Take note of this and help fight this IT IS VERY VERY BAD!!!

[G.mech]

I'm not surprised that Nestle isn't #1 on the water demand list, but I am shocked at how much water CBM and Capitol Paving are allowed to take for aggregate washing. The golf course up the road does have permits to take a lot of water, but it's only about half as much (totalling three separate wells) as Nestle.

 

To be frank, I agree that there must be some sort of "hidden agenda" here or conspiracy against Nestle. But for the average person it's pretty easy to look at bottled water and think how wasteful this is on so many resources (energy, petroleum, transportation, etc.) when clean, potable water is freely available in every home. I think, if nothing else, that is the agenda.

 

Absolutely, very well said.

[dave524]

I'm not surprised that Nestle isn't #1 on the water demand list, but I am shocked at how much water CBM and Capitol Paving are allowed to take for aggregate washing. The golf course up the road does have permits to take a lot of water, but it's only about half as much (totalling three separate wells) as Nestle.

 

To be frank, I agree that there must be some sort of "hidden agenda" here or conspiracy against Nestle. But for the average person it's pretty easy to look at bottled water and think how wasteful this is on so many resources (energy, petroleum, transportation, etc.) when clean, potable water is freely available in every home. I think, if nothing else, that is the agenda.

 

Especially when you consider that Nestle to my mind would be a clean industry pollution wise while the runoff from aggregate washing and fertilizer and pesticide laden golf courses is not.

[manitoubass2]

Speaking of runoff...

 

I wonder, with the amount of organic and inorganic substances entering the watertable, are any new substances being created?

 

Its fairly easy to test what you are looking for in water, BUT

 

These chemicals and organic matter like to make friends.

 

Who if anyone, is looking at and databasing new substances?

[Dutch01]

 

......Nestle is permitted at 3,600,000 liters/day and right next door the old Dufferin Aggregates (now called CRH Group) plant is permitted over 8,000,000 per day and St Mary's Cement is permitted for 23,000,000. The Victoria Park Golf Club has 3 permits totaling almost 3,000,000 lpd. These are just a couple of examples of the hundreds of permits on the map to look through....

 

https://www.ontario.ca/environment-and-energy/map-permits-take-water

As an FYI, Nestle is pulling water under multiple company names, they are pulling 20,000,000 in total:

 

"Nestle Canada has three permits to take up to 8.3 million litres of water every day for bottling, while Nestle Waters Canada a division of Nestle Canada has a half dozen Ontario permits allowing it to take an additional 12 million litres a day."

 

This puts them on par with the concrete plant. Nestle is a good target, because we can't very well stop building with concrete without a substitute. We can (and should imo) stop Nestle from shipping our water to the USA.

 

(I'm in the trucking business, there are dozens of loads available everyday carrying water to the USA for Nestle. Some are saying water is low impact on the environment, but creating those bottles, trucking then around the continent, and then having many of them end up in a landfill hardly qualifies as environmentally friendly)

[dave524]

 

(I'm in the trucking business, there are dozens of loads available everyday carrying water to the USA for Nestle. Some are saying water is low impact on the environment, but creating those bottles, trucking then around the continent, and then having many of them end up in a landfill hardly qualifies as environmentally friendly)

 

You are quite correct looking at the big picture but this group " Wellington Water Watchers" smacks of NIMBYism so I was referring to effects to the local environment. These socalled environmental groups look to causes they can sell easily to a gullible well meaning public and line their pockets.

[whiskywizard]

Water abuse in Ontario should concern us all but Nestlé shouldn't be our first target. They are more environmentally friendly than you can imagine. A very close personal friend of mine is a senior manager at Nestlé Waters. I've toured 2 water bottling plants and seen inside the operation. Over many, many beers we've talked about how Nestlé is viewed by the public vs. how Nestlé really is. At the plant I toured most recently, Nestlé's waste water gets re-processed and piped back to the local municipality where it joins the municipal water supply. They have aggressive targets for reducing environmental impact and helping their communities. They account for something like <0.0004% of water taken in Canada. And maybe most importantly, Nestlé Waters has said publicly at numerous hearings that they are prepared to pay whatever the proper fee is, as long as other for-profit water-takers pay too.

