Nestlé مستخرج ماء from Canadian Towns on Expired Permits — وكيف دفعهم السكان

وقد تعرض نستلي، وهي أكبر منتج للمياه المعبأة في العالم، لسحب المياه الجوفية منها Canadian towns on permits that had already expired. The situation outraged residents and environmentalists, who accused the Ontario government of letting نستلي) تواصل الربح) من الموارد العامة المشتركة مع توليد كميات هائلة من النفايات البلاستيكية ذات الاستخدام الواحد.

Nestlé defended itself by pointing to the tens of thousands of dollars it donated to the towns hosting its wells and bottling plants, and it blamed the Ontario government for making what it called “complicated changes” to water-management rules. The company said it was amending its Permit to Take Water applications to comply with the new technical requirements.

لم تكن هذه المرة الأولى التي تعمل فيها الشركة بهذه الطريقة (نيستي) كان لديه موثق تاريخ تعبئة المياه في تصاريح منتهيةعلى الأخص في كاليفورنيا المنكوبة بالجفافوفي عام 2015، كان يستخرج المياه من غابة سان برناردينو الوطنية على تصريح كان قد انخفض قبل 27 عاما.

وفي أونتاريو، في الوقت نفسه، تضخ الشركة ملايين لتر من المياه الجوفية يوميا من آبار بالقرب من بلدتي أبرفيل )في بوسلينش( و إيرين - ويُسمح لمصنعها في أبرفيل وحدها بأخذ ما يصل إلى ٣,٦ مليون لتر في اليوم - وهو ما يحدث في كثير من الأحيان أسرع مما يمكن أن تغذيه طبقات المياه الجوفية المحلية.

“على الرغم من أن تصاريح (نيستلي) و(إيرين) قد انتهت صلاحيتها، فإنهما يعتبران أنهما سيبقىان قيد التنفيذ،غاري ويلر، المتحدث الرسمي باسم حكومة أونتاريو VICE News.

نهر الرمال، أوتاريو، كانادا

The friction in Wellington County had been building for years. A local hydrogeologist working with the grassroots group Wellington Water Watchers reported that the Guelph-area aquifer had dropped roughly 1.5 metres between 2011 and 2015 — a stretch during which Nestlé increased its pumping by about a third — and the controversy boiled over in the drought summer of 2016, when Guelph residents faced fines for watering their lawns while the bottling line kept running. Residents demanded that the government impose higher levies on large extractors and do far more to protect natural resources, warning that demand for water was climbing alongside population growth.

“إنه صراع كلاسيكي بين مطالب القلة التي تفوق مطالب الكثيرينقال مايك ناجي ناشط وخبيرة استشارية مع مراقبات مياه (ويلينغتون)

In response to the public pressure, the province moved to hold large bottlers more accountable. In 2016 Ontario sharply raised the fee corporations pay to extract groundwater — from less than $4 per million litres to $503.71 per million litres — and imposed a moratorium on new and expanded water-bottling permits, a freeze that was repeatedly extended in the years that followed.

غاري (ويلر) قال أن التهمة الأعلى كانتمن المتوقع أن يسترد جزء كبير من تكاليف المقاطعة المياه الجوفية المأخوذة من قوارير المياهبما في ذلك دعم البحوث العلمية والسياسات والتوعية والامتثال.”

(كريستال) ، (أستونيو) ، (كانادا)

نستيلي يبتعد عن كندا

The sustained community resistance ultimately paid off. In July 2020, Nestlé announced it would exit the Canadian bottled-water business entirely, saying it wanted to focus on premium international brands such as San Pellegrino, Perrier, and Acqua Panna. Its first attempt to sell the Pure Life operation — including the Aberfoyle plant, the Erin well, and the contested Middlebrook well it had bought near Elora in 2016 over fierce local opposition — was to the Ontario company Ice River Springs, but that deal collapsed in September 2020 when it failed to clear the Competition Bureau in time.

Instead, in February 2021, Nestlé sold its entire North American water business — Nestlé Waters North America, encompassing Pure Life, Poland Spring, Deer Park, and Ice Mountain — to the private-equity firm One Rock Capital Partners for roughly $4.3 billion. The new owner rebranded the operation as BlueTriton. That ownership churn was far from over: BlueTriton announced in late 2024 that it would merge with Florida-based Primo Water and wind down its Ontario operations by the end of January 2025. The Aberfoyle and Erin properties and their water-taking permits then passed in 2025 to White Wolf Property Management, a Shelburne firm tied to the Gott family that also owns Ice River Springs, which paid more than $61 million for the former Nestlé site.

Water campaigners scored a more direct victory at the third, never-used well. After years of advocacy by Wellington Water Watchers and the Council of Canadians, the township of Centre Wellington purchased the Elora/Middlebrook well in April 2025 for a reported $1.8 million, returning it to public hands rather than leaving it available for future commercial bottling.

A clean, permanent resolution remains elusive — the renewed permits still authorize taking up to roughly 3.6 million litres a day at Aberfoyle and 1.1 million litres a day at Erin, and activists argue that bottling public groundwater for private profit is never sustainable regardless of which corporation holds the license. But the saga stands as a reminder of what organized residents can accomplish: a multinational that once pumped Ontario’s aquifers on lapsed permits has been pushed out of the country, and at least one well has been reclaimed for the communities that depend on it.