Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It
npr.org
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That (if true) is a legitimate complaint and Nestle should make them whole.
Edit: as someone else noted, this is less than one swimming pool's worth of water per day. If wells are going dry because of that, they were marginal at best.
We're talking an olympic size swimming pool @660k gals each day, not the backyard type which is probably 1/6 the size [1].
Also rates matter. It's not how much is there, it's the depletion rate - recharge rate (families probably don't use nearly that much per day, so over time it would be many many olympic sized swimming pools).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic-size_swimming_pool
Wells have specific recovery rates. I don't know whether the amount they're pumping will exceed that rate-- environmental studies should include that information.
Where? I'm seeing anecdotes of an average of $100-300 to fill up a pool with a hose, and $1250 to bring a truck in.
Nonsense. Maybe in Phoenix or Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Not in Michigan.
By the way, why are you so passionate about this topic? You’ve made 17 comments on this thread, or 17% of all of the comments here as of this writing. Thst seems extreme to me. The one I’m responding to isn’t substantive, another is just a single word. Dominating a conversation with sheer volume seems extreme, and impolite.
Because I hate innumeracy.
Following that through, you clearly hate being backed into a corner, and don’t mind engaging in “innacuracy” when it suits you.
When a well draws water, it creates a cone-like depression of the water level around the well (think of all those nifty gravity diagrams of planets). A well which was drilled sufficiently deep to work with existing draws can be made "dry" by getting a new neighbor who draws enough to lower the aquifer below their well head.
Those wells can be made to work again, but only by having a company come in and make the well (perhaps significantly) deeper.
An search on "aquifer drawdown" will provide a lot of reference material.
But as to various forms of high-capacity wells in general, in neighboring Wisconsin, not only are other pre-existing wells at risk from this -- which the Republican state government continues to seek to reduce regulation of and control over, meaning planning and effective and fair management of a limited resource. New high-capacity wells are also threatening and impacting lakes. A lot of those wells are for agri-business, such as very large capacity commercial animal husbandry/farming.
In those cases, the other risk is resulting animal waste; disposal often leaves it contaminating the aquifer.
Quite arguably, this isn't "conservative" at all. They aren't conserving resources -- nor existing property rights and businesses. It is "Conservative", an ideology that places money and individual short-term gain before all else.
The facility proposes to pump about half a millon gallons per day.
Tempest, meet teapot.
Overall there is a growing sense in the U.S. that public assets are being sold off at below market rates. That corporate interests trump public interests. There's a lack of trust in the system. The overreaction, as you put it, here seems to me to be a symptom of what I think is a growing lack of trust in the system.
I suspect the value of untreated groundwater in Michigan is very, very small.
> there doesn't appear that Nestlé would be providing a service in the interests of society at large.
What about jobs? What about the people who want to buy bottled water? Why don't the workers and consumers count as "society at large"?
Note: I personally think most people who buy bottled water are foolish (unless the local tap water is unsafe or unpalatable), but then people do a lot of things I think are foolish.
This is just a permit to draw water from a well, not a municipal drinking water supply. I suspect that (other than the permit fee) they aren't paying anything for the water. (I had a look at the permit & didn't see anything there about payments).
https://www.bridgemi.com/guest-commentary/opinion-nestle-wat...
The county they're in has high unemployment and they make the case that it's all about the jobs they're creating.
What do you imagine a fair price would be for untreated, pump-it-yourself groundwater?
http://www.detroitmi.gov/Portals/0/docs/DWSD/Water%20Rate%20...
Yeah, there are places where groundwater enters the aquifer from long distances away. Michigan is not one of those places. It gets plenty of precipitation.
No, most likely it does not. The watershed and the associated aquifer are where the river water comes from.
As to "what that assertion is based on", that would be "knowledge of how the hydrologic cycle works".
Yes, that's where it comes from, but it doesn't fill up instantly. Depending on the depth and type of aquifer the well is tapping, it could actually take a very long time for the aquifer to refill (or it could refill very quickly).
Are they widely used in places like Michigan, where there is plenty of precipitation? No.
Hint: nowhere.
We're talking about 1/2000 of the river's flow.
Hydro power for example uses 100% of the flow so removing that water directly reduces power output of downstream power plants.
"Not a huge amount of energy", indeed.
For reference, an olympic sized swimming pool holds 660,000 gallons of water. So even after this increase, they are still drawing less than one pool's worth of water.
1) They are a global multinational and don't demonstrate much sympathy for local environmental issues
2) They are specifically bottling water, which seems wasteful as a practice in general, adds minimal value, etc.
I can't speak knowledgeably about #1 -- Nestle's track record probably speaks for itself -- but I do wonder about #2.
