Nestle' Is Sucking the World's Aquifers Dry

Nestle sold $7.7 billion worth of water in 2018, the world’s largest bottled water company. It made that money by paying a pittance for water, paying Forest Service $524 a year to draw 30 million gallons of public water in San Bernardino, California; paying Evart, Michigan $250K a year for its water. Nestlé sets up shop in areas with weak water regulations. States like Maine and Texas operate under a lax rule from the 1800s called “absolute capture,” letting landowners take all the groundwater they want. Michigan, New York, and other states have stricter laws, allowing “reasonable use": property owners can extract water as long as it doesn’t unreasonably affect other wells or the aquifer system. Laws vary even within states. New Hampshire is a reasonable-use state, but in 2006, the municipality of Barnstead became the first nationwide to ban the pumping of its water for sale elsewhere