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Nestlé Subsidiary Tries to Sell Small Town it’s Own Water: Residents Fight Back
Perhaps you’ve yet to hear of a little town called Fryeburg, Maine, USA. It sits on its own pristine aquifer, but once Nestlé subsidiary Poland Spring moved to town, residents noticed that their streams were getting smaller. It turns out, in its continued efforts to privatize water, the company was pumping the aquifer, and then selling the water back to town residents in bottles. Freyburg is fighting back, though.
Nestlé has openly admitted that they don’t think water is a human right. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the Chairman and CEO of Nestlé, stated so openly in public, only to back-paddle later once activists accused him of being singularly interested in corporate profits and not water conservation, as he claimed. You can see him admit his true stance in this video.
When lakes and streams started to be depleted in Freyburg (that’s some water conservation, Nestlé) the residents spoke up, and the company then launched an aggressive, divide and conquer campaign.
The corp sued the town, almost bankrupting several water advocacy activists, and worked with the city board members to ensure their ongoing access to the town’s water. Nestlé took the case all the way to the Supreme Court when Freyburg wouldn’t just lay down and take it.
Furthermore, Nestlé also set up a Poland Spring shop for outreach, and established the Fryeburg Business Association staffed by a Nestlé employee. What this corrupt company is trying to do is get people to accept this as the norm: water they have to pay a corporation for, even though it was abundant and free prior to Nestlé’s interference.