On December 6, 2000 the Perrier Group, a subsidiary of Swiss-based Nestle, the world's largest food company, applied to the local health authorities in Mecosta County for permission to drill two water wells on an 800-acre private hunting preserve in the county's southern reaches. The company's purpose: to establish a source for a new bottling plant to ship its popular Ice Mountain brand of spring water throughout the upper Midwest. Five weeks later the permits were granted. Like a hot match put to a fuse, the approvals touched off a stunningly fierce debate about who controls Michigan's underground reservoirs of fresh water -- water so abundant and pure that half of the state's 9.9 million residents draw theirs straight from the ground
‘Noise, Distraction, Fabrication’ Mar Water Rights Debate
Monday, September 18, 2006 What Thirsty Arizona Really Wants
Five minutes into his interview, a top Arizona official squashed the big fear driving efforts to protect the Great Lakes Basin from massive water diversions: He said his state is not interested in the basin’s huge freshwater supply. But basin residents should not feel sanguine. Arizona already has a leg up in the drive to develop new, high-paying jobs—in water-saving technologies.
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Blocking the water spigot
Thursday, July 27, 2006 Whose Water Is It, Anyway?
A Mecosta County-based citizens group that has for five years challenged the authority of the world’s largest food company to pump and sell Michigan’s spring water is awaiting a decision by the state Supreme Court to hear the case. The David and Goliath legal battle has generated worldwide attention, influenced state legislation concerning large water diversions, and prodded Great Lakes states to reconsider the vulnerability of their most important natural resource. The question: Who decides where and for what purpose Michigan’s fresh water is used?
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The source
Thursday, April 06, 2006 Great Lakes Lawmakers Unveil Restoration Bill
Four months after Great Lakes leaders unveiled a $20 billion plan to restore their region’s troubled waterways and distressed economy, federal lawmakers have introduced legislation for what one senator calls “the biggest restoration project in the world.” Basin state legislators strongly support the proposal and have signed up 140 sponsors, but making the project a national priority will be challenging.
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Water bottled
Tuesday, March 28, 2006 New Law Intensifies Water Diversion Debate
Just weeks after Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm signed one of the region’s toughest laws to prevent mass Great Lakes water diversions, the debate about how the state should promote economic development around its matchless water resource is intensifying. Critics of the new law are questioning whether, even during a statewide economic crisis, Michigan should allow more growth in the bottled water business.
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Our favorite water bowl
Sunday, February 05, 2006 What’s Good for Water is Good for the Economy
A year ago, pessimists were blocking efforts to sustain the Great Lakes water supply. Now, those who claimed that water regulations would hurt the Great Lakes economy contend that they are essential to promote growth. The tide is turning for water policy as business and political leaders realize that what’s good for water is good for the economy.
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Liquid asset
Tuesday, November 08, 2005 Lawmakers Flood Lansing with New Water Bills
Just in time to ride the tide of public opinion rolling toward the 2006 election, the Michigan Legislature is wading into a familiar debate: How best to protect Michigan’s Great Lakes, streams, and aquifers from over-pumping. Both parties appear ready to use water security as an environmental cornerstone, as they did in 2002, even though, in the past four years, lawmakers have enacted just two water bills.
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Nestle' plant in France
Friday, July 22, 2005 A Small Crack in the Dam?
With the world’s largest water bottling company trying to squash a law that allows Michigan to prevent the siphoning of the Great Lakes, some opponents of stronger water regulations may be softening their resistance. At a special state Senate hearing, some farmers wary of state regulation of their irrigation practices called for economic incentives, while one prominent business advocate long opposed to new water laws indicated a willingness to move forward gradually with new rules.
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Governor Granholm
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 Granholm Moves Water Reform to Higher Ground
As a crucial legal clash between a citizens group and a giant international food company over pumping and selling groundwater heads to the Michigan Appellate Court today, actions by Governor Jennifer M. Granholm tackling aspects of that case stir the state capital.
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Nestle's new water source
Thursday, May 19, 2005 When One Company Sips, Nestle Gulps
Evart’s agreement to sell its water to Nestle Waters has strong support from residents, but it is becoming another focal point in the battle over how best to prevent massive water diversions in Michigan. And the Granholm administration's reluctance to openly challenge the deal is reviving old questions about just how committed the governor is to preventing the export of water from the Great Lakes Basin.
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Ford Rouge Center
Friday, March 25, 2005 Saving Water, Ford Sees Two Shades of Green
While top business groups are opposing state legislation requiring more efficient water use, Ford Motor Company is saving money by sharply reducing its water consumption. The company’s actions tacitly challenge the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the Michigan Manufacturers Association, which have successfully stalled the governor’s Water Legacy Act.
