Comment
I fail to understand why the Ministry is treating this request as a renewal of an existing permit. Nestle Waters North America has sold its spring water holdings to an equity company that has created a totally new entity named Triton Waters Canada Inc. This company has no previous experience in the business of bottled water. Surely, if the permit system (PTTW) to extract groundwater is to have any appearance of legitimacy the new company should be treated as such and be made to apply for a completely new permit and assessed accordingly.
When Nestle Waters Canada had the PTTW for the Puslinch well the permit duration was 5 years.
Yet, Triton Waters Canada is seeking a permit duration of 10 years. This is an outrageous request considering the lack of experience and knowledge this equity company has concerning the extraction of groundwater within Ontario. It is an even more outrageous action on the part of this company when you consider that it is unlikely this company will still own this company in 10 years. One only has to examine the history of this company to see that it generally "flips" its holdings within a span of 3 to 7 years.
The Puslinch permit to take water should be denied because in 2020 Nestle Waters Canada extracted only 44% of the water permitted under its permit to take water (PTTW).
I also oppose this permit for the same reasons I opposed bottling by Nestlé Waters Canada. First, water is a public good and should be held in public stewardship, not be for sale as a commodity. Second, water is taken without the consent of First Nations and despite a cease-and-desist order issued two years ago (June 7, 2019) by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council, the traditional leadership of Six Nations on the Grand, Nestlé/BlueTriton continue to ignore Indigenous sovereignty.
The bottling plant in Aberfoyle will continue to package water in single use plastic bottles -- millions of them every day – half of which result in litter or end up in a landfill. Single use plastic has a heavy carbon footprint in its life-cycle from production to distribution, and breaks down into microplastics, a growing threat to wildlife and human health.
It is more important that the water remain in the ground, to support all forms of life in the local ecosystem and to be conserved for future generations.
The climate crisis is making groundwater supplies less certain. Experts say groundwater is effectively a non-renewable resource, when measured on a human timescale, and should be considered a “finite” resource because of its slow recharge rates. In southern Ontario, the rate of recharge is highly variable and ranges from 10 years to upward of 10,000 years, depending on the source of the aquifer Only six percent of groundwater is replenished within a fifty-year span.
Submitted June 20, 2021 3:14 PM
Comment on
Triton Water Canada Holdings, Inc. - Permit to take water
ERO number
019-3531
Comment ID
57164
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Comment status