The
following article appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal on 9/17/02
Perrier
foes apparently get wish
11:12
PM 9/17/02
Judy Gibson CWN News Service
WISCONSIN DELLS - The high-capacity well permits held by Nestle Waters
will expire Friday and the company doesn't have any current plans to reapply.
"We
are obviously not using them, so we are letting the permits lapse,"
Lynn Morgan, public relations for Nestle (formerly Perrier Group of America),
said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
"During
our search for a plant in the Midwest we looked at Wisconsin and at Big
Spring," Morgan said. "Nestle Waters went to Michigan. The plant
there is up and running and doing well, so our site search has been fulfilled."
Perrier's efforts to locate a multimillion-dollar water bottling plant
at Big Spring in the town of New Haven started in 1999 after it abandoned
plans for locating a plant near Mecan. In both places grass-roots organizations
waged a major publicity and legal fight to block the international company
from building a water bottling plant.
This is the second grass-roots victory in the state this week. Monday,
BHP Billiton pulled out of a project to build an underground zinc and
copper mine near Crandon. The project had been fought by environmentalists.
Rosemary Carlson, New Haven resident and member of the grass-roots organization
Waterkeepers of Wisconsin, said, "It's wonderful news. As a person
very interested in the ground water issue, and this is not my first fray,
I'm overwhelmed. I'm delighted it's not going to happen, at least for
a while. Our concern was that it would have set a precedent and opened
the door for the whole state."
The company may reapply for permits in the future, but it could then be
under new regulations now being proposed in the state Legislature, giving
the Department of Natural Resources more power to assess any proposed
well. New regulations cannot be applied retroactively to an existing permit.