coca-Cola bottle Detroit municipal water for their Aquafina and Dasani
brands, respectively. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have water-bottling plants in Quebec
and Ontario.
Opponents say Nestle's pumping
is lowering water levels in local creeks and lakes -- systems that feed the
Great Lakes. In Ontario, a hydrologist hired by a group opposing the Nestle
plant reported that the company was using 7 percent of the local water supply
and depleting the flow of a creek.
"As long as the bottled-water
loophole remains, it's a gaping hole in the Great Lakes Compact that would lead
to potentially sucking the Great Lakes dry," said Meera Karunananthan, national
water campaigner for the Council of Canadians, a citizen
group.
In both Ontario and Michigan,
many residents are also angry that Nestle gets the water at low cost, paying the
same rate as any other water user. But Terry Swier, president of Michigan
Citizens for Water Conservation, said she doesn't necessarily want the company
to pay for the water. "Then with the financial situation Michigan is in, we
would just open up the state to any water bottler," she said. "We have to
preserve and protect the waters for future generations."
Flaherty said he doesn't think
bottled water, in or out of the Great Lakes basin, should get a bad
rap.
"We're one of 70,000 different
types of beverages you can buy," he said. "We use the least amount of water and
the least amount of plastic, and we're good for you."
Mark
Antoniewicz
Research
Assistant
Marlowe & Company,
LLC
(202)
775-1796