| 8/00 |
TO:
David Weitz |
FR:
Tom Wilson |
Testimony before the DNR regarding:
ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS AND DECISION ON THE NEED FOR AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT (EIS) Great Spring Waters of America, Inc. a.k.a. Perrier Group of AmericaThank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. I represent Northern Thunder, a grassroots environmental organization that has been active in Western Wisconsin for over a quarter of a century. I am also Western Regional Hub for the Wisconsin Stewardship Network and am serving on the Water Resources Committee of Trout Unlimited and, although we have spoken at length on these issues in these organizations, I cannot at this point say I am speaking for either groups or their supporting chapters and organizations.
August 1, 2000
There are many areas of the DNR's Environmental Analysis that we could discuss tonight, and there are certainly many people speaking more eloquently than I on many issues of local concern or of specific environmental threats. However, I would like to take issue with the DNR’s claim that “The project is reversible in that water withdrawals could be halted and the bottling plant, wells and pipelines could be removed. Wells could be properly abandoned to prevent pollution risks to groundwater and disturbed areas could be restored to agricultural use.”1
It is well documented that the cone of depression from a major draw down of an aquifer exacerbates the transport of near-surface pollutants (such as resulting from agricultural chemical applications) which can, in turn, pollute the entire aquifer. Nitrate accumulation in the rural waters of much of the State of Iowa being a case in point. This may or may not be a guaranteed threat from this particular project, but to summarily dismiss the possibility of irreversible environmental damage is unconscionable and clearly points to the need for a full scale Environmental Impact Statement based on true long-term draw-down studies and an analysis of the possible pollutants present in the recharge area.
This fact, notwithstanding, I would primarily like to focus my attention to Sections 22, and 24 of the Environmental Analysis, Significance of Cumulative Effects and Significance of Precedent.
Section 22 rightfully addresses the concerns I outlined in a previous hearing on this project relating to the precedent-setting nature of this project with regard to potential future wholesale export of waters from our aquifer in either pipeline or supertanker. Lumping wholesale export of water with beer brewing (why not milk production?) is diversionary and does not respect either the value-added nature of these operations nor the potential scale of export from either industry. Equally distorting is the comparison of wholesale export of water to other high capacity wells (mostly irrigation) that are only operated intermittently and to a large extent recharge the aquifer.
The DNR appears to be dismissing this concern on the basis of the nature of the water export. “The Great Lakes Charter…was developed mainly to address direct large-scale water withdrawals and diversions, such as via pipelines, outside the Great Lakes basin.”2 This runs in opposition to guidelines exercised by the World Trade Organization (WTO) with regard to Process and Production Methods (PPM’s).3
Trade restrictions based on PPMs are in most cases contrary to WTO rules, unless such restrictions are necessary to enforce product performance characteristics.” and a general rejection of the Precautionary Principle under which “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation…Even a narrow interpretation of the precautionary principle could threaten the very functioning of the multilateral trade system.”4
These two tenants of world trade policy leave the door wide open to future mass export of our water resources by any means. The Process and Production Methods essentially says it doesn’t matter whether the water is being exported in pint bottles, supertankers or pipelines; it is still water and if you allow one company to export it is one form you can’t restrict another from choosing a different means of packaging or transport. And the rejection of the Precautionary Principle demands absolute proof that irreversible damage will occur despite the overwhelming wishes of the local populace or their government.
Water is the commodity of the next century, and those who possess it and control it could be in a position to control the world’s economy.
At present, there are probably more questions than answers under world trade regulations. Among the outstanding questions are:
In section 24, the DNR concludes that the approval of this project would not supercede its authority to deny future water extraction projects. “A decision on this project would not commit the Department in making future decisions for similar projects at other locations.”6 This may be true within the confines of State law but here again, the DNR has failed to consider the historic record of how the World Trade Organization and other supra-national tribunals have decided similar matters.
To these organizations, precedent is supreme because any divergence from a previously enacted policy is deemed an unfair restraint of trade. And lest the DNR assume that their own position is defensible within its own internal policies of protection of the environment and “Any such proposals would be considered on their own merits and issues according to applicable regulatory rules/processes,” the historic track record of the WTO tribunals is that whenever a decision has been reached where environmental concerns conflict with free access to trade opportunities—in excess of 30 such decisions—the environment has lost every time7 and in every case, the WTO decision has superceded state, national or even transnational agreements (such as the Great Lakes Compact).
Once wholesale water export is defined as a commodity available for international trade, there is little or nothing the DNR or anyone else can do to help stem the flow. “Under NAFTA and the WTO agreements, a government cannot reduce or restrict the export of a resource to another signatory country once the export flow has been established. Barlow points out "if the export of water were to commence between NAFTA countries, the tap couldn't be turned off, even if new evidence found that massive movements of water were harmful to the environment."8
In short, the DNR’s analysis of the impacts of this decision may be adequate as far as it goes, but the DNR has failed to consider the larger global implications of this decision. There is no indication in the text of this analysis or in the list of experts consulted that the DNR has even remotely considered the international legal implications of this project. This was the issue I raised at the last hearing and the fact that the DNR failed to respond to those concerns simply shows the inadequacy of this analysis.
