Nestlè Waters - "Flint" spot

[SolarMax]

Really??
Seriously??

[Arthur Mometer]

Well, after having cloudy water for over a week and being told that it was just "air", and getting GI tract and sore throat symptoms even with filtered water, and being 40 miles from the Flint City Limits, I am convinced that there may be more problems with many water systems than they are willing to admit. Finally, they blew out the hydrants and Doobie Brothers levels of Black Water came out. After that, it did clear up, and tasted better than it had in months. I went out and bought bottled water in the meantime. I would have appreciated some free bottled water from Nestle. Wondered why I was hearing wind chimes before I turned on the valve...

[tapeisrolling]

Water from those folks.... The CEO once said that water should be treated as a commodity. You get "X" gallons free then you pay for all the rest you use. This from a company that is basically getting their water for free!

[kager]

Water from those folks.... The CEO once said that water should be treated as a commodity. You get "X" gallons free then you pay for all the rest you use. This from a company that is basically getting their water for free!

So...

Nestle pays no taxes, their electricity is free, workers volunteer sted of getting a paycheck or healthcare, water just flows pre-filtered from the ground into zero-cost containers loaded by mind-control onto government-insured trucks that use wind and solar to get it to its destination.

Yep, 'basically free' in that model.

[Calvert DeForest]

Water from those folks.... The CEO once said that water should be treated as a commodity. You get "X" gallons free then you pay for all the rest you use. This from a company that is basically getting their water for free!

Water is free. Filtration, treatment and distribution is not. If Flint taught us anything it's that clean water comes at a cost. We take it for granted that what comes out of our faucet is safe for consumption. Most of the time we don't stop to think about the massive infrastructure necessary to make that happen. We think about it as much as we think about what happens when we flush our toilets. Out of sight, out of mind. The people of Flint discovered first-hand just how important that infrastructure is and what happens when leaders who don't understand the process cut corners to save a few bucks.

Fact is every drop of clean water we consume is paid for by someone in one form or another. I pay a municipal water bill every three months to cover the costs of making it clean and safe. If I was an apartment-dweller, my landlord would pay that bill and pass the cost along to me in calculating my rent. Nestle is a business marketing a product that people want to buy. I rarely drink bottled water because it doesn't make fiscal sense when I can fill a bottle from my tap for fractions of a penny-per-gallon. That being said I have no control over how other people choose to spend their money. As long as there is a demand for the product the market will respond and some some company, Nestle, Coca-Cola, etc, will provide that product for sale.

I will say that Nestle's use of the Flint crisis to prop themselves up is rather shameless and tacky. The Bible says that true charity is practiced without fanfare and expectation of return. Nestle could well have done this without tooting their own horn and using their charity for potential profit. The Parable of the widow in the temple comes to mind.

[Ed Joseph]

I never understood all the animosity toward Nestle.

If any taxpayers wish to be angry at anyone - direct that anger toward the dummies in Lansing.

Nestle is simply practicing smart business by negotiating a negligible use tax with regard to spring water. Are they supposed to go to Lansing and say "please slap us with a massive tax hike!" ?

Nestle employs hundreds & hundreds of people, probably at a decent wage, in an area of the state where large industrial employers are very few & far between.

I agree with Arthur's comments. Fortunately in his case, it sounds like it was simply a deferred maintenance issue that was easily resolvable. The biggest issue with water quality may prove to be well systems in smaller communities being infiltrated by PFAS or agricultural waste. Big, big problem in portions of Plainfield Township, Rockford, a few sections of Allegan County, and Parchment (near Kalamazoo). I suspect those communities are just the tip of the iceberg.

Came to this party late... it's so strange having this gaping hole in the message database.

I think the animosity of the majority are to corporations in general. The problem is, they're writing our bills and bribing Congress to pass them. Consumers NEVER get a break. As for directing anger towards Lansing, I think the midterm did just that.

Unfortunately, corporations create jobs. Or axe them and move them offshore to slave labor markets. It's a tit-for-tat thing.

You mentioned problems in parts of Allegan county. Having spent the last five summers up there at Sandy Pines (thank GOD I am almost free of that dollar-sucking disaster), I can tell you first hand how nasty the water is in that place. All wells, and forty tons of lawn fertilizer, bug killer, illegal rodent killers, dish soap, weed killer in the lake... you get the idea. In the last few years, almost everyone up there has gone off the deep end, to the point members are absolutely fleeing the place. I always brought bottled water up there, or at least a big jug of tap water from home. At least we aren't in the city limits here, so we've been getting the "somewhat less toxic" Detroit water. Although, I *think* we were getting switched to the Port Huron source if we haven't already.

Tap water problems are a BIG problem in the US now, especially since fracking sprawled the land. Many oil companies have been, with Prezzy boy's blessing, simply dumping their toxic waste products into streams and rivers. Great idea... Surely, no problems would come from that!