 

G.mech posted some good data. We need to clean this issue up but we need to manage by facts, and that means starting with waste by municipalities, mines, golf courses, etc.

Edited August 25, 2016 by whiskywizard

[G.mech]

As an FYI, Nestle is pulling water under multiple company names, they are pulling 20,000,000 in total:

 

"Nestle Canada has three permits to take up to 8.3 million litres of water every day for bottling, while Nestle Waters Canada a division of Nestle Canada has a half dozen Ontario permits allowing it to take an additional 12 million litres a day."

 

This puts them on par with the concrete plant. Nestle is a good target, because we can't very well stop building with concrete without a substitute. We can (and should imo) stop Nestle from shipping our water to the USA.

 

(I'm in the trucking business, there are dozens of loads available everyday carrying water to the USA for Nestle. Some are saying water is low impact on the environment, but creating those bottles, trucking then around the continent, and then having many of them end up in a landfill hardly qualifies as environmentally friendly)

 

I'm not sure where your quoted facts come from but Nestle Waters cannot even bottle 20 million LPD in Canada and hold only 3 permits under "Nestle Canada Inc". The other permits you described do not show up on the Ontario list anywhere that I can find. They have 2 plants in Canada, the Aberfoyle plant and one in Hope BC. The Aberfoyle plant bottles most of it's water from it's source well at the plant and also draws about 25% (or less) from it's well in Erin township, no other source wells are presently used. The actual bottling capacity of the Aberfoyle plant is under 4 million LPD flat out at 100% efficiency (4 high speed lines that run 1200 1/2 liter bottles per minute, and one slower line that does around 800 or so) . The Hope BC plant is about 1/3 of that capacity. The plants do not run at full capacity for other then a couple of months in the Spring, the rest of the year they idle some of their bottling lines as sales are much higher in the summer months. Also, the water from Aberfoyle is bottled for the Canadian market and is not normally shipped to the US but there are some rare instances where it is including that flavoured 'Splash' garbage they bottle. The Hope BC plant does routinely ship to the US however. As you suggest, they do use a ton of electricity and plastic in bottle making which itself is an environmental concern far greater than the water as far as I'm concerned.

 

Anyway, it's kind of a moot point but there sure is a lot of misinformation floating around in the media these days and much of it seems to spring forth from the WWW (pardon the pun ). It's groups like this with their half baked hype who were responsible for the all the witch burnings back in the middle ages.

 

I would just like to reiterate that I am not a supporter of Nestle or their water business and have no skin in the game I just don't like some of the tactics these special interest groups use and wanted to try and keep the facts as straight as possible (I do have some inside knowledge of the plants in question). If it wasn't for the 300 jobs and all the spinoffs in trucking, construction, etc from the plant I'd be leading the parade to have them shut down. The industry is waste but if people keep buying bottles, somebody is going to fill them,

Edited August 25, 2016 by G.mech

[Dutch01]

"Nestle Canada has three permits to take up to 8.3 million litres of water every day for bottling, while Nestle Waters Canada a division of Nestle Canada has a half dozen Ontario permits allowing it to take an additional 12 million litres a day."

 

http://globalnews.ca/news/2900501/ontario-to-review-water-taking-permits-for-nestle/

 

If this isn't true, Nestle should sue Global News and the Canadian Press (or at least demand a correction).

 

I don't care about what the real number is. I do care that we are practically giving away what will someday be the most valuable substance on Earth for corporations to profit.

 

A while back people tried to organize a boycott of a single gas retailer (it may have been Petro Canada, I forget) on the premise we can't boycott 'em all and still get to work. I think the same play is in motion here and Nestle is a convenient target.

 

If special interest groups generate news stories that get Canadians thinking about conservation, I'd say that's a good thing.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Dutch01

[Dutch01]

 

"...the water from Aberfoyle is bottled for the Canadian market and is not normally shipped to the US but there are some rare instances where it is including that flavoured 'Splash' garbage they bottle. The Hope BC plant does routinely ship to the US however..."

I've personally dispatched hundreds of loads of water from various areas in Southwestern Ontario to the US. I haven't done any of those loads for about 8 years now, they don't pay enough. My memory isn't the greatest, it's possible Nestle was not among those shippers. But the point still stands. We are giving away our water for a song, and a LOT of it is going down the road to the US.

