The Michigan DEQ has approved a permit from Nestle Waters North America to increase the amount of groundwater it pumps from its well near Evart, Michigan.
The state says Nestle has to complete a monitoring plan and submit it to the DEQ for approval. After that happens, Nestle will be authorized to pump up to 400 gallons of water per minute from its White Pine Springs well.
The permit request was highly controversial. As Michigan Radio’s Lindsey Smith reported, the DEQ received a unprecedented number of public comments on Nestle’s proposal. 80,945 commenters were against the request. 75 were in favor.
“This is a 60 percent increase in the volume extracted — potential 60 percent increase — and it’s just tough to take,” said Nicholas Occhipinti, government affairs director for the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.
“Folks are struggling to get clean water in Detroit and Flint and having a lot of issues with PFAS contamination,” he said. “It’s just a hard, hard road blow to take for Michiganders to see water pumped out of the watershed for other states.”
Nestle makes these deals with corrupt local and federal governments around the world.
The level of corruption is only on a higher scale in the developed world where companies like Coke, Pepsi and Nestle make deals with corrupt federal governments for entire bodies of water.
What is going on in Michigan is completely ridiculous and the people there need to take a stand against it, the officials at the Michigan DEQ, the agency that is tasked with approving these types of decisions are obviously being paid off by someone at Nestle or are being promised sweetheart deals for when they leave the DEQ and get lucrative jobs at Nestle.
Water is Michigan’s most valuable natural resource and its being plundered by Nestle.
It sucks to watch this happening in America so openly and more people aren’t up in arms about it.
Next stop, tyranny.
h/t User_Name13