Nestlé eksponeret udvinde vand fra canadiske byer på udløbet tilladelser - og hvordan beboerne skubbede dem ud

Nestlé, som er verdens største producent af flasker og vand, blev udsat for at tegne grundvand fra Canadisk der allerede var udløbet. Situationen harmede beboerne og miljøforkæmperne, som anklagede Ontario-regeringen for at lade Nestlé fortsætter med at profitere fra en fælles offentlig ressource og samtidig generere enorme mængder af engangsplastisk affald.

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.

Dette var ikke første gang, virksomheden havde drevet denne måde. Nestlé havde en dokumenteret Tidligere aftapning af vand på udløbet tilladelser, især i tørke-ramt Californien, hvor det fra 2015 var blevet udvinde vand fra San Bernardino nationalskov på en tilladelse, der var udløbet 27 år tidligere.

I Ontario pumpede virksomheden hver dag millioner af liter grundvand fra brønde nær byerne Aberfoyle (i Puslinch) og Erin - dens Aberfoyle-fabrik alene fik lov til at tage op til 3,6 millioner liter om dagen - ofte hurtigere, end lokale akvifere kunne oplade.

“Selv om Nestlé 's Aberfoyle og Erin tilladelser er udløbet, de anses for at forblive i kraft, og operationer kan fortsætte, indtil ministeriet træffer beslutning om fornyelse ansøgning", Gary Wheeler, en Ontario regering talsmand, fortalte VICE News.

Sandflod, Ontario, Canada

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.

“Det er en klassisk konflikt af kravene fra de få opvejer kravene fra de mange", sagde Mike Nagy, en Aktivist Og konsulent med Wellington Water Watchers.

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.

Gary. Wheeler sagde den højere ladning var "forventes at inddrive en betydelig del af provinsens udgifter til forvaltning grundvandet taget af vandaftappere, herunder støtte til videnskabelig forskning, politikker, outreach og overholdelse.”

Krystal falder, Ontario, Canada

Nestlé går væk fra Canada

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.