11/29/05: Great Lakes Compact Needs Change To Close Big Loophole On Bottled Water - Hiroshi and Arlene Kanno

Great Lakes Compact Needs Change To Close Big Loophole On Bottled Water

Dear Editor: As Gov. Jim Doyle considers the historic Great Lakes Compact, there is one glaring provision that we ask he reject and amend.

The compact permits the exporting of bottled water out of the Great Lakes watershed in containers less than 5.7 gallons. Water shipped in containers greater than 5.7 gallons would be considered a diversion.

We have yet to see people carrying around a 5.7 gallon container of bottled water. This should be amended so that any bottled water shipped out of the Great Lakes watershed would be considered a diversion.

In our rural community, Nestle proposed to take 720,000 gallons of spring water a day, over 26 million gallons in a year, and ship it out in small containers. The millions of dollars of income from this extraction would enrich Nestle but do little for the people of Wisconsin. There is no tax on extracting and shipping our spring waters.

Had they been successful, our ecosystem would have suffered irreparable damage. The traffic and pollution from their bottling plant would have transformed our rural community. We won our fight against Nestle, or so we thought, but we should have known better.

Lobbyists for Nestle, Coke and Pepsi have successfully inserted the 5.7 gallon provision to protect their multimillion-dollar enterprise. If the governor allows this provision to remain unchanged in the compact, spring waters throughout the watershed would be fair game.

We look to Gov. Doyle to protect our springs and watershed and not let a handful of profiteers destroy even one spring in our state, because they will never be satisfied with only one spring.

Please amend this provision and protect our state's most precious natural resource.