The Highwire with Del Bigtree - WATER WARS

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Farmers are crying foul as the growing bottled water industry lays claim to water sources crucial to the health of much needed crops. It’s a war for water that could have a critical impact on our food supply.#WaterWars #Farming #PolandSpringsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

One of the towns that is seeing these droughts, these historic droughts, is Hollis, Maine. And there's an unfolding story going on there around their water supply in York County. That's the county that houses that city. And this is what the headlines look like. Despite drought, Poland Springs wants to extract more water in Hollis. This is the water bottling company. The next headline goes, Poland Springs seeks town approval to double water extraction in Hollis. Locals express concern.

And in the article, it says, in York County, where Hollis is located, 83.6% of residents are currently affected by drought. It's the driest year to date that the county's had in 128 years. So Poland Springs is asking to go from 30 million gallons per year extraction to 60. So they put a request in for that. And the townspeople were very, very unhappy. So the planning board just finished its second meeting yesterday. They had no resolution.

So they're going to have another meeting on September 14th. So anybody in that area that wants to be a part. of this can go and check that out. But that's what's happening there. And in Poland Springs is a subsidiary of Nestle, but Nestle was acquired by Blue Triton just recently. So Blue Triton is this Bohemoth. It's now owned by a private equity firm in New York. And they have Arrowhead, Poland Springs, Ice Mountain, all of these water bottle companies are owned by this large company. But this isn't the first time we've seen this behavior, you know, against the backdrop of a drought, you really get to see this behavior of some of these big companies. Last year in California

in San Bernardino, Strawberry Creek, this was the headlines there facing drought. That was last year. California challenges Nestle over water use. I contacted the California State Water Board this week, and they said they had sent a cease and desist letter at that time. And these hearings are still going on. They're not expected to be done with these hearings until probably late 2022 or 2023. So the challenge there stopped that, which was good news for the townspeople. there. But that is in the headlines here. And this is the fight to stop Nestle. That's actually what the headlines are saying. The fight to stop Nestle from taking America's water to sell in plastic bottles. And this was before they obviously sold to Blue Triton. But what's happening now in California,

obviously we're having another drought in California and check out these headlines. This is how the people are treated. In California's water crisis, neighbors turn to neighbors and even celebrities aren't spared. And the byline says water authorities have been installing flow restrictors on the homes of the region's wealthiest residents for using too much water. And, you know, really one of the biggest... Let's just, I want to, let's bring that headline up, because this is part of what we're doing here at the high wire. And I want everyone to get ready for this, because, you know,

the needle is moving of the issues that we are here to discuss, right? We have made our way. We've got Tony Fauci who lied to the world running into the hills, and we haven't taken our sights off of him. But when we're asking ourselves, where's the government moving now? They don't want to give up on controlling us. They don't want to give up on tracking us. So everyone just look at this headline really quickly and look how familiar this looks.

In California's water crisis, neighbors turn to neighbors and even celebrities aren't spared. How long ago was it when neighbors in California were being told to turn each other in over mass? How long ago was it when California was shutting off your power if you had more than 10 people over for Thanksgiving? Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom is having giant dinners and birthday parties at his own club events. So there's a shift going on here, and it's something that we're going to start exploring here on the high wire. We may be moving away from the vaccine at the moment. We shouldn't take our eyes off of it, but is it possible tracking systems and things like that are going to be based on now environmental issues, climate change, droughts, things like that.

I mean, this is, you know, it's like the exact same playbook when you really put the focus on it, isn't it, Jeffrey? Right. We're seeing the same overlay of these restrictions that we really were, thought were repugnant during the coronavirus. We're seeing the same overlay being used for it looks like water, environmental restrictions. So this is really one of the more concerning headlines here talking about farmers in California. We know the farmers have been under attack. California farmers warned to stop diverting water in drought hit areas. And why is that important? Because when you look

at the bottles, bottling company says bottled at the source. So they go right to the source of this of the water and they take that. But everyone downstream is having some issues with that. So some of the farmers, obviously, because of the drought are trying to divert some water to keep their farms going. And California is appearing to drop the hammer on there. But we hear about Blue Triton. Well, and I would assume that's again. You have lobbying issues, right? This is what we've just gotten through with the vaccines.

You have these giant, you know, powerful Nestle companies now Blue Triton that is lobbying your politicians in California. So the farmer doesn't win. The farmers can't get enough support to go in the way that, you know, Blue Triton can go in and fund politicians and fund all the education. and say, hey, we got a problem here. We got some farmers up river that are digging into our water that we own. Used to be your water. Now it's our water. I mean, this is the problem, right?

This is the problem. And I'll be honest. And I've said this before. I'm still an environmentalist. I still want clean air, clean water, clean food. But the way all this is going about, I thought the only purpose of a government was to protect us from these giant industries that are stealing things from us, poisoning us, when they shouldn't be.

But now we have a problem because. all these regulatory agencies that these industries basically own are making decisions through our government against the citizens. This is what, you know, is such a big part of what we need to change in this country if we want it to remain the dream that our founding fathers had. And that's the big issue when you peel back the layer of these front-facing companies. But the front-facing layer uses words like sustainable, uses words like, we're doing this for the environment. So when you go to the Blue Triton website, they have the word on their, sustainability, sustainable. Well, this was actually challenged in court. And this was an article from

the intercept. It says bottled water giant blue triton admits claims of recycling and sustainability are puffery. So they were sued under unfair and deceptive trade practices act. And they said, well, these words like we believe deeply and sustainability, these are aspirational terms. And they really can't be proven true or false. So in the court documents, those words were called non-actionable puffery. So when you see these words, you're looking at just, some slick, really slick PR, which is kind of concerning. But one of the biggest videos coming out of the water industry was in the early 2000s, and I want to remind viewers of this, this was the head of Nestle at the time.

And he was discussing, is water a human right? If you haven't seen this video, it's time you watch it. Take a look. So water is, of the most of the raw material that we're people now on the world have. It's about whether it's normal water-versorgation of the people privatize or not. And there are two different, and the one of the

ansharming, would I say, would I say, will be from the NGOs, who are they on upho, that water to a public right that's right-aclared with. That is, as a man, should they just have to have,

that is the one extreme solution. And the other, the other, that says, water is a life as

as every other life-mittles, should that a market-were Wow. Yet again, it's like another Bond villain

that is running such an important company and as I sit here and watch this Jeffrey I mean this is in real time I was just thinking you mentioned one of these bottling companies that you know I've had water delivered to my house I brag about drinking spring water I think we all have got to sort of come to terms with how do we start you know making a difference we've got to withdraw our voting dollars if you will from these companies that are stealing from our farmers stealing from our citizens and and find new ways and so in many ways

ways, honey, if you're watching this, as I know you are, I think we got to get our filtration systems up on our house and running again. And we just can't be supporting these companies that are, you know, basically corporatizing and monopolizing what I do believe is a human right. If water isn't a human right, then what's next? Air, oh my God. Exactly. You just got done where air was illegal to breathe. It's kind of scary. Exactly. Sorry to make some more work for your household, but that is a very key step here. We all have to do our part, right? It's not easy. It's not easy to live rightly in this world these days.