Letter: Taking water from future generations is immoral (July 3, 2008)
Editor:
I grew up in Kennebunk and now attend Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. I study sustainability issues. My main focus is how to take ecological functions and apply them in to our culture in things like buildings, cars, agriculture, everything really.
As someone who devotes his life to sustainability, I feel very agitated when I hear about Nestle’s newly proposed water source.
From an environmental point of view, this is obviously a disaster! But buried deeper in the environmental implications of 250,000 gallons of water per day are the social implications. My children’s generation will be the worst affected by this proposal. Not only is it unfair, it is morally unacceptable.
Our duty as human beings is to provide a suitable environment for our children to be raised in! What kind of responsibility is this?
My children will be second to Nestle when it comes to the resource that they vitally need for survival. I urge people of the community to look beyond the idea of “activism” and into the future.
Sustainability means providing a safe future for generations to come; instead of buying a hybrid, the most “green” thing we can do is to protect our resources for future generations.
Ryan Wilson
Olympia, Washington
I grew up in Kennebunk and now attend Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. I study sustainability issues. My main focus is how to take ecological functions and apply them in to our culture in things like buildings, cars, agriculture, everything really.
As someone who devotes his life to sustainability, I feel very agitated when I hear about Nestle’s newly proposed water source.
From an environmental point of view, this is obviously a disaster! But buried deeper in the environmental implications of 250,000 gallons of water per day are the social implications. My children’s generation will be the worst affected by this proposal. Not only is it unfair, it is morally unacceptable.
Our duty as human beings is to provide a suitable environment for our children to be raised in! What kind of responsibility is this?
My children will be second to Nestle when it comes to the resource that they vitally need for survival. I urge people of the community to look beyond the idea of “activism” and into the future.
Sustainability means providing a safe future for generations to come; instead of buying a hybrid, the most “green” thing we can do is to protect our resources for future generations.
Ryan Wilson
Olympia, Washington
Mr. Wilson,
I appreciate your opinions about sustainability, but the suggestion that water is being taken from future generations is incorrect.
Poland Spring monitors and protects every spring source we use - these springs must be running strong 10 years from now and 100 years from now - this is important for the environment and our business!
In this case with the Kennebunk-Kennebunkport-Wells Water District, Poland Spring is not taking control of any public water. The Water District remains in complete control thanks to the contract terms they have dictated and we will agree to - the Water District can simply tell us to stop for any reason – that is local control.
I work for Poland Spring and am a geologist in charge of water level monitoring, spring monitoring and sustainability at all our spring sites in Maine. I am from Maine too – my family and 800 other Maine families rely on Poland Spring's good, clean manufacturing jobs that use a renewable resource.
One big piece of information that is missing from the discussion in your home town area is that water is a rapidly-renewable resource in the sand and gravel aquifers used by Poland Spring and municipal water districts statewide. Just because you use water today, does not mean that it’s gone tomorrow.
If this were the case, a farmer working in Maine today and using groundwater for crop irrigation would eventually put himself or herself out of business over time. This is not the case with farming or with our industry because we receive much rain and snow in Maine that naturally recharges local aquifers.
To consider sustainability, we need to consider non-renewable resources and renewable resources. It takes 60 million years to make oil (non-renewable), a tree grows for 30 years or so (renewable), but water renews itself continually in the state of Maine (rapidly renewable).
The big difference between the climate in Maine and other parts of the world is that we receive around 44 inches of precipitation on average. Some places with water issues receive less than 25% of our annual rainfall.
Poland Spring has operated a business in Maine for 163 years with no adverse impact, through droughts and low water seasons. We monitor all of our sources for sustainability because we aim to be in business for at least another 163 years in the future.
Monitoring at our sites includes precipitation, aquifer water levels, stream flows and many biological parameters to provide additional measures of sustainability. Average water levels near our spring site in Hollis, Maine are actually higher today than when we started operations around 2000. Monitoring data from this site is completely public and we operate under numerous federal, state and local rules and regulations in eight towns across Maine.
I encourage you to look into our business and help us separate rumor from fact.
Mark Dubois
Natural Resource Manager, Poland Spring
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Mr. Dubois:
I notice you repeatedly speak to the health and longevity of the springs Nestle mines for water, yet you ignore the health of the downstream habitat.
After all, Nestle's concern for the spring is understandable - it's the well from which your massive profits flow.
However, in Michigan, Nestle was ordered by a judge to immediately cease pumping from a spring because of damage to the watershed below your station (you eventually agreed to take half the water you were originally taking, and studies suggest that's still too much).
In McCloud, Nestle blithely stated that your operation would have no effect on downstream habitat when your organization hadn't even studied downstream flows. In fact, it was a citizen's uprising which forced Nestle to recently (years into the project) back away and agree to a monitoring regime designed to actually study the impact of your extraction.
Those flows feed several of California's blue-ribbon trout fisheries, and Nestle's cavalier approach to that resource -- and a sizable chunk of the town's tourist economy -- belies the happy, "good corporate citizen" picture painted by your paid PR flacks.
In other words, you're great a protecting the bits that make you money, but not so good on the downstream part of the equation. And that's ignoring the increased pollution in an area due to truck traffic, increased damage to infrastructure, the damage done by the 80% of your plastic bottles that end up leaching toxics into landfills, etc.
Tom Chandler
Small Town Inhabitant & Fly Fisherman
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