Conscious Choice: Victory at Ice Mountain

January 2004

Victory at Ice Mountain

A Michigan judge embraces the environment, quotes the Grateful Dead and shuts down Nestlé's pumping.

by Kari Lydersen

A group of scrappy grassroots activists are declaring victory in their fight against one of the world’s largest bottled water companies, Nestlé — officially known as Nestlé Waters North America Inc.

At issue was Nestlé’s pumping more than a half million gallons a day of water out of springs in Mecosta County, Michigan for its Ice Mountain brand of bottled water, as detailed in the August 2003 Conscious Choice cover story, "There Is No Ice Mountain." The springs, in central Michigan, are feeders to ponds and small lakes that in turn feed Lake Michigan.

In the fall of 2001, the group Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC) had filed a lawsuit seeking to halt Nestlé’s pumping. Last November, Judge Lawrence Root ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered Nestlé to cease all pumping from the aquifers in question within 21 days.

Nestlé is bound to appeal the decision but, even so, it must stop pumping in the meantime. Activists with MCWC and the Sweetwater Alliance, a grassroots group, which worked in conjunction with MCWC to raise awareness of the issue, were thrilled with the decision. "It was super exciting," said Louis Blouin, a member of MCWC and the Sweetwater Alliance. "You don’t always put a lot of faith in the legal process, so it was super to see Judge Root go out on a limb and really give a ruling that is in the interests of the people."

Activists lauded Root’s 68-page decision, which detailed the harm the pumping is causing to streams and ponds in the area and lambasted Nestlé for trying to mislead the public and for obtaining permits based on reports that "even the defense now admits were inaccurate, incomplete or otherwise flawed." The decision also quoted the Grateful Dead, saying, "What a long strange trip it’s been," and noted that Michigan should be especially protective of its natural wetlands since it is known as "The Great Lakes State" and the state’s slogan is "Winter Water Wonderland."

Blouin said some of the plaintiffs were surprised that Root prohibited Nestlé from pumping completely, rather than setting a lower limit for their extraction. The Judge wrote in his decision: "I am holding that Nestlé’s pumping operations at the Sanctuary Springs must stop entirely...Further, I am unable to find that a specific pumping rate lower than 400 gallons per minute will reduce the effects and impacts to a level that is not harmful."

Nestlé is still allowed, however, to keep pumping 175 gallons per minute from groundwater on the site of its bottling plant in Stanwood, 12 miles from the aquifers involved in the lawsuit.

The decision wasn’t quite as precedent setting as some might have hoped, since it hinges mainly on the specific effects of pumping on the Mecosta County area rather than the blanket ideological issues of water privatization and the rights of citizens or the government to control water in their state. But members of MCWC and the Sweetwater Alliance think the decision will still have a definite chilling effect on other bottled water companies, preventing them from planning widespread pumping in Michigan or other areas.

"This has upped the ante for corporations wanting to do something like this," said Blouin. "They’re not going to want to do it if they know there will be legal challenges as well as direct action and protesting."

Direct action and community organizing along with the lawsuit have been a large component of the campaign to stop the pumping. The Sweetwater Alliance has organized various protests over the past few years, including a "canoe-in." However, the groups denounced an incident last fall in which plastic bottles filled with flammable liquid and rigged to explode were placed at the plant. The bottles were found before any of them could detonate, and the militant environmental group Earth Liberation Front later claimed responsibility for the action.

Holly Wren-Spaulding, a member of the Sweetwater Alliance who has attended seminars on water rights in South Africa, Brazil, and most recently Miami, said she hopes the decision encourages people to keep fighting to protect the environment and oppose the privatization of natural resources. "Nestlé must be shocked," she said. "I’m sure they’re used to getting their way. They have tons of lawyers, we have one; they have millions of dollars, we’re in debt. But the judge decided to do the right thing."

Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based writer, a reporter for The Washington Post, and an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Institute.

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