Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/03/599207550/michigan-oks-nestl-water-extraction-despite-over-80k-public-comments-against-it

by rafaelc • 8 years ago

166 123 8 years ago

npr.org

jumelles• 8 years ago

80,945 against and 75 in favor

Life in a democracy?

mehrzad• 8 years ago

We Americans like to claim we live in a republic and not a democracy, but we live in a broken republic too.

tracker1• 8 years ago

The problem is, at this point the "representation" is far too removed from the governed... Very few people "know" their representatives (local, state and federal alike). And the public image is very manipulated. Unfortunately, people no longer vote for who they feel is a better person, but who is in their party and has a better smile and message.

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.

Zeta_Function2• 8 years ago

You can call a clod a cake, right? We don’t live in a democracy, we live in an indirectly federated republic. I’m this case a very badly corrupt one, run by plutocrats for longer than any of us have been alive.

We have killer propaganda though.

Firerouge• 8 years ago

It sounds like these comments were misdirected, and should have gone towards policy makers, not an agency that proclaims to only enforce existing policy.

anigbrowl3• 8 years ago

It turns out policy makers are not as responsive as they are supposed to be, so people are forced to seek other outlets to express their concern.

rch• 8 years ago

We don't have the power to say no arbitrarily. We can't just say no for reasons that aren't attached to the law.

Seems like the residents need to direct their energy towards lawmakers.

slavik81• 8 years ago

A government agency is similar to a court in that sense. It doesn't matter how many people want someone thrown in prison, the judge must have a reason based on existing law to do so.

koolba2• 8 years ago

From the article:

> 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.

Grovara123• 8 years ago

Short and direct - well stated and agreed.

banach• 8 years ago

The holocaust was legal, slavery was legal, segregation was legal. If you use the state as a metric for ethics you'll end up disappointed.

-- @lex_looper

gameswithgo• 8 years ago

I notice a lot lately, maybe it has always been so, that some large powerful entity will insist that the citizen has been screwed over according to all proper procedures and applicable laws...

Spivak• 8 years ago

At least to me, this is the system working.

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.

anigbrowl3• 8 years ago

That's nice for Nestle, but ignores the fact that Flint is still having water quality problems and replacement of the lead-tainted pipes won't be complete until 2020. It's entirely reasonable that citizens would like their government to prioritize their wellbeing at the expense of regular procedure, considering that the Flint water crisis was a product of government error to start with.

dexterdog• 8 years ago

That has to be a skewed sample. You can't get that kind of lopsidedness if the question is "Can I have permission to murder you right now?"

topspin• 8 years ago

Life where property rights exist.

snvzz2• 8 years ago

Money talks.

RosanaAnaDana• 8 years ago

Source?

snvzz2• 8 years ago

Story's headline.

There Nestlé represents money (look Nestlé up if in doubt).

Public opinion is worthless next to Nestlé's wishes.

Turing_Machine21• 8 years ago

The Muskegon River (the main drainage for the area) has a discharge of 1,450 cubic feet per second at Evart, Michigan (where this facility is located). That is about 11,000 gallons per second, or about 937 million gallons per day.

The facility proposes to pump about half a millon gallons per day.

Tempest, meet teapot.

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/mi/nwis/current/?type=flow

sykh• 8 years ago

I don't know the particulars in this case but is Nestlé going to pay proper amount for this water? If the public doesn't want the plant then shouldn't their desires carry some weight? Especially since it doesn't appear that Nestlé would be providing a service in the interests of society at large.

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.

Turing_Machine21• 8 years ago

I don't know the particulars in this case but is Nestlé going to pay proper amount for this water?

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.

nrdgrl5• 8 years ago

I don't know the particulars in this case but is Nestlé going to pay proper amount for this water?

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).

rmason• 8 years ago

Nestle is paying $5200 for all the water it is drawing. I'd be willing to wager they're paying 10-20x that on lobbying efforts.

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.

lima• 8 years ago

Isn't that apples and oranges, comparing the numbers like that? The river is connected to the water table, sure, but surely the issue is more complicated than that?

Turing_Machine21• 8 years ago

I don't see how it could be more complicated. Any groundwater that isn't pumped out and used is going to eventually go down the river, right? Otherwise the area would be underwater.

