From the Canadian Blue Community Water Watchers:
๐ฆ One Well Reclaimed!! ๐ฆ Another Water Justice Victory โค ๐ฅ
The infamous Middlebrook well has officially been reclaimed to the realm of the public good!
First owned by Nestle, then Blue Triton, we learned early yesterday morning that the Middlebrook well in Elora was acquired by Centre Wellington Township to support their community’s drinking water needs.ย
Centre Wellington did extensive studies on their drinking water needs and had identified the Middlebrook well as the best, most secure source to meet the growing Township’s current and future needs. In 2016, Nestlรฉ Waters unfortunately outbid the Township and began hatching their plans to bottle water from the Middlebrook well. But the Elora and Water Watchers communities didn’t remain silent. Our collective advocacy got Centre Wellington to declare themselves an unwilling host for water bottling and Nestle nor Blue Triton were ever able to extract water from the Middlebrook well.
In 2021, we forced Nestlรฉ to exit water bottling in North America through our years of grassroots advocacy, collaboration with other NGOs, and solidarity work with Black, Indigenous, and other racialized people. In their retreat, Nestlรฉ sold their water bottle brands and facility operations to Blue Triton, a company backed by a finance firm with a reputation for flipping struggling brands. Meanwhile Canadian opinion has continued to turn sour on the bottled water industry and sales of the so-called ‘Pure Life’ bottled water brand have declined.
Now, Middlebrook well has officially been returned to nurture drinking water access!
Not one bottle of water will be made from this water and that’s because of what we did together.
This is a monumental win in the journey for water justice. Our victories against Blue Triton & Nestlรฉ are the result of over 18 years of dedicated advocacy on predatory water-taking. Middlebrook’s return is just another pieces of the water justice puzzle falling into place. Tens of thousands of individual actions were taken on this issue by Water Watchers supporters and together,
we created the conditions for Blue Triton to exit the water bottling business in Ontario and for the Middlebrook well to be reclaimed.
We will continue this fight in solidarity with Indigenous and grassroots water protectors until we end permits for bottling water and our governments uphold the human right to water.ย For now though, we are celebrating this amazing win and raising a glass to you, our supporters and allies. We are constantly faced with so much heartache and challenge in the social & environmental justice spaces, but this – this is a moment of JOY built action by action, rally by rally, and voice by voice by a robust, connected movement of grassroots power for water justice. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being with us on this journey for water justice. This is what it’s all about. |
Yours in Joy & Water Justice, |
