Dear WHEA,

I would like to keep you informed about the water issue.

Water is bought, bottled, and shipped all over the place.  There is nothing new about that.  What is new is that a water bottling plant wants to settle in our own backyard and now, for many people, its personal.

Niagara wants to buy some land in Bloomfield, set up a bottle manufacturing plant and a bottling plant by November, truck in spring water by tanker truck (200 trucks per day), extract water by special pipeline from the MDC supply (the Farmington River Watershed), mix the spring water with the MDC water, repackage the mixture and market it as spring water, and make a profit in the process.  To accomplish this, they have made deals with the MDC to purchase the water at a reduced rate and get their assistance in the completion of a large pipeline to their soon to be acquired property.  They have also gotten a tax abatement from the town of Bloomfield with the promise of bringing a whopping 40 jobs to the community.

If successful, they plan to bottle over a million bottles per day and suck up a half million gallons of water daily.  They will become MDC’s largest customer and will pay about $1 million per year to the MDC for our water.  The MDC claims that this will lower our monthly bills.

If and when we experience a drought in this area (Hey..that could never happen could it?)  Niagara will be allowed to keep pumping merrily along while residents will be asked to conserve.

This is all rapidly coming to light in the newspaper and in public hearings.

The bad news is…it is all legal.  For now.

To stop this “commodification” and exploitation of our precious water supply, there need to be some new laws passed.

That’s where legislators come in.  Luckily we have a representative, Beth Bye, who has already begun writing legislation to address this.  There will be public hearings on this bill at the Legislative Office Building in the near future.  There needs to be a massive turnout to testify in support of this bill and massive public pressure on every legislator to pass this bill as rapidly and as unanimously as possible.

Please see the forwarded email below and consider signing the petition.

Thanks

Ted Goerner