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Use it
Saturday, February 19, 2005 State Business, GOP Leaders Attack Granholm Water Law
Just days after Governor Granholm focused her State of the State address on creating jobs in a 21st-century economy, top state Republicans and business officials used that theme to attack her proposals for safeguarding the Great Lake State’s supply of clean, fresh water. The boiling conflict over stewardship of the Great Lakes ecosystem comes as Democrats and Republicans begin to position their parties for the 2006 campaign.
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Lakes and Streams Act legacy
Tuesday, February 15, 2005 Granholm Administration Eyes New Strategy to Move Water Legacy Act
With legislation to protect Michigan’s water supply badly stalled in Lansing, the state’s environmental agency is reviewing its existing authority to protect wetlands, lakes, and rivers from unwise withdrawals. The move signals a potential shift in Governor Granholm’s drive to establish water withdrawal guidelines, which began when she introduced her Water Legacy Act last year. Despite bipartisan support for the Democratic governor’s goals, the Republican-led state Legislature refuses to hold a hearing on her bill.
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Waukesha's water tower
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Wisconsin’s Road to Water Wisdom
As a state-sanctioned citizens group meets again today to discuss how Michigan might protect itself from shortsighted water withdrawals, one hopes that its members have Wisconsin on their minds. The citizens, members of the Water Policy Work Group, could garner important lessons from the strong parallels between Michigan’s and Wisconsin’s water politics and problems, as well as the steps Wisconsin is taking to deal with both.
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A warning to diverters
Saturday, October 23, 2004 Michigan House Votes Ban on Great Lakes Withdrawals
While a comprehensive plan to protect the Great Lakes from unwise water diversions languishes in the Michigan Senate, the state House of Representatives recently passed a three-sentence anti-diversion resolution that some experts say could actually weaken the state’s ability to prevent such withdrawals. The House resolution would amend the state Constitution to ban diverting water from within the state to areas outside of the Great Lakes Basin, but some water experts say the hurriedly passed proposal would set back the larger, ongoing international effort to accomplish the same thing.
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Few states use more groundwater
Sunday, May 02, 2004 Governor’s Conservation Bill Treads Water
Months after Governor Granholm proposed a comprehensive plan to better regulate ground and surface water withdrawals within Michigan, her legislation aimed at that popular goal is losing political momentum. The problem was evident recently when an appointed council of business, academic, and environmental leaders convened to publicly evaluate the governor’s proposal, called the Water Legacy Act. After an hours-long review of the 26-page proposal, the group adjourned without endorsing it. Instead, the council ended its meeting with many questions still on its mind.
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Low water level on Lake Michigan
Wednesday, March 10, 2004 Granholm Proposes Water Protection Laws
Nearly two decades after Michigan promised Great Lakes Basin neighbors that it would prevent ill-advised water diversions, Governor Jennifer M. Granholm has proposed legislation that would help the state finally honor that commitment. Water experts say that the governor's proposal will restore at least some of the state’s credibility on the issue. But Republican Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, who two years ago championed the protection of Michigan's water supply, is resisting. Many statewide environmental groups support the new legislation, but a few say it does not go far enough.
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The Narrows in Leland
Friday, January 23, 2004 Legacy or Letdown?
Governor Jennifer M. Granholm delivered a memorandum this week that called for “swift action” to strengthen safeguards for Michigan’s fresh waters. The Democratic governor’s proposal calls for seven specific actions that the administration asserts will dramatically improve state oversight of Michigan’s most important natural resource. As a display of Ms. Granholm’s ability to command attention, the roll out was an unqualified success. But as the opening of a political strategy to galvanize citizens, sway powerful industrial interests, and convince Republicans in the Legislature to seriously consider and approve new laws to regulate Michigan’s waters, the high profile announcement produced an ironic outcome.
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Thursday, January 15, 2004 New Groundwater Council Could Challenge Granholm
As a state task force begins studying how to protect Michigan's underground water supply, Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm is trying to blunt charges that her support for keeping a controversial spring water bottling plant open could complicate her ability to act boldly on water issues. The Democratic governor promised to issue her own set of water protection proposals later this month. But some observers say that unless her proposals are both prompt and bold, she risks losing the initiative on one of the state's hot-button issues to Republicans.
