Appeal or not, Nestlé Waters director of corporate affairs John Challinor said there has never been any intent by the company to harm local residents.
The company had been involved in an environmental review involving an appeal to mandatory reduction of water use from its Hillsburgh well during GRCA drought alerts.
Last year, Nestlé challenged restrictions placed on its Permit To Take Water by the Ministry of the Environment on its Hillsburgh operation.
Last week, the day after the Advertiser went to press Challinor called to advise that the withdrawl from the appeal was accepted.
“Basically, they said we could withdraw from participating in the full appeal,” Challinor said.
Prior to this, he explained the company could not comment until it knew the letter accepting the withdrawal was received.
Challinor then explained the reasons behind the company’s withdrawal from the appeal boiled down to cost and timing.
“The cost would not only be ours to bear, but the Ministry of the Environment was supportive of this, therefore it would have cost Ontario taxpayers as well because the ministry would have been part of this hearing.”
He anticipated there would have been costs to groups such as Ecojustice as well.
The timing issue, he said, was related to the fact there is roughly three years left on the permit.
Challinor said it was difficult to predict whether there would be drought conditions – to conduct needed hydrogeological work – which we said we would do as part of the proposed agreement.
Despite the fact the company chose not to proceed with the appeal, Challinor said that if Level 1 or 2 drought conditions happen, the company will undertake testing to determine the local effects.
“But we have been doing hydrogeological testing all along,” he maintained.
“We file reports to the ministry whenever we use the spike rate. At this point there has been no adverse activity around the well. It’s been fine.”
He added there had been no problems since the company bought the well in 2000.
Well has some history
“And that well has been operating since 1988 – so it has some history.”
Challinor said the local community has never been impacted by the drawing of water.
“We simply would not allow that to happen. We value our relations with our neighbours too much to ever allow it to occur – wells running dry or other issues.”
Challinor did not anticipate the move to have any other impact to the business
“We had said all along if a drought level was declared by the GRCA, we would voluntarily reduce our taking.”
He added, “We have always and consistently reduced our taking in the watershed where drought levels have been announce. That would continue to be our policy and we would plan our business around it.”
He added “It has now become a mandatory requirement … and that is unfortunate. We are now the only water drawer in the GRCA watershed that manditorially has to reduce its water taking. Everyone else has the voluntary alternative.”
Challinor said, “not everyone reduces their water taking during a drought. We always have.”
When asked, Challinor said he was uncertain as to the number of commercial water takers there were in the watershed.
He stressed “we are not by far the largest water user in the watershed.”
He estimated the beverage industry represents less than one per cent of the use.
“Municipalities are the largest water users along the Grand River,” Challinor said.
He said over 50 per cent of the water is drawn and used by municipalities – based on GRCA reports.
Challinor added the public has access to Nestlé’s water taking reports either through the ministry or the company.
GRCA communications representative Dave Schultz stated the water use referred to by Challinor comes from a 2011 report entitled Water Use Inventory Report for the Grand River Watershed which is currently available on the GRCA website.
It notes that municipal water use is 60% and bottled water shows up at 0.6%.
In addition the report cites Nestlé as the only commercial water operation within the Grand River watershed.
