The Stream, October 10: Nestle Chairman Supports Higher Prices for Big Water Users

Water Pricing
The more water you use, the more you should pay for it, says Nestle’s Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Bloomberg News reported. Brabeck-Letmathe spoke at a Nestle corporate sustainability meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland yesterday. “For rare resources, the economy of scale is the biggest mistake you can have,” he asserted, referring to the common practice of charging a smaller unit price for bulk water purchases.

Water Pollution
A lab manager for a company that monitors water pollution in West Virginia pled guilty yesterday to conspiring to violate the Clean Water Act. John W. Shelton, a former employee at Appalachian Laboratories in Daniels, West Virginia, has confessed to tampering with water samples associated with coal mining operations in the region, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. He admits to diluting and/or substituting samples to make sure pollution appeared to be within acceptable limits.

Water Governance
In Southeast Michigan, the development of a new regional water authority to replace the embattled Detroit Water and Sewerage District is making headway. A plan to include Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties as well as the City of Detroit in the creation of the “Great Lakes Water Authority” was approved by Oakland County on Wednesday and by Macomb County on Thursday, CBS Detroit reported. The City of Detroit approved the plan last month, and Wayne County approved it last week. The plan allows Detroit to retain ownership of the system, but gives the suburbs more control and requires that they pay $US 50 million annually to Detroit for the next 40 years.

Water Conservation
Two university students in the United Kingdom are urging their classmates to urinate in the shower in order to save water, BBC News reported. Chris Thompson and Debs Torr, of the University of East Anglia, have started a campaign called “Go With the Flow”. They say that if all residents of the United Kingdom took part, water savings could amount to 720 million liters annually.