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Governor Jennifer Granholm
Tuesday, December 23, 2003 Granholm Said Yes To Nestle Diversion After Court Said No
Until last week, nothing that Democratic Governor Jennifer M. Granholm did resembled the closed-door style of former Governor John Engler. Then the governor did something that environmentalists called surprisingly Engleresque: Shutting out a feisty citizens group and aiding the world’s largest food company in a David and Goliath legal struggle that affects all of Michigan. The issue: The security of the state’s treasure trove of fresh water.
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Ice Mountain bottling plant
Thursday, December 04, 2003 Nestle Decision a Bipartisan Challenge
In an era defined by increasing limits on government's will to regulate industry, there has been little momentum on one of the great economic and environmental issues of the day: How to secure Michigan's abundant supply of fresh water. Mecosta County Circuit Court Judge Lawrence C. Root's startling decision last week to order the shutdown of four high capacity spring water wells in central Michigan owned and operated by Nestle Waters North America could change that. The ruling in the most prominent dispute over the use of Michigan's water in years could have other significant repercussions as well.
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Water for everyone, always?
Sunday, May 04, 2003 A Tide of Influence Swamps Groundwater Protections
Ignoring a state task force’s strong recommendation for protecting Michigan’s groundwater supply, a Michigan Senate committee last week bowed to special interest groups and voted to significantly weaken a proposal that that would have taken the first substantive steps to reform the state’s 19th century water laws, which permit completely unrestricted withdrawals of virtually any amount of groundwater.
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Protest at Nestle's bottling plant in Mescota County
Thursday, October 24, 2002 Despite Abundance, New Talk About Limits
Until two years ago, Mecosta County was notable for nothing more or less than the decent state university campus here and 40,000 generally well-behaved Midwesterners who regularly attend church and send their children off to school on yellow buses. They never for a moment worried that the clean, fresh water flowing past their homes or from their taps would ever run dry. Mecosta County, after all, sits squarely in the middle of the largest supply of fresh water on earth.
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Lakeshore Drive
Monday, July 01, 2002 Deadline Missed on Water Security Pact
Governors and Canadian premiers, who have been working on a far-reaching agreement to ensure that international trade agreements, diversions, and other 21st century threats do not drain the Great Lakes, missed a self-imposed deadline in June to open the water-security pact for public review, state officials have confirmed.
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Thursday, November 15, 2001 Put a Cork in It
Lansing — Attorney General Jennifer Granholm today called on state lawmakers to immediately consider new legislative proposals to close legal holes that now allow private companies to divert millions of gallons of fresh water out of the Great Lakes basin.
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Friday, October 05, 2001 Michigan's Attorney General Weighs In: Perrier Plan is a Great Lakes Diversion
Last March, after it had advertised "crystal clear well water" for sale in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the village of Webster, New York received a curt letter from Michigan’s Republican Governor John Engler.
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Thursday, September 13, 2001 Attorney General's Opinion on Perrier and Water Diversion
The proposal to pump and bottle groundwater from a spring in Mecosta County is subject to the provisions of the federal Water Resources Development Act, which requires the consent of the governors of the Great Lakes states for any diversion or export of water from the Great Lakes for use outside the basin.
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Monday, August 20, 2001 Michigan Gives Perrier Permission
The state of Michigan took a fateful step Wednesday, Aug. 16, when it gave the Perrier Group of America permission to pump 200 gallons of groundwater per minute from central Michigan and sell it nationwide. Perrier intends to expand to 400 gallons per minute as soon as possible.
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Thursday, July 12, 2001 Great Lakes Supernova
It was just three years ago that an Ontario-based company proposed a novel and alarming business venture: Scoop 156 million gallons of water out of Lake Superior every year and deliver it by tanker to Asia.
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Wednesday, May 16, 2001 Institute Urges DEQ to Defer Perrier Permit
The Michigan Land Use Institute appreciates this opportunity to comment on the proposal by the Perrier Group of America to withdraw, bottle, and sell Great Lakes water. The Institute believes that the proposal, which will set a precedent for bottled water operations in Michigan, presents a valuable opportunity to advance reasoned management of our globally unique freshwater resources.
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Monday, April 23, 2001 A “Small” Withdrawal?
The term ‘Perrier’ is, like Nike’s swoosh emblem or McDonald’s golden arches, the quintessential mark of its trade. The global community associates athletic shoes with Nike, the world’s largest footwear company. We relate fast food with McDonalds, the planet’s premier burger stand. And, if revenues are any measure, we connect the Perrier Group of America, a division of the world’s largest food company, with the most essential beverage on earth — water. This connection may intensify at the expense of the Great Lakes water supply.
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