Washington has taken a major step toward becoming the first US state to restrict companies looking to extract, bottle and sell local water supplies.
On Monday night the state senate passed a bill that would ban new permits for water bottling operations. SB 6278 states “any use of water for the commercial production of bottled water is deemed to be detrimental to the public welfare and the public interest” and would apply retroactively to new permits filed after 1 January 2019.
The move was hailed by water campaigners, who declared it a breakthrough moment in the fight against the privatization of such a valuable public asset.
What sodding value? Washington State gets 38.15 inches of rain a year. There’s so much water it quite literally falls from the damn skies. For free.
Isn’t bottled water in a first world country complete and utter idiocy anyway?
I think, maybe, my part of the East Midlands doesn’t count as first world. I’m staying with drinking bottled water.
There’s so much water it quite literally falls from the damn skies. For free.
Yeah, but the government owns it so naturally there is a shortage.
Not if it’s fizzy, excavator man, think of Perrier, San Pellegrino, Badoit, Vichy, Tesco Sparkling…
Yuk. Water. Disgusting stuff. You never see the fish getting out before they…do you?
Is it the water or the plastic bottle they are worried about?
Diogenes, Fizzy water is a different drink. After all, beer and lemonade (for example) are mainly water with a smidgeon of something else added. The addition of that smidgeon makes all the difference, even if it’s just gas. And PJF needs to watch out that his bottled water hasn’t just come from the mains – quite a lot of bottled water does just that …
“The move was hailed by water companies possessing permits filed before Jan 1st, 2019”
“You’re selling our water at a substantial markup and we want a cut.”
I drink Aqua de la Northumbria. Cool, fresh, soft, cheap as chips.
Here in frosty Michigan, during the late water quality crisis in the city of Flint – caused completely and entirely by the incompetence and intransigence of city and State government officials – there was some chucklehead or other in the Garniad
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/29/nestle-pays-200-a-year-to-bottle-water-near-flint-where-water-is-undrinkable
complaining that the real problem was that, a hundred miles away in the village of Evart, Nestle was extracting and bottling groundwater – and Selling it! For a Profit! Truly, the stupid of the Woke is never so complete as when it comes to issues of water supply.
llater,
llamas
Oh, I’m not so sure – they also show an extensive lack of knowledge when it comes to energy issues.
😉
Main complaint just north in BC user don’t charge enough for the licenses, the counter argument being there’s so much of the stuff that it’s better to get something
Last time there was a fuss they put it up to $500 per million litres of groundwater and apparently it’s was only $2.25 per million litres 10 years ago