I fail to understand why the…

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 Hillsburgh 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 Hillsburgh permit to take water should be denied because in 2020 Nestle´ Waters Canada extracted only 6% of the water permitted under its permit to take water (PTTW). It is clear that the Hillsburgh well is not necessary to Triton Water Holdings Canada Inc business as the water-taking at the Aberfoyle well was only 44% of its permitted volume.

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 in Hillsburgh.

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.