 

I'm not saying squash Nestle and kill the industry and attendant jobs. I'm saying we need to be limiting the draw based on long term sustainability, and charge a fair price for what we do let them draw. Fair to Canadians, since it's their resource.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Dutch01

[aplumma]

The elephant in the room which we all see but will not say is that Nestles is an American company and the price paid for the water seems to be to cheap. The US based company bottles the water in Canada for Canada for the most part saves on trucking costs import fees and taxes. The less they pay for water the cheaper the end product is. Now double the purchase price of the raw water and the end product will be less desirable due to the cost point of business. Now Nestles will be branded as gouging and ripping off Canadians. If the end product remains in Canada then you get money from the water sale and also the taxes and 2nd person sales profit. It is money staying in Canada as well as money from Nestles.

Now look at the other major consumers of water with the detrimental byproduct that are returning to the environment that have to be either cleaned up or left to damage the water and land. Look at mining damage as well as nitrate poisoning from golf courses. Look at the agenda before you decide to take it up if you don't see the logic you do not have all of the facts.

 

 

Art

[Dutch01]

The elephant in the room which we all see but will not say is that Nestles is an American company and the price paid for the water seems to be to cheap. The US based company bottles the water in Canada for Canada for the most part saves on trucking costs import fees and taxes. The less they pay for water the cheaper the end product is. Now double the purchase price of the raw water and the end product will be less desirable due to the cost point of business. Now Nestles will be branded as gouging and ripping off Canadians. If the end product remains in Canada then you get money from the water sale and also the taxes and 2nd person sales profit. It is money staying in Canada as well as money from Nestles.

Now look at the other major consumers of water with the detrimental byproduct that are returning to the environment that have to be either cleaned up or left to damage the water and land. Look at mining damage as well as nitrate poisoning from golf courses. Look at the agenda before you decide to take it up if you don't see the logic you do not have all of the facts.

 

 

Art

I concede there are worse abusers. You'll get no argument from me there. I'm also not against industry. No industry means no trucking, and then I need a new job.

 

I am against under-valuing our resources - $3.74 per million liters? The stuff will be worth more than oil in a hundred years (maybe less than a hundred).

Edited August 25, 2016 by Dutch01

[aplumma]

CountryTotal Water Resources of potable water

 

Average Precipitation

1Brazil 8233.0 km3/yr15,236 km3/yr

2Russia 4508.0 km3/yr7,855 km3/yr

3United States 3069.0 km3/yr7,030 km3/yr

4Canada 2902.0 km3/yr5,352 km3/yr

5China 2738.8 km3/yr5,995 km3/yr

 

Contrary to popular belief the US has lots of drinking water. It is not as localized in some areas but it is readily available. There is not a market or ad campaign that I know of that makes Canadian water seem better than domestic water. One of the best selling water made by the Coke Cola company is distilled water with minerals added with the advantage of no matter where it is bottled it will taste the same. A key ingredient in Mcdonalds coffee sales (coke product outlet)which is the same taste across the nation.

 

Art

[aplumma]

I concede there are worse abusers. You'll get no argument from me there. I'm also not against industry. No industry means no trucking, and then I need a new job.

 

I am against under-valuing our resources - $3.74 per million liters? The stuff will be worth more than oil in a hundred years (maybe less than a hundred).

I am a consultant to companies on water treatment and water purification. From returning black water back to drinking water as well as bring mass amounts of gray water back to the environment. There is no scientific bases for the water shortage scare being used by assorted companies misleading agendas. This being said it is a precious resource and needs to be honored. The only issue is as water becomes contaminated it will become more expensive to bring back to the level that we have been getting for free. Now the bottled water removed is not adding to the increased cost of having clean water. The removal of excessive water from a source will drop the water table temporarily but will replenish when the demand drops below the supply. Very rarely will the water fractors close and remain permanently dry but yes it is possible. Now the real issue is when you have to clean up the water from chemicals and even silt both byproducts of mining and golf courses. The process of removing silt is filtration which is a cost in itself. The chemicals both organic and inorganic are much more costly to remove. To return a gallon of water flushed down the toilet to water fit for drinking is $1.85 using the Thedford system. That process is micron filtration, Carbon extraction and an ozone injection system. While it is drinkable, to do so requires extremely high monitoring so we reuse it as gray water to be reflushed in the toilet systems. Watch the industries they are the people who are damaging the water purity.

