Statement: Kennebunk Board of Trustees Meeting

Hello, my name is Judy Grant. I am the Associate Campaigns Director at Corporate Accountability International, a group that has, for 30 years, waged and won campaigns challenging irresponsible and dangerous corporate actions, working with people and organizations around the world.

Today, we are here in Southern Maine to stand in solidarity with the residents of Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, and Wells, who have rightly seen a wolf in sheep’s clothing when it comes to Nestlé’s interest in tapping the Branch Brook aquifer.

Across North America, the world’s largest food and beverage corporation, Nestlé, is staking claim to community water resources like this one.

In the worst cases, Nestlé’s water grab is ruining streams, ponds, wells and aquifers. And in all cases, Nestlé’s practices are raising serious questions about who should be allowed to control water, our most essential resource, and to what end.

Will it be corporations like Nestlé or the communities that rely upon this most essential resource for their health, livelihood and well being?

Over the last decade, corporations have pushed us further down a road where water has increasingly become a high-priced commodity. As the U.S. bottled water market has ballooned to $15 billion a year, confidence in public water systems has diminished. We consider this no coincidence given the tens of millions of dollars spent on marketing water, which most can have from their tap for a fraction of the cost.

Bottled water marketing is changing the way people think about water. For example, a 2007 University of Arkansas poll found that, on average, young people buy bottled water more frequently than their older counterparts because they perceive it to be safer or purer than tap water. However, scientific studies have shown that bottled water is on average no safer than tap water, and may sometimes be less safe, containing elevated levels of arsenic, bacteria and other contaminants.
 

Manufacturing demand for a product that requires the equivalent of more than 50 million barrels of oil to produce and transport every year is deeply concerning. On top of that, when siting and operating bottling plants the bottled water industry negatively impacts ecosystems and runs roughshod over local control of water resources.

Corporate Accountability International believes that the best stewards of this resource are the local communities that rely upon it for their very health and wellbeing, and that water systems are best protected when decisions about how to manage these resources are made democratically, with full and authentic public participation.

That almost didn’t happen here.

Water bottlers like Nestlé are using undue political influence and economic clout to gain access to water resources in communities from Wells to McCloud, California, from Mecosta County, Michigan to the Texas grasslands. In many cases, Nestlé is operating without regard to the impacts of groundwater extraction on communities and local ecosystems.

Tens of thousands of people are realizing that the costs associated with relying on bottled water as a primary source of drinking water are not worth it, and are pledging to “think outside the bottle.” This week, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, an organization representing more than 1100 mayors passed a resolution encouraging cities to stop spending taxpayer dollars on bottled water. And today we are sending yet another message to the bottled water industry that we will not be manipulated by its advertising, bullied by its lobbyists and muscled out of our most essential resource for their short-term profits.