If a Anheuser Busch or Coca Cola wanted to open a manufacturing plant in Michigan consuming 576,000 gallons a day going to beer or soda, would it garner the same criticism? I feel like while there would still be discussions about rates charged for a public resource, the community at large would view beer or soda as a legitimate product for water, as opposed to bottled water.
Citation needed.
Please, people, celebrate the benefits of living in the modern world: buy a canteen and fill it at your sink.
I buy bottled water maybe once a fortnight, if that. The only time I buy it is if I'm out and about and don't have a ready supply of water. I buy the cheapest water I can get, which I'm fairly sure is bottled in the city straight from municipal supply.
I find the concept of buying water like San Pellegrino to be so absurd. There's all this perfectly fine water to drink here, and you ship it from the other side of the world? It's the highest form of wastefulness.
They propose to withdraw 0.5E6 gal/day. We have data for the state of Michigan (in 2004, but probably not too much different today)[2] If we're only talking about ground water, industrial is 89.1E6, irrigation is 197E6, and electric generation is 4.1E6 usage. Why is it OK for these uses of ground water, but not the much much higher value use of water that actual human beings drink? I suppose that not many people are dipping their flow meter into the power plant's water main and noticing the massive quantities of water that they use (and then return to the environment, just like Nestle). They do see the case of bottled water on the shelf though and get pissed off that some company is making money selling the fruits of a public resource.
To put it in perspective, in all of Michigan, total water usage is 11E9 gal/day. Nestle wants to use 0.5E6 gal/day. The population of Michigan is about 10E6, so they propose to make a giant factory that uses the same amount of water as 500 people. Somehow a giant plant using the same amount of water as 500 people attracts 80,000 negative comments. Go figure.
[1] http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
[2] http://msue.anr.msu.edu/resources/water_withdrawals_and_wate...
The bigger debate is about exploitation of natural resources , negatively impacting the local community and environment [2] corporate capture, people in neighboring towns not able to access clean water, all things that the average citizen is negatively impacted by.
Nestle, corporate shills and those paid to defend it defending it is logical. Individuals with no stake seeking to defend Nestle on the basis on volume extracted based entirely on Nestle's figures with no regulatory framework to independently verify actual extraction on the other hand is not.
Your first link is a generic article on progress and sustainability. The second does not show how much water is extracted by Nestle and its impact on the local environment and is based on 'self reported' figures. Here are far more updated perspectives on the issue.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-mak...
[2] https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-02-04/tiny-michigan-town-wa...
Government overrules the public on something HN actually gives a shit about, like net neutrality, using the exact same process: HN calls for blood in the streets!
This is despite the fact Nestlé typically pays nothing (or an absurdly low amount) for the public resources it's selling, gets incredible tax breaks to create jobs, and then only creates on average 24 low-wage jobs that mostly go to non-local residents...
Wouldn’t it be something of a presumptuous brad and chad move, to dive in and try to fix things one is clueless about?
Why would it be surprising that computer nerds have no visceral reaction to a non-computer-nerd story?
Filing this as a feature, not a bug.
I don't see how these issues are connected other than "water in Michigan". Am I missing something?
For perspective, all of Michigan uses 9 billion gallons of water each day. Nestle will be using 0.006% of what the state uses.
Looking just at groundwater, Michigan uses 690 million gallons of water per day. Nestle will be using 0.08% of what the state uses.
This is irrelevant. And I'm glad the personal opinion of 80k comments was ignored.
Source: http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3313_3684_45331-370...
Maybe it's not a big deal, maybe it is, but you can't use wide geographic generalizations like this to dismiss the concern.
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-dwmad-eh-swpu-Fina...
4) The supply potential of the water source, considering quantity, quality, and reliability and safe yield of hydrologically interconnected water sources;
Application materials, extensive evaluation and consideration by staff, along with experience with the aquifer in the area, lead staff to conclude that the aquifer can sustain the proposed withdrawal without deleterious effects to the dependent resources.
The ruckus and commotion by the public is just pointless and useless activism.
People are angry because of the disaster that was Flint. When government officials refuse to answer for large-scale disasters, people resort to other outlets and places to direct their anger. People are angry because they see corporations swooping in to bottle and sell more water in the same state where those people are suffering due to greed and failure.
I can understand, but that doesn't make it any less pointless or useless.
> People are angry because of the disaster that was Flint. When government officials refuse to answer for large-scale disasters, people resort to other outlets and places to direct their anger. People are angry because they see corporations swooping in to bottle and sell more water in the same state where those people are suffering due to greed and failure.