 

Art

[Dutch01]

I am a consultant to companies on water treatment and water purification. From returning black water back to drinking water as well as bring mass amounts of gray water back to the environment. There is no scientific bases for the water shortage scare being used by assorted companies misleading agendas. This being said it is a precious resource and needs to be honored. The only issue is as water becomes contaminated it will become more expensive to bring back to the level that we have been getting for free. Now the bottled water removed is not adding to the increased cost of having clean water. The removal of excessive water from a source will drop the water table temporarily but will replenish when the demand drops below the supply. Very rarely will the water fractors close and remain permanently dry but yes it is possible. Now the real issue is when you have to clean up the water from chemicals and even silt both byproducts of mining and golf courses. The process of removing silt is filtration which is a cost in itself. The chemicals both organic and inorganic are much more costly to remove. To return a gallon of water flushed down the toilet to water fit for drinking is $1.85 using the Thedford system. That process is micron filtration, Carbon extraction and an ozone injection system. While it is drinkable, to do so requires extremely high monitoring so we reuse it as gray water to be reflushed in the toilet systems. Watch the industries they are the people who are damaging the water purity.

 

Art

 

Art, I have no doubt that you know more about water than me. However it doesn't take a crystal ball to see the future of resource consumption in the world. It is easier to pollute water than it is to remove the pollution. It is easier to run a well dry than to fill it back up. Desalination is still too expensive to be a viable option from everything I have read. According to the UN (I know there are better sources but this isn't a career for me, I don't have time to dig deeper right now), "There is enough freshwater on the planet for seven billion people but it is distributed unevenly and too much of it is wasted, polluted and unsustainably managed." (source link: http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml). If you look at the attached picture, you can see that Canada and even the USA are looking pretty good compared to a wide swath of the planet along the equator:

 

This is good news, of course. It means we are in good shape right now. This is all the more reason to stress conservation right now. It is far easier to not use it up/pollute it in the first place. It's not fear-mongering for me to say we should be conserving the resource now before we actually do face a crisis.

 

Also from the same link "Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and, although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water."

 

So there is not currently a global water shortage. If we continue to give it away for free and pollute it for another hundred years because anytime someone brings up conservation they are labelled as a conspiracy theorist, my prediction is only more certain to come true.

 

It's never a bad time to start conserving water. That is only my opinion, but I stand by it.

[John Bacon]

The elephant in the room which we all see but will not say is that Nestles is an American company

 

 

Art

 

Aren't they Swiss?

[Dara]

I hear a lot of discussion about the cost of bottled water here. The thing I see it that bottom line is, it's drinking water. Whether it comes from a tap or a bottle it gets drank. It will come from our clean water source no matter what. Why then should it be priced to the bottler any higher than we get it from the tap. Actually less because infrastructure doesn't deliver it . All we really need to stop bottled is an excessive tax on the bottles so we are encourager to fill a reusable bottle from the tap. Let's face it, bottled water is great for camping.

[jbailey]

i think we should be more concerned with whats being discharged to our river systems and lakes... these bottling manufactures can only move so far up river...

[dave524]

How many of us when drinking water out of the tap, let the tap run till the water runs cool and then fill our glass , maybe we are actually using less water and conserving the resource with the bottled stuff

[Dutch01]

Dave, I agree there are lots of wasteful practices in the world. But nothing will ever get done if the standard reply is to deflect to other wasteful practices, say yeah but what about that, shrug, then do nothing. I say, why not both (or all)?