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.

Pharylon• 8 years ago

Are they pumping the water from the Muskegon River? No? OK... then... uh... what are you talking about?

nrdgrl5• 8 years ago

Nope, they are pumping from the "White Pine Springs well". The aquifer likely refills at a much slower rate than the flow of the Muskegon River

Turing_Machine21• 8 years ago

Just where do you think the local groundwater winds up?

Retric4• 8 years ago

The facility is only one of many uses for water in the area. Suggesting the rivers flow is 100% free to use is extremely misguided.

Turing_Machine21• 8 years ago

We're not talking about "100% of the river's flow".

We're talking about 1/2000 of the river's flow.

abtinf• 8 years ago

Per the article, they already pump 360,000 gallons per day. So this dispute is about a an increase of just 216,000 gallons per day and it has taken them almost 2 years to go through the permit process.

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.

cowpig2• 8 years ago

Bernie Madoff's $68.5 billion ponzi scheme was a MERE 0.09% of the world's $78.3 trillion GDP.

larkeith3• 8 years ago

This is a false equivalence - discharge rate of the Muskegon is not the same as refill rate of the aquifer being drained.

tptacek• 8 years ago

The aquifer we're talking about holds about as much water as Lake Michigan. It is huge on a scale that dwarfs human enterprise.

ucaetano7• 8 years ago

Nestlé's request to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to pump 576,000 gallons of water each day

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...

Pfhreak• 8 years ago

This is not a useful comparison. It equates statewide use to a factory that will presumably source water from a focused area. What are the conditions like at the site of the factory? Can that site accommodate that intake? Is 0.5m the final scale of the factory?

Maybe it's not a big deal, maybe it is, but you can't use wide geographic generalizations like this to dismiss the concern.

ucaetano7• 8 years ago

That is all covered by the environmental report, as it should be:

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.

castis• 8 years ago

Maybe their opinions were based on principle. I know you do not care, but your dismissal of 80k people you don't and will never know says volumes about you as a person.

ucaetano7• 8 years ago

I know you do not care, but your dismissal of 80k people you don't and will never know says volumes about you as a person.

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.

dang2• 8 years ago

Personal attacks are not allowed on HN, regardless of how wrong another commenter may be. We ban accounts that do this, so would you please not post like this again?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

larkeith3• 8 years ago

For perspective, one teacup holds 150ml of liquid. Nestle will be using 14 535 981 teacups of water.

Is this a relevant comparison? Just as much so as comparing a local watershed-impacting factory to a state's usage.

ucaetano7• 8 years ago

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;

oconnor6632• 8 years ago

Who on earth would take time out of their day to write a comment about bottling water, unless they were deeply opposed to it?

eckza4• 8 years ago

Flint resident here.

The whole state of Michigan is a little sore about water right now.

oconnor6632• 8 years ago

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that it's weird that there are people opposed to bottling water. More that it's not very meaningful to compare the number of comments opposed to the number of comments in favor.

jotm• 8 years ago

What's the state of the water supply now? There's no more news about it, everyone forgot, as usual...

MereInterest• 8 years ago

So long as nothing is shipped outside the Great Lakes watershed, I am not opposed to this. The problem is that while directly piping water outside of the watershed is forbidden, bottling it then shipping doesn't fall under this definition. This is the loophole that needs to be closed.

dna_polymerase• 8 years ago

For anyone new to this topic I recommend watching Tapped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzntuXdE8dY

a2tech• 8 years ago

You’ll read a lot of comments on this, both good and bad. A lot of passionate arguments have been made on both sides. I have two things to add to it—and feel free to take them as you will. People I know in the area with wells had them go dry after the nestle plant opened. These were wells that had previously been high (for wells) throughout, just drying up. The plant also got special tax rebates and other incentives to open with the idea they’d make it back with taxes and jobs but it’s never materialized.

Turing_Machine21• 8 years ago

People I know in the area with wells had them go dry after the nestle plant opened. These were wells that had previously been high (for wells) throughout, just drying up.

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.

r00fus• 8 years ago

Edit: as someone else noted, this is less than one swimming pool's worth of water per day.

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

Scaevolus• 8 years ago

Swimming pools are huge and not often emptied. Homes usually pay ~$6,000 to fill a pool. 576,000 gallons / day is ~6000 people's daily usage.

