WATER WARS, REDUX

WATER WARS, REDUX

Flint Residents Pay to Drink Polluted Water While Nestlé Pumps Great Lakes for Profit

(Truth-Out.org Interview w/txt & audio)

"Janine Jackson: It is impossible, really, not to connect two recent pieces of news: Residents of Flint, Michigan, have been told that the state that poisoned their drinking water will no longer provide them free bottled water. They'll be going back to paying some of the highest prices in the country, some $200 a month, for water that may still be making them sick. The Washington Post reports at least 12,000 homes in Flint still waiting for replacement of lead pipes.

At the same time, Michigan approved a permit letting the Nestlé Corporation pump more fresh water out of a well in the Great Lakes Basin to bottle and sell at a profit, more than half a million gallons a day, the right to which will cost Nestlé…wait for it…around $200 a year. And that won't increase, although the amount of water they are taking will -- by 60 percent.

This is, in fact, how water rights work in this country, but if it feels wrong to you, you are far from alone. What can be and what is being done? Joining us now to discuss this critical story is Peggy Case. She's president of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation. She joins us now by phone from near Traverse City."