Edited August 26, 2016 by Dutch01

[aplumma]

Potable water is something to be concerned about for sure but it is not the bottled water plant that is an issue. It is an agenda that is being touted as a grave issue that it really isn't. The cost to desalination a gallon of water is 28 cents on a commercial scale and that includes equipment cost and overhead. The bottle water is just a drop in the bucket when you think about a flush of a toilet (water saver) is 6 bottles of water each time you push the lever. A faucet running is for 1 minute is 10 bottles and a shower can be as high as 20 bottles a minute. (1 bottle equals a liter)These are items that we actually waste water meaning it is not being drunk to keep ourselves alive. Now nature has it's own way to purify water and if it is allowed to do so then the rain water will return to the earth uncontaminated and be reused. When we pollute the basins that the water returns to (think mining run off and chemical on golf courses) the water returns to a contaminated basin. This is the where the water becomes an issue. This is no longer free water that can be drunk. This is water that has to be treated over and over to make it drinkable. This is one of the reason desalination is not a good answer. To go after Nestle is not solving the issue some say it is a start but if you want to see a result you go after the big perpetrator not the little ones. Curing 5% of the offenders will leave 95% still active. It is like saying I want to lose weight so I will no longer eat lobster instead of cutting out bread. Nestle is doing nothing wrong they are taking water to be drunk same as tap water and selling it to the public just like your local municipalities. The cost of delivery, the profit of industry and the convenience is why we pay more for bottles water.

 

John you are correct the parent company is in Switzerland I am used to dealing with the US branch and it's operating structure my bad.

 

 

Art

[netminder]

While we're on the topic of laying blame where it's due, I see a lot of people bringing up golf courses as a contributor to increased phosphorus and nitrates in the water supply. But let's not forget about the excessive use of fertilizer, etc. on the cash crop/factory farming operations (and yes, this includes "organic" farming which can actually be more extensive). I wish I could find an actual article on it, but I had heard that the levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in the topsoil on many farms is somewhere in an amount that it would take several generations to return to background levels. I don't want to hazard a guess at what it must be on golf courses, though...

 

edit: found it... http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/phosphorus-fertilizer-1.3535475

Edited August 26, 2016 by netminder

[G.mech]

The two Nestle Waters plants in Canada are owned by Nestle Waters North America (a US corporation). NWNA is owned by Nestle Waters who in turn is owned by Nestle Inc (a Swiss Corporation). Not too confusing.......

[Dutch01]

I've been pretty clear in my posts that I'm not focused solely on the water industry and that I think all natural resources developers should be paying more. I'm not sure how that's being misconstrued. I have mentioned nestle because that was the original topic, but I've not excused any other polluter/developer.

 

Oh and thanks for the link, Art. That was a good read.

Edited August 26, 2016 by Dutch01

[Dara]

I've been pretty clear in my posts that I'm not focused solely on the water industry and that I think all natural resources developers should be paying more. I'm not sure how that's being misconstrued. I have mentioned nestle because that was the original topic, but I've not excused any other polluter/developer.

 

Oh and thanks for the link, Art. That was a good read.

 

 

Dutch

 

The developers DO NOT PAY ANYTHING..in the end we pay it all, every penny

 

Do you want the price of gravel to go up

Do you want the price of a round of golf to go up

Do you want the price of a glass of water to go up

 

When it goes high enough, we will buy it from a country that doesn't charge as much, except we won't have any money to pay for it.

[Dutch01]

 

 

Dutch

 

The developers DO NOT PAY ANYTHING..in the end we pay it all, every penny

 

Do you want the price of gravel to go up

Do you want the price of a round of golf to go up

Do you want the price of a glass of water to go up

 

When it goes high enough, we will buy it from a country that doesn't charge as much, except we won't have any money to pay for it.

So the answer is to give it away free?

 

Yes, I do want the cost of products created by polluting or environmentally unsustainable industries to go up.

 

Many years ago, before I was in the trucking industry, I was in the lumber industry. In those days, it was cheaper to buy Canadian lumber from American companies, and have it shipped back to Canada, than to buy it here in the first place. Does that sound right to you? Does this support keeping jobs in Canada? Maybe only the logging jobs, all the profit went to America.

 

Despite what was said by others above, I know for a fact that dozens of loads of water a day are going down the road to the USA. I don't think Canada getting a few bottling /truck driving jobs is worth giving away our water for $3.74/M liters. Again, this only my opinion, I'm not trying to sell anything to anyone here.

Edited August 26, 2016 by Dutch01