Water Bottler A Drop In The Trillions Of Gallons That Fall On Michigan

Roughly 55 trillion gallons of rainwater fall on the state of Michigan every year. That’s enough to fill about 83 million Olympic-sized pools.

That’s also 135,500 times the output of the Michigan water bottling operation run by Nestle.

According to the state of Michigan, Nestle Waters North America reported that it used about 400 million gallons of water at its four Michigan locations in 2017.

The size and magnitude of the waters that surround Michigan and lie under its ground is often lost in debates over water used for residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural purposes.

Recently, House Bills 5290 and 5292 were introduced by a group of Democrats in the Michigan Legislature, which would treat Michigan groundwater under a “public trust” doctrine.

MichiganVotes.org explains, “This would replace the current legal doctrine that gives the owner of real property a property right to the reasonable use of groundwater, to the extent this does not diminish the ability of neighboring property owners to obtain water. Instead, the use of groundwater would be subject to state approval and regulation.”

The bills are unlikely to advance in the current session, but their passage is supported by the environmental advocacy group Clean Water Action.

And Nestle’s is the target singled out by Clean Water Action in supporting the bills.

“While they [Nestle] may not be able to take tanker trucks full of water or build pipelines to other states, they can still take massive amounts of our water, bottle it in containers of 5.7 gallons or less, and sell it back to us at a huge profit,” Clean Water Action stated on its website.