Arlene Slocombe, Wellington Water Watchers
In a major victory for citizens opposed to the packaging and sale of water as a commodity, advocates in southwest Ontario successfully campaigned for the shutdown of a water bottling plant in the township of Puslinch owned by BlueTriton, which bought the facility from Nestle in 2021. BlueTriton announced in November that it would shut down the facility, which was estimated to bottle 56 million cases of water annually. Additional environmental benefits of the shutdown will include the conservation of hundreds of million gallons of groundwater and the elimination of millions of tons of plastics used to make bottles. But the plant closure will also mean the likely layoff of 144 workers.
A leader in the effort to stop the bottling operation was the Wellington Water Watchers, who have been fighting local water privatization since 2007. The group’s director, Arlene Slocombe, spoke with FLOW about the significance of the group’s campaign.
How does the commodification of water factor in your opposition to the bottling facility, or were you focused on direct environmental impacts?
The commodification of water was always central to our opposition, right from the early days. Of course there were concerns about environmental impacts and over time we developed a much deeper analysis that this type of water taking is a justice issue. But right from the outset, people in this community were outraged about a mutli-national company profiting off of precious and life-giving water. Our mantra became Water for Life, Not Profit!
How much resistance did you meet in trying to convince provincial authorities that the withdrawal was harmful? Does any advice to other citizens groups grow out of that?
The short answer is – lots of resistance.
In fact, we have not yet been successful in having the province phase out permits to take water for the purpose of water bottling. This is our ongoing work, and our next steps. Nestle and now BlueTriton (BT) are leaving because the grassroots advocacy here has made their ongoing viability a challenge.
There are other water bottlers in the province – and we know that BT is trying to sell their operations here – so our work is not yet done. We have more to do to ensure that permits for water bottling are phased out completely.
Our current regulatory framework that supports all sorts of resource extraction is doing exactly what it was designed for. We came to the understanding that to make meaningful change requires building overwhelming political pressure that will drive the changes needed for environmental and social justice. In essence, we started to understand that environmental regulations are primarily there to regulate environmentalists. And this is what I would share with others.
Working “inside the bubble” alone will not drive the changes needed. The bubble is the framework established by the government for pathways of interaction and influence. We grew to understand that we needed to work “outside of the bubble” to have success.
What do you tell local officials who say that the loss of jobs is more important than the protection of water?
It is a part of the corporate playbook of large water extraction companies to situate in small rural (and typically under-resourced) communities that then become dependent on the tax base and other small handouts offered by the company. Shorter-term needs then tend to outweigh real long-term impacts and needs.
In a world where we now understand that we have surpassed six of nine planetary boundaries, we have to take a mature and sober look at the viability of extractive industries.
The tax base loss that Puslinch may experience pales in comparison with the cost of having to seek new water sources to meet local drinking water needs. Money isn’t life, but water is life and needs to be prioritized as such.
Throughout our advocacy opposing the water taking for profit, we have been consistent in our call for a just transition for employees in an industry that can not be sustained indefinitely. Everyone needs to put food on their table and a roof over their heads. I’m sad to say we haven’t seen a more proactive approach from government leaders at local and provincial levels, and from the industry itself to support workers in these sunsetting industries.
Water Watchers has been in this advocacy game around bottled water for almost 18 years now and the pressure has just continued to grow. Governments of all levels have continued to ignore this, and the workers are paying the cost. We need government to be more proactive around planning for these transitions towards a more just and sustainable economy for industries where working class people will be left behind.
What does this victory mean not only to the community but to the Great Lakes and communities in general?
Fundamentally, this is a justice issue.
We understand the power of the global bottled water industry in undermining confidence in public water systems and marketing their products as more safe, reliable and convenient. I believe we need to take steps to rein in the industry by banning false advertising and greenwashing. All water extraction proposals must be subject to robust environmental impact studies; we must stop allowing firms to bottle municipal water for sale, or charge a large amount for this, or make this through public agencies as an interim measure.
Bottled and packaged water are central to the global process of water commodification and is a key impediment to realizing the human right to water, not to mention a major environmental threat.
It is often positioned as a needed solution in emergencies, but this is a false solution. There are real, viable alternatives like bringing in water tankers and setting up water stations.
Single-use plastic needs to be banned. Recent studies are also showing the increased health risks of drinking water stored in plastic bottles because of the “shedding” of nanoplastics. We understand that the growing market for bottled water is in lower socio-econominc communities who disproportionately tend to be communities of Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour. And if these communities are facing greater health risks because of the impacts of nano and microplastics – this is fundamentally a justice issue.
Not to mention the egregious situation where First Nations communities across what is now called Canada continue to face water insecurity and boil water advisories. This includes the community at Six Nations who are less than 1 hour south of the bottling operation – and they have never given consent to Nestle – nor to BlueTriton to extract water from treaty lands. And in many cases, these community members are forced into dependence on bottled water (because of the lack of appropriate infrastructure) and have to buy that same water from their treaty lands in order to have clean drinking water. It’s appalling.