As we are constantly reminded, we do live in a global economy and water resources are clearly a global issues. The middle East is in turmoil over control of the Golan Heights source of fresh water for Israel and Palestine. Sadam Hussain’s attempted annihilation of the Kurdish people is not a racial war but a war to control the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Water resource wars have been fought for decades in America’s Western states and are ongoing as cattle ranchers fight Los Angeles developers and mining interests over access to this precious resource.
It is technically and economically feasible to meet these water needs from Wisconsin’s aquifers! “Water is the commodity of the next century, and those who posses it and control it could be in a position to control the world’s economy.”9 The time is now to define whether we consider our pure water a resource we wish to preserve for our own people or whether we are willing to define it as a commodity to share with the rest of the world.
We’ve never fought the battle over water rights here in Wisconsin because we believed we had an unlimited resource. Even this DNR analysis claims: “From a global perspective water is a renewable resource.”10 The question is not whether the world will run out of water—there are plenty of oceans to tap—the concern is that fresh, potable water is not a renewable resource and as long as we continue on the path we are heading in this decision, it is a steadily depleting resource (we shouldn’t have to remind the DNR of this fact).
Only about one percent of the water in the Great Lakes is renewed by rain each year.11 The very fact that Perrier’s customers need our resource attests to the fact that people in other parts of the country and the world have already either used up or befouled their own “renewable” resource of potable water. It is to the credit of the DNR, Wisconsin’s responsible agricultural and manufacturing community and everyone one of its concerned citizens that we have been able to preserve this precious resource for our own use.
The historic track record of the WTO tribunals is that whenever a decision has been reached where environmental concerns conflict with free access to trade opportunities—in excess of 30 such decisions—the environment has lost every time."
Let us not turn our backs on that legacy simply for the benefit of a few foreign stockholders of a multinational corporation or the short term profit of a handful of landowners or real estate developers who might make a few thousand bucks off of this deal. The fact that Wisconsin does not have a comprehensive water rights policy in place simply opens up our resource to any individual who wants to buy a couple of acres of land and sink a well.
We all know that the aquifer being tapped does not respect that legal surface boundary of the property line. The fact that we have not as yet dealt with this issue in a comprehensive manner does not excuse the DNR from not considering the environmental implications of water mining in the absence of such regulations. Such an analysis can only be accomplished with a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement.
The DNR gives lip service to this issue in Section 22 when it states, “…it can be expected that there will be an increasing future demand on available water resources. This will also increase the chance of future conflicts over water use. For the Department to properly and fully address and prevent serious water resource or use problems in the future, the Department believes changes are needed to clarify and expand the Departments’ (sic) regulatory authority.”12
That is not enough. The document under discussion here is not supposed to be simply an analysis of the DNR’s opportunities under present Wisconsin Law, but rather it is supposed to be an “environmental analysis and decision on the need for an environmental impact statement.” As such, it should go far beyond the narrow state-mandated regulatory authority under present regulations. It should focus on the Department’s primary mandate by analyzing the broad environmental impacts and protecting Wisconsin’s resources by looking at the whole picture including the environmental threat of international trade precedent.
Section 24 b. requires the DNR to “Describe any conflicts the proposal has with plans or policy of local, state or federal agencies that provide for the protection of the environment. [and] Explain the significance.”13 Since State and Federal policy has been dictated by the new political/economic realities of world trade rules and sanctions, such a global regulatory analysis is essential to really understand the significance of this permit.
What the DNR allows here will set the precedent for what the WTO will
insist on in future claims to Wisconsin’s water resources. Just as
the DNR must by extension consider its authority, obligations and the implications
of its local decisions under the umbrella of State, Federal, interstate
commerce and Great Lakes Compact agreements, so too must it here
consider the decisions it makes under the realpolitik of
international law, US international treaty obligations and the omniscient
hand of the World Trade Organization. To do any less is a gross abrogation
of its environmental oversight responsibilities and a failure to fully
analyze the need for an Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed
project by Great Spring Waters of America, Inc. a.k.a. Perrier Group of
America.
_____________________________
Footnotes:
1. Environmental Analysis And Decision On The Need For An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Great Spring Waters of America, Inc. a.k.a. Perrier Group of America, WiDNR Section 21 b.
2. ibid.
3. WTO Rules and the Trade and Environmental Interface: an ICME Assessment, International Council on Metals and the Environment, September 1999, p. 5.
4. Op cit. p. 6.
5. What’s Trade Got to Do with It? Water a Case Study, National Wildlife Federation November 1999.
6. WiDNR Section 24
7. Admission by WTO Chair Michael Moore on public access television, December 1, 1999.
8. Water, Water Everywhere To Be Sold To The Highest Bidder, Ruth Caplan, Alliance for Democracy, 1999.
9. Tom Osborne quoted in the Washington Post, August 22, 1999, op cit.
10. WiDNR Section 22. Significance of Cumulative Effects.
11. What’s Trade Got to Do with It? Water a Case Study, National Wildlife Federation November 1999.
12. WiDNR Section 22. Significance of Cumulative Effects.
13. WiDNR Section 24 Significance of Precedent.
