Perrier, the giant international water bottling company, has announced that they will not seek renewal of a conditional permit from the DNR for development of a high capacity well east of Wisconsin Dells in Adams County.  The proposed water bottling operation has encountered intense opposition from conservation and environmental groups concerned about the mining of Wisconsin's groundwater.

"I think we have pretty well blocked them for the time being," says Hiroshi Kanno, the groundwater chair for the Wisconsin Stewardship Network and a resident of the Town of Newport, near the proposed Perrier project.

Perrier still retains options to purchase the land for the project, a point Kanno mentions as an indication that the battle could again erupt in the future.  The company had proposed pumping up to 500 gallons a minute, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year from the groundwater feeding Big Springs.  The operation would have drained up to 270 million gallons of water a year for bottling under Perrier's Ice Mountain label.

Kanno thinks one reason that Perrier's interest in the project has waned is the success of the company's new bottling operation in Michigan.  The company, despite opposition from area residents, opened a plant near Big Rapids and the Muskegon River in western Michigan.  Perrier began exploring their Michigan options after opposition to their plans surfaced in Wisconsin.

"They got in there real quick," says Kanno.  "I feel kind of bad about it because we have friends in Michigan."  He expects Perrier to mine as much groundwater as they need from their Michigan site.  "Michigan's laws," Kanno observes, "are worse than ours."

Kanno says the Wisconsin Stewardship Network played a critical role in blocking Perrier's plans here.  They helped spread the word about the project to other groups and individuals and helped build opposition to it.  Another powerful ally, he notes, was Trout Unlimited.

With the exception of municipal wells, Kanno says "we don't have any laws governing the pumping of groundwater."  It's something that he says the legislature must address.  Otherwise, Wisconsin will remain vulnerable to the whims of Perrier or other water mining giants like Coke and Pepsi.