The UN took an historic vote on July 28 when it passed a resolution introduced by Bolivia on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation. Thanks to all who left messages for the Ambassador and/or signed the Credo petition. The resolution got 122 votes in favor, 41 abstentions including the US, and did not get any no votes. The U.S. did not succeed in watering down the resolution, but joined 40 other countries (list below), including Great Britain and Canada, in abstaining. Continue reading UPDATE: VICTORY! UN Voting 7/28 on Right to Water
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Staff Writer Poland Spring and the water district that serves Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Wells are close to striking a deal that would allow the company to draw water from one of the district’s underground springs, although a fledgling group of opponents hopes to delay the process. Continue reading Activist Alert: Nestle Again Goes after Spring Water in Wells At a recent meeting in Ellsworth’s City Hall sponsored by the Lamoine Conservation Commission, a 2009 film called “Tapped,” about huge problems with bottled water, was shown. Concerned with the stubbornness of corporations in our daily lives, I was worried that a big company could drain “my aquifer” and leave me wicked thirsty. I learned enough to make me wicked worried! Continue reading Protect Our Water The state may ban some uses of a controversial plastic additive as its first “priority chemical” under a new toxic chemical control law. Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection is recommending that bisphenol-A, or BPA, be banned from use in reusable food and beverage containers such as baby bottles and water bottles sold in the state. Continue reading Maine may limit use of BPA Hello readers, Climate meetings are taking place in Bonn Germany this week and next week. They are preparing for the next major round of negotiations in Cancun this fall. So far water is not even being discussed in climate negotiations. Negotiators need to hear from us that water is key to protecting our earth from climate change. Please sign the petition to the negotiators to make this a top priority issue! SIGN THE PETITION – CLICK HEREBy Joyce White We did not weave the web of life,
Somehow we became persuaded that purchased bottled water is better than free tap water. The “spring water” description implied by several bottling companies probably helped convince people that bottled water must be better – although we’ve since learned that most “spring water” comes from the same sources as public drinking water and that all those plastic water bottles are an environmental nightmare. Jim Wilfong is the person most responsible for publicizing the complex issues of water in Maine. Four years on the Natural Resources Committee in the Maine legislature expanded his long-term interest in environmental issues; and during his stint as President Clinton’s assistant trade secretary, he noted that good drinking water was always among the top three issues in countries he worked with. That led him to think about groundwater – aquifers – differently. In his previous environmental work, Wilfong had focused on cleaning up surface waters – lakes and rivers – and hadn’t thought much about drinking water and water extraction issues. Continue reading Water and the Web of Life Executive Producer/Host: Amy Browne Contributor: Meredith DeFrancesco On Tuesday, the Lamoine Conservation Commission, the Bar Harbor Conservation Commission, the Union River Watershed Coalition, and Food & Water Watch, sponsored a showing of the documentary film “Tapped” and a panel discussion on bottled water and its impacts. Today we bring you excerpts from the panel discussion and question and answer session. The panelists are Rep. Jim Schatz of Blue Hill; Emily Posner, Coordinator for Defending Water for Life in Maine; Daphne Loring, Coordinator at the Maine Fair Trade Campaign; and Willem Brutsaert, an Environmental Engineer Professor at the University of Maine, and expert in groundwater and surface water hydrology. (Recorded by Meredith DeFrancesco; Edited by Amy Browne) original link HERE
It is unfortunate that you have chosen to give former law Professor Orlando Delogu what appears to be the final word on the issue of large water extractions in the town of Wells. He is long on pronouncements and short on insight, with a narrow lens through which he decides what is good for us and what is not. Equally inappropriate is your headline for his April 27 column, which continues to muddy the issue of water extraction (“There’s no way Poland Spring could have depleted water in Wells”). Continue reading Poland Spring issue still boiling Regarding the inaccuracies in the editorial regarding water rate hikes in the Kennebunk-Kennebunkport-Wells Water District (“Water use battles play out in rate hike talk,” April 6): In the words of President Obama, “You can’t make stuff up!” Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage corporation, owns the Poland Spring brand. There is no longer a Maine company named Poland Spring. And when you deal with multinational corporations like Nestle, international trade agreements take precedence over local ordinances. Any “regulatory ordinance” the town of Wells could have come up with could not have controlled this corporate behemoth. The so-called regulatory ordinance would have allowed large-scale extraction by Nestle of 432,000 gallons per day of our water, for which they would have paid nothing to the town of Wells. Nestle already mines millions of gallons of Maine water each year, and it pays no per-gallon state tax. Further, the Wells taxpayers would have had to foot the bill for damage to our roads caused by Nestle’s trucks hauling our water away. Nestle claimed that there would be “good jobs in Maine,” not that there would be any jobs for Mainers. The only possible jobs would have been a few truck-driving positions. But since our water would have been sent off to a bottling plant in Massachusetts, there would have been no need to hire local Maine drivers. The town of Wells overwhelmingly turned down a devil’s deal with Nestle. Do you really think that giving away millions of gallons of our water to the giant Nestle Corp. would be a proposition that Wells voters would ever want to revisit? Do you think that there is any possible reason the people of Wells would want to give Nestle a second look? I don’t think so. |
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Defending Water For Life in Maine | Coordinator: Emily Posner |
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