Bottling water okay, for now

APRIL 4 | Some people use water for drinking, some for cleaning. Nestle Waters North America sells bottled water, water it obtains from Michigan, and the Michigan Supreme Court appears likely to decide soon whether that is a proper use under Michigan water rights law.
The Michigan Court of Appeals already has sided with the water bottler, saying selling the water is within the range of permissible uses. But that use, and that decision, has been challenged by a group of plaintiffs now expected to take the case to Michigan's top court. Nestle may even join in, since it takes issue with some aspects of the decision. A Nestle attorney, Michael Haines, with the Grand Rapids law firm of Mika Meyers Beckett and Jones, was quoted as delivering in a prepared statement: "The Michigan Court of Appeals made the correct decision when it overturned the lower court's ruling and preserved water use law that ensures ample water supply is accessible to all water users, consistent with ecological protection. Michigan's economy and all of the industries that comprise it, our communities and environment are the beneficiaries of this decision, in which resource conservation is a wise underpinning.

TAKING ON THE MEXICO CITY FORUM A guest opinion in the Cook County News Herald of Grand Marais, Minnesota, blasted the approach taken at the March Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City which equated water rights with human rights.
"After the first day of the meeting, however, it became clear that the government and corporate agents were only interested in turning water management into a business opportunity, whereupon the NGOs and activists established an alternative forum intent on identifying access to clean water as a fundamental right . . . If we accept the position that water is a common good, and an inalienable right shared by all people, does that mean that folks in China or France have as much right to Lake Superior’s water as we do?
Perhaps we would be better served if we didn’t use the concept of human rights to justify our control of Lake Superior’s water, but rather, focused on Cibber’s observation that possession is eleven points in the law."