News item:
NESTLE WITHDRAWS WATER LAWSUITS
Nestle Waters North America, which owns the embattled Ice Mountain water bottling plant in the state, has ended both federal and state lawsuits designed to protect its ability to distribute water from the plant.
Water protection legislation enacted last month effectively lifts any limitations on distribution from the plant, company officials said on announcing dismissal of the lawsuits. The law does not consider containers less than 5.7 gallons to be a diversion of water from the Great Lakes Basin.
The state had imposed restrictions, pending enactment of the law, that forbade the company from distributing bottled water outside the state. Bob McCann with the Department of Environmental Quality said the department had issued new permits to the plant earlier this month, following a new executive directive from Governor Jennifer Granholm, that allowed the plant wider distribution.
"We are pleased with the satisfactory resolution of these issues," said Kim Jeffery, President and CEO of Nestle Waters North America. "We firmly believed in the rights of our company - and all companies - to do business on a fair and level playing field, and that the restrictions imposed on our Michigan operations were unjust and unjustified. Today, Michigan has taken the appropriate steps to right this error, and we find the future of our business in Michigan to be much more certain."
"We are pleased, as is Nestle, that we were able to get some legislative certainty around this issue," Mr. McCann said. It's good that now we're able to put all that behind us."
Legislative certainty? Uh-uh. Behind us? No way.
The legislature has enacted a patchwork law that applies to a few streams in the state. It has yet to enact anything close to certainty.
Ultimately, the constituents of the legislature -- the people of Michigan -- will decide whether the legislature was correct to authorize unlimited exports of Michigan/Great Lakes Basin water in bottles. To say the issue is "behind us" is wishful thinking.
It's too bad that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality didn't take a stronger stand against water export from the beginning in 2001, when Perrier (now Nestle) came to Michigan after being booted out of Wisconsin by citizens.