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.

falcolas• 8 years ago

Wells in aquifers don't work quite that way - they aren't open bodies of water that can flow freely.

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.

pasbesoin• 8 years ago

I don't know specifically about this Nestle plant -- although they are shits for going after limited water resources in the Shasta watershed in California.

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.

knightofmars• 8 years ago

I'm from Wisconsin as well and agree completely. The conservatives haven't been conservative in this state for many years. They're just Super PAC and special interest representatives running under the flag of the Republican party.

malvosenior2• 8 years ago

Can someone who knows more about this issue explain how Nestle bottling water has anything to do with lead in Flint's water or Detroit shutting off water to people who were delinquent on their bill? They seem totally unrelated. If Nestle didn't do this would it fix Flint's lead problem? Would it help people pay their water bills?

I don't see how these issues are connected other than "water in Michigan". Am I missing something?

eckza4• 8 years ago

You aren’t missing anything. It’s just “outrage logic”.

malvosenior2• 8 years ago

But what are people outraged about? I see my comment has been on a rollercoaster of up and down votes so people obviously feel strongly but I still don't understand what the actual issue is.

skookumchuck• 8 years ago

Where do people expect all the bottled water they buy comes from?

mratzloff2• 8 years ago

Government overrules the public on privatizing public resources despite near-unanimous opposition from the public that stands to "benefit": HN can barely muster a shrug.

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...

chrischen• 8 years ago

Government didn't overrule the public. The agency is not legally allowed to arbitrarily deny the permit.

mratzloff2• 8 years ago

It's almost as if the government makes the laws and can arbitrarily write them to take the public screaming at them into account.

expertBrogram• 8 years ago

Why would anyone expect HN to venture beyond its area of expertise.

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.

daodedickinson• 8 years ago

Citizens of Michigan should get a check every year like they do in Alaska. This keeps happening because only Nestle and a few politicians get a cut and everyone with power is happy.

maxerickson4• 8 years ago

My city (in Michigan) charges large users of water 0.2 cents per gallon (~$2 per thousand, they charge small users more). That's for treated, metered tap water that they pump into a tower. So the cost includes distribution and such. Another town in Michigan charges something like 0.8 cents per gallon.

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.

Turing_Machine21• 8 years ago

The difference is that Nestle is drilling and maintaining its own well, purifying the water itself, and distributing the water itself. All of those costs are factored in to what your city charges for water (and it's breathtaking just how expensive a network of pipes to every single house is).

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.

perceptor• 8 years ago

I feel like Nestle in particular draws heat for two reasons:

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.

dajohnson89• 8 years ago

spring water isn't used to make Budweiser so your last point doesn't hold any....water.

Turing_Machine21• 8 years ago

spring water isn't used to make Budweiser

Citation needed.

username223• 8 years ago

Bottled water is just terrible. First, the fact that potable municipal water is so cheap that you can use a gallon of it to make your poop disappear is a miracle of modern civilization. Second, putting that same water in plastic bottles, driving it around the country, and selling it for $1-2/liter creates all sorts of environmental damage for absolutely no benefit.

Please, people, celebrate the benefits of living in the modern world: buy a canteen and fill it at your sink.

toomanybeersies2• 8 years ago

It seems to be a very American thing to drink bottled water when there's perfectly fine water in the tap (unless you live in Flint, MI).

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.

white-flame• 8 years ago

There's also their negative ethical reputation from situations like this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/16/health/brazil... and quotes around that air and water should not be a human right.

Turing_Machine21• 8 years ago

The whole idea of Michigan being somehow desperately short of water is ridiculous on its face, by the way.

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.

cameldrv• 8 years ago

I know that we live in an outrage culture that doesn't respect orders of magnitude, but "he who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense"[1].

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...

throw2016• 8 years ago

The issue is much more nuanced than that but nice job positioning protest, dissent and citizen concern ie basic democracy as 'outrage culture'. [1]

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...

craftyguy• 8 years ago

You're comparing water usage for necessary infrastructure to the completely unnecessary, and wasteful, usage of bottling it for consumption. With a few rare exceptions, tap water in the US is safe for consumption. There is no good reason why this industry should exsit at this scale.

Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

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