Sure, and the two issues are disconnected. Not only that, but the protests and anger actually cause a loss of value to society and to the state.
And saying that this protest is pointless and useless doesn't mean I don't sympathize with those suffering at Flint.
Thanks for the ad hominem.
It isn't that I care or not, approving this well is a technical environmental decision, and shouldn't depend on how much people scream. It doesn't matter if there were 10 million people against it, the agency isn't there to evaluate public support for a project, it is there to evaluate the technical and environmental aspects of the project.
Don't let an angry crowd make technical decisions.
That's completely incorrect because the state is run by politically elected leadership who ultimately answer to the people. If the people hated Nestle because its factories were painted green, they have the right to complain and ultimately vote for leadership that would disallow Nestle to paint their factories green.
This isn't being voted by elected officials, this is being approved by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality following the standard procedure set in law by elected officials.
> If the people hated Nestle because its factories were painted green, they have the right to complain and ultimately vote for leadership that would disallow Nestle to paint their factories green.
Yes, and they should do so at the ballot or at their elected officials.
Or are you suggesting that any laws and regulations are legally void when 80k people comment against it?
What if they didn't like Nestle hiring black people?
You have the right to complain, yes. That doesn't mean you automatically get your way. Not even if everyone votes for it.
Not sure why everyone is so upset by my post that essentially is reiterating, "the people have a right to be heard and they ultimately elect how their town/state/country is run".
Imagine a hypothetical world where the South won the Civil War and successfully seceded.
The elected government of the Confederate States of America says that black people have no civil rights whatsoever.
Okay by you?
A comment like this one also breaks the guideline that says: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
That wasn’t an ad hominem. The parent was making an observation—unnecessary as it may be and regardless of its accuracy—on your character based on your comments. The parent was not dismissing your argument based on or by switching to refuting it with a personal attack of your character.
Is this a relevant comparison? Just as much so as comparing a local watershed-impacting factory to a state's usage.
Well, since you ask, here's the watershed comparison:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-dwmad-eh-swpu-Fina...
4) The supply potential of the water source, considering quantity, quality, and reliability and safe yield of hydrologically interconnected water sources;
Application materials, extensive evaluation and consideration by staff, along with experience with the aquifer in the area, lead staff to conclude that the aquifer can sustain the proposed withdrawal without deleterious effects to the dependent resources.
Not only does it get plenty of rainfall, it's surrounded on every side but the south by the friggin' Great Lakes. You guys have heard of those, right? You know, the ones that contain 21% of the freshwater in the entire world?
People keep mentioning Flint. Flint doesn't have a water shortage. It has crappy water due to an outdated water supply system.
The whole state of Michigan is a little sore about water right now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-still-havent-made...
Life in a democracy?
In the internet age, it's almost worse with the sheer amount of disinformation which cannot be contained or offset in both directions, for the better or the worse of a given candidate.
It's disillusioning and outright sad. That doesn't even account for external pressures and interests.
We have killer propaganda though.
Seems like the residents need to direct their energy towards lawmakers.
>> But despite deep public opposition, the agency concluded that the company's plan met with legal standards.
I’ll take equal interpretation of the law over mob rule any day of the week.
-- @lex_looper
Defending potentially bad behaviour solely on the basis that it’s legal behaviour may not be the best defence (outside of a court of law.)
The point of the quote was to point out that laws aren't necessarily right.
And this point you keep making about it only being a small % of the total water isn't very convincing. I'm sure you would mind if I embezzled 1/2000th of Michigan's GDP.
A better comparison would be if you invoiced Michigan for 1/2000th of their GDP and the state and local governments paid it. In that case, I'm fine with it.
And neither is the public.
We once needed a law and show of force against public demonstrators to let black children into schools.
They were not comparing the activities.
Equating the legal system of Michigan with the legal system of Nazi Germany is ludicrously incorrect.
Of course anything surrounding Michigan, Nestle and water is going to attract attention and serve as the backdrop for uninformed people to vent their anger. And despite all the backlash the adminstration followed the law and the right call was still made.
The rivers drain into it quite far apart though.
There Nestlé represents money (look Nestlé up if in doubt).
Public opinion is worthless next to Nestlé's wishes.
Under the new permit, Nestle will be pumping about 210 million gallons a year. At the going rate for clean water in Michigan, it's in the ballpark of $1 million dollars (or maybe $2 million), with 9 million residents.
Whether the water is being put to good/appropriate use is the much more important question than the saleable value of the water.
I don't know what a fair price in Michigan for raw, untreated, drill-pump-and-distribute it yourself groundwater might be.
I'd be surprised it it were more than a cent per thousand gallons, though.