Polaris Institute Water Alert

Posted November 8, 2006 in [Water]

Great Lakes Water Bottling: Who's Counting?? 

Leigh Thomson

The Nova Group's bulk water export proposal of 15.8 million US gallons per year in 1999 provided the impetus for Great Lakes governors and premiers to work on the Great Lakes Charter Annex.  The Annex Agreement and Compact were signed last fall.  But those agreements now allow billions of US gallons per year to be diverted out of the Great Lakes Basin - in bottles.

The gaping loopholes of the Annex can still be closed by members of the US Congress, the body given final control to ratify the deal.   The ‘power’ given Ontario, Québec and Great Lakes states to regulate bottling regionally is empty:  

1) Water in the Annex has been defined as a “product”, triggering the US Commerce clause and NAFTA, which trump regional legislation in trade courts;  

2) Water as a “product” in the Annex can be shipped to consumers outside the Basin; and

3) The Annex allows water in containers under 5.7 gallons to be exempt from diversion regulations.

Few have paid attention to the water volumes which bottlers actually take.  The Polaris Institute has initiated www.insidethebottle.org to map bottlers across the US and Canada, and has already discovered some startling facts, along with some useful alternatives.

Polaris has found that current public records of water use in the US and Canada do not identify the industrial water bottling operations of Coke and Pepsi in cities along Great Lakes shores.  These global operators use municipal public supplies of water.   Reprocessed tap water, marketed as brands like Dasani and Aquafina are sold around the world.  Then there’s groundwater exporter Nestlé and Groupe Danone, which say some of their bottled spring water stays in the Great Lakes Basin.   Who’s doing the checking?

Annex debates were hampered by lack of good data, and an excess of unverified rhetoric.  In reality, no comprehensive industrial water use data base exists.  All subsequent studies cite back to one report by Statistics Canada (Industrial Water Use Survey 1996) which is a decade old, and the US Census Water Use Data System, which was never completed.  In both countries actual data has been replaced by estimates.  The US Geological Survey Estimated Use of Water in the US cited government funding cutbacks for the demise of actual records.

Statistics Canada, in its 2004 report “Human Activity and the Environment”, uses the Industrial Water Use Survey of 1996.  Even then, the report shows that surface fresh water intake by industry far outpaces both agriculture and municipal intake:  In the Great Lakes Basin 27,229.02 million cubic metres (mcm) were taken by industry, while municipalities in the Basin took only 3,087.12 mcm, and agriculture 271.64 mcm.  Across Canada as a whole, industrial takings are far greater (31,491.03 mcm) than municipal (4872.83 mcm) and agricultural (4098.19 mcm) takings combined (p.80).

Actual data show that industry is the largest taker of Great Lakes water.  In spite of this, pundits find it far easier to blame small farmers and municipal residents for water problems.  Some have quoted sources which either ignore industrial figures entirely, or which lump the food processing industry in with actual farming.  We are bombarded with reports of family farmers sucking aquifers dry, or individuals who leave the tap on while brushing their teeth.  It’s as if the big boxes and smoke stacks along the lakes and rivers don’t exist.

While residential use and large-scale irrigation are concerns, much of the water taken flushes back to the immediate watershed.   ‘Consumptive use’ refers to water that is incorporated, and not immediately returned to the water source.  Industrial consumptive use including power plants outpaces both agricultural and residential consumptive uses in the Great Lakes basin.  Yet no one has reliably counted how much of that, like bottled water, gets diverted entirely from the Basin.
In Canada 51.6% of municipal utilities surveyed by the Canadian Water Works Association do not meter industrial users at all.  The current online version of the Water Trade Sector Review at Measurement Canada eliminates the industrial data, and focuses only on residential customers.  Further, Measurement Canada stated its actual functions could be delivered by "private corporations or the trade sector itself”, giving industry direct control over its own regulation.

Federal governments have stopped collecting actual data.   The few regional programs that hope to collect records in future years are based on industry self-reporting.  All levels of government have directed public taxes to fund corporate partnerships and voluntary compliance promotion.   Worse still, they often offer incentives:  Nestle was given $ 9.5 million in tax breaks to pump water from Sanctuary Springs, Michigan.  No bottlers are taxed for taking ground, lake, or municipal water from the Great Lakes Basin.

The hot-ticket incentive today is water pricing.  Governments and wealthy investors are funding water ‘valuation’ research, as high prices for water will feed speculation in water markets and water trade, and will enrich corporate profits.  Instead of using tools that work to curb water abuse, like taxation of corporate water diverters, governments in effect subsidize the industrial water give-away with high rates for ordinary residents.
Further, governments have downloaded responsibility for water planning and infrastructure to municipalities, without sufficient funds.   Local councils are given the option of contracting with private sector giants, or raising resident user fees and property taxes (see www.infraguide.ca ‘best’ practices- funding). 

Already many rural residents are being forced off the land, leaving even more water and land for corporate hawks to pick off.

The time has come for citizens to regain real public control of water.  Let’s work for accountable volume testing, and taxes for industrial water diversions like bottling.  Let’s start counting useful numbers, and close the loopholes in the Great Lakes Annex.   When it comes to the element that sustains life on earth, we have the right to demand water-tight policy.