This week the movement for water justice clinched another victory: the water bottling company BlueTriton announced the sale of its largest bottling facility and plan to wind down operations in Ontario by January 2025.
Taking over the facilities from Nestlé in 2021, BlueTriton has been taking billions of litres of groundwater from the Aberfoyle (in Puslinch) and Erin wells (in Hillsburgh), mostly for the purpose of bottling it for retail in plastic bottles. The company took 638 million litres in 2023 and 672 million litres in 2022, and their permit allowed extraction at twice this volume per year until 2026, before their decision to end operation. This industry has been draining the precious and finite groundwater supply in Wellington County while the local communities, including Six Nations of the Grand River, face water insecurity.
BlueTriton’s announcement came on the heels of their latest merger with Primo Water Corporation, headquartered in Florida, into Primo Brands, although their press release said these decisions are unrelated. The new company will continue to operate its water bottling facility in Hope, BC, also previously acquired from Nestlé. The Aberfoyle facility in Puslinch is for sale, so there is still a possibility that another corporation could purchase the facility, reapply for a water-taking permit, and continue extraction. As part of the plant closure, 144 workers at the facility will lose their jobs.
This is not the first time these facilities have changed hands. In 2021, Nestlé Water left Canada following fierce community opposition to its water grabs, selling the Pure Life brand and facilities to private equity firms One Rock Capital Partners and Metropoulos & Co., renaming the company to BlueTriton. While the name of the company changes, the story remains: big corporations are extracting our shared and finite resources and selling them for obscene profit, while the local communities face the consequences.
And because water is life, the reality of water insecurity is heartbreaking. Children growing up in Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation have never drunk water straight from the tap, and a family of six pay $250 a month for drinking water, according to a CBC story. The First Nation has never been consulted or given consent for the extraction of the water in their territory. Meanwhile, the surrounding municipalities in Wellington County are all concerned about the future of their water as population growth, climate change, droughts, and over-extraction put further pressure on the aquifers they rely on for drinking water. Recognizing and implementing the human right to water means guaranteeing communities have access to water for their daily use and not letting corporations extract, repackage, and sell the water for profit. The US-based companies trading ownership of our water also don’t care about the workers who will lose their livelihood in the process.
The Council of Canadians and local allies like Water Watchers and Save Our Water have been campaigning for over a decade for an end to the extraction of groundwater for profit and permitting to take water for bottling. We fought for a four-year moratorium on water bottling permits and pushed the province to establish a new framework for issuing water bottling permits in 2020 that takes into account community needs. The fierce campaigning on the Nestlé boycott and local community resistance ultimately drove Nestlé out of Canada. Our No Water to Waste campaign has been educating and mobilizing over 36,000 people to boycott bottled water. It’s the organizing and advocacy you are a part of that makes this victory, and many before it, possible.
We reaffirm our commitment to end the water bottling industry and recognize water as a human right. Echoing the calls to action from Water Watchers, we are also calling for a just transition for the workers losing their jobs, return of the stewardship of the water wells to Six Nations of the Grand River, and compensation to the First Nation for the decades of extraction of water without their consent.
This current victory reminds us that people coming together to safeguard the water and well-being of our communities can win against the power of corporations. The Council will continue to work towards building a movement for water justice that puts people before profit through the Blue Communities Project, our campaign to end drinking water advisories in First Nations, the recognition of the human right to water, and policy improvements to protect water for future generations. We look forward to continuing the fight for water justice with you.
Vi Bui
Vi Bui is the Ontario, Quebec, Nunavut Regional Organizer at the Council of Canadians.
