I am very happy to see that…

I am very happy to see that municipalities will have the power to veto any new water bottling permits in their districts. This is such welcome news as we face water security issues in the future due to climate change and also the growing crisis of the plastic pandemic. Water bottlers are a major culprit in the massive amount of single use plastics that are never recycled. The water bottling industry didn't exist 40 years ago and their marketing has made many consumers believe they cannot exist without it. This is false and needs to be remedied. We survived without water wrapped in plastic in the past and we can do so in the future. As well as depleting aquifers and rivers, the cost to the environment to make the bottles ( 3 times as much water to produce as the bottle will hold) and transport them creates an unacceptable environmental problem that need not exist. Complicating matters even further is the moral and ethical issue of treating a natural resource which is needed to survive, as a commodity to be sold for a profit by private multinational companies. Fort these reasons, I strongly urge you to take away the option for water bottlers to be able to pump up to 379,000 litres every day. I don't understand why this would be an option considering the good work already done to protect water supply and ecosystems from predatory water bottlers. This gives them an in to increase water taking in the future and helps them to maintain their presence in a community where they are unwelcome such as in the case of Elora where I live.