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Files Perrier Lawsuit |
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10/19/00
Friendship - Waterkeepers of Wisconsin (WOW) filed a lawsuit on October 18 in Adams County against Great Spring Water of America, Inc. (GSWA), a subsidiary of the Perrier Group, involving proposed high-capacity water wells in the town of New Haven. According to Gary Dreier of First Law Group, a Stevens Point law firm which represents WOW, the basis of the claim is the installation of commercial test wells and the proposed installation of high capacity commercial production wells violate Adams County zoning laws. WOW's lawsuit contends the shoreland protection zoning and the exclusive agricultural zoning of Adams County do not allow GSWA to place their commercial test wells and commercial production wells at sites disclosed by Perrier to the DNR. The relief requested includes the removal of wells that have already been installed, an injunction forbidding drilling, construction and utilization of wells which violate Adams County zoning ordinances, and a declaratory judgment determining the test wells may not be utilized and production wells may not be installed or utilized because they violate local zoning laws. Despite strong opposition from local residents and others, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) last month conditionally approved the application by GSWA to drill two 200 foot wells to extract 720,000 gallons of water per day, 365 days of the year from the headwaters of Big Springs in Adams County. The company also wants to build a 1 million-square foot bottling plant less than two miles away in the rural community of New Haven. The lawsuit is the second filed against the Perrier project in the past week. The local group, Concerned Citizens of Newport, has sued the DNR alleging that the agency violated its own regulations when it granted Perrier high-capacity well permits. The suit charges the agency with ignoring Wisconsin’s Environmental Protection Act and being derelict in its duty to protect the public trust. “There has been a lot of talk about how the DNR has never asked for a stricter well application out of the 9,400 well applications,” said, Mike Jacobi, of WOW. “That may be true, but we need to reemphasize that only 6 to 12 wells are extracting water directly from springs. The DNR says it has no data available on those 6 to 12 wells.”
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