Editor:
A version of this letter was sent to the board of Sunshine Coast Regional District.
Should B.C. stop issuing water licences to bottle groundwater for commercial sale or bulk export? This will be up for vote at the end of September at UBCM. How will you vote?
Sad to see that we constantly give away our natural resources. Many will scream, “Oh, we need jobs.” Well, what good is a job if you have no water? Major corporations make millions of dollars a year bottling our water then selling it back to us, and out of country. Who pays for the handling of the discarded plastic bottles that clog our landfills and oceans with billions of tons of plastic waste? Yes, we the taxpayers.
Sometimes we forget that a gallon of water taken out of a natural system for bottled water is a gallon of water that doesn’t flow down a stream, and that does not support a natural ecosystem. With large corporations like Nestles, we are talking millions of gallons a year.
We in this country are in trouble. We see large corporations almost controlling government. As our elected officials, you have the power to voice our concerns over our water being handed to foreign corporations. Tell the senior governments this must end now.
The B.C. government announced earlier this year that it “has extended the water licence application transition period for those who were using groundwater on or before February 29, 2016 for any non-domestic use, including agricultural, industrial, commercial and institutional groundwater uses. Applicants now have until March 1, 2022 to apply for a licence.”
This is not good enough! Water licences for bottled water should not be given to multinationals at any price.
We ask that you to do everything in your power to protect water for communities and ecosystems now and for the future.
Vel Anderson, Elphinstone
