Global Water Crisis Hits Home
O
by Martin Miron
nce upon a time, all our food was organic and Americans drank well water; many still do. But in the postwar, baby-boom decades of the 20th century, population grew from 151 million in 1950 to 281 million in 2000 and agricultural practices became more industrialized and centralized on factory farms that use huge amounts of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. National water quality suffered overall and we passed legislation such as the Clean Water Act in response. Bottled water had long been a niche product for local situations and emergency use. It was usually distributed via large, redeemable glass jugs mounted on a standing dispenser. Then big multinational companies with deep pockets and vast bottling capacity like CocaCola, Pepsico, Danone and Nestle enlisted the same advertising juggernaut that made it seem healthy and sexy to smoke cigarettes to do the same for a new beverage group, and Big Water was born. The fact that non-biodegradable plastic single-serving bottles now litter every segment of the environment adds insult to injury. With an attractive profit margin for a product that is close to free to obtain from nature, Nestle sought out sparsely populated rural areas where they could leverage their economic clout to the best effect. In North Florida, Ginnie Springs, which feeds the Santa Fe River, has become a battleground where the future of the industry will be decided. Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson, co-owner of Rum 138, a kayak/canoe livery, outdoor music venue, cafe and art gallery near Rum Springs, is the vice chair of the local Suwannee Saint Johns Sierra Club and previously an organizer with Sierra Club Florida. She currently serves as the advocacy chair for the nonprofit Our Santa Fe River (OurSantaFeRiver.org) and says, “We are the ones that are absolutely opposed to the bottling plant. This is what we do. We stopped four bottling permits in the past and we are going to stop this one, too.” The Ginnie Springs Campground owners are family members of Seven Springs Water Company, which holds the current expiring $115 water permit. “The people that secured the original water bottling permit were the same people that owned Ginnie Springs back in the 1990s,” explains Jipson. In December 2018, Nestle Waters North
America bought the water bottling plant on County Road 340 and entered a contractual arrangement with Seven Springs, which has a 40-acre pipeline connected to two wells located at the Ginnie Springs Campground. They extract 200,000 to 300,000 gallons of water a day. “Their kids are now fighting tooth and nail to keep this permit online because they have contracted with Nestle, the biggest corporation that bottles water in the entire world, and they’re concerned because now the public is engaged in a way that they were not expecting.” “Back in 1999, the public tried to get engaged. I met people that lived here that said, “Oh, I wish you were here back then, because we would have been able to stop it.” They were not able to stop it, for whatever reason, and I’m still going over those documents right now. Even the Gilchrist County Soil and Water Conservation Board, which is an elected body, was opposed to it,” states Jipson. “They wrote a very strong letter in 1999 saying, ‘We are opposed to this water use. This should not be permitted.’ They were not able to stop it because the water managers at that time did not vet the science necessary to stop harm to our natural resources. We were considered the ‘Saudi Arabia of water’ back then. Today is another day and age, where every drop is precious and life-sustaining.” Jipson declares, “Nowhere else in the state of Florida has the most abundant fresh water, lowest taxes and biggest parcels of land. It’s inevitable that we’re going to have climate migration. We’re going to have the exodus from coastal communities, and they’re all going to move inland.” “If we have the laws, let’s enforce them. Instead we’re relying on these crazy relationships with corporate interests that somehow control our natural resources when our natural resources should be kept in perpetuity, protected as is. These companies have the influence and the money,” says Jipson. “They can come in and they hire experts at this kind of exploitation. You have local people that might seem kind of naive to them and that get manipulated pretty easily I would think.” The vote will most likely be in March or April, when the governor-appointed Suwannee River Management District Board will decide the fate of this water use permit that was issued more than 20 years ago. Jipson says, “These are generally speaking, people that have limited understanding of permitting and rely heavily on staff of the water management district, and that’s one reason we’re asking the public to write into the portal.” Jipson advises, “If you do a change.org or some sort of handwritten petition, that’s wonderful and all great and dandy, but that [Suwannee River Management District] portal is gold because they have to read every comment. We’ve been trying to message out to the public how important it is that the public understands the heavy responsibility to say something meaningful. Don’t just say some social media pot shot, say, ‘This is my water. I live down the road. I have sinkholes. I’m affected by this. I have Nestle in my community and Nestle has been a bad neighbor.’ Nestle also exists in Florida in five other springs. That is shocking to me that they exist in five other spring sheds in the state of Florida and yet they want ours.” Public input to the Suwannee River Management District about permit #2-041-218202-3 is accepted at Tinyurl.com/PermittingComments. January 2020
13
