If We Were Aware..

My speech to West Hartford Town Council:

Three weeks ago, at a meditation group, I was speaking to three women from Bloomfield that had just been at their Town Council meeting the night before.  They were pretty upset about a bottling company that was trying to build a facility in their town. I had no idea what they were talking about. That's a key point to my address to you:  I had NO IDEA what they were talking about.

Niagara Bottling Company, is the nations' largest private-label water bottler. You can buy it at Costco. Niagara has struck an agreement with the town of Bloomfield and the Metropolitan District Committee to build a 10 acre manufacturing and bottling plant. Maybe that's why I had not heard of this, it's pretty much a Bloomfield issue, right?

WRONG!

This is a huge West Hartford issue and every resident of West Hartford, and paying customer of the MDC, should be informed about what is going to happen to our most precious natural resource, our public water.

The MDC has struck an agreement with Niagara Bottling Company to sell 2 million gallons of water A DAY from our reservoir, at a reduced rate, to Niagara.

At the proposed Bloomfield plant, Niagara will produce 2.6 million plastic bottles PER day on each line at their factory. With a proposed capacity of 4 lines, this would be over 10 million plastic bottles a day!

Niagara would then be able to dump 20% of the water used daily, about 360,000 gallons, right back into the MDC as waste water.

And of biggest concern: should West Hartford and surrounding areas experience water shortages, CT law does not allow the MDC to shut off the tap to Niagara!

We, as customers, would be asked to comply with emergenbcy conservation measures, yet Niagara would still be able to bottle and ship out of state!

My question to the council is: how ahve we, the West Hartford residents and paying customers of the MDC, not been informed of this agreement? The agreement that the MDC, a public company, will sell 2 million gallons of our water a day, to Niagara, a for profit company, at a discounted rate?

West Hartford residents are progressive and treasure the reservoir and the environment around it. If they were aware that Niagara anticipates 100 trucks a day to be trucking in 24/7 and would be polluting and congesting traffic...they would be concerned.

If residents were aware, that to rpoduce 10 million plastic bottles a day would require the handling of potentially hazardous materials, and that they would be handled and stored so close to us...they would be concerned.

If they were aware that the most recent E. coli contamination recalls involved 2 Niagara bottling plants in PA as evidenced by Sunday's Hartford Courant...they would be really concerned.

But if West Hartford residents were aware, that 2 million gallons a day of our most precious natural resource, would be sold EVERY DAY for the foreseeable future, putting in jeopardy our children's and grandchildren's water supply...they would be OUTRAGED!

If they were aware...why were the residents not made aware by the MDC?

Bloomfield Town Council and the MDC say it's a done deal. Bloomfieldcitizens.org states that it is not a done deal. I sure hope not.

But I want to make sure this NEVER happens again!!

Do not let MDC give away water to inefficient large users.

If we were just made aware...