Breaking News: There will be a public hearing held on SB-753 by the Environment Committee on Friday February 3rd beginning at 10 AM in Room 1D of the Legislative Office Building.
Protect CT’s Water Security: Provide Oversight for Large Water Bottlers: A STUDY BILL IS NOT ENOUGH!1/30/2017
Bill to "study" Expanded Water Bottling will be the only "water bill" allowed to come up for a hearing. Powerful Opponents want to "study" water bottling, while leaving it without any oversight. While the drought continues, CT will still be open to corporate water raids. A Letter to Our Legislators: As our state continues to suffer from a withering drought, I am calling on you to protect our public trust waters. With climate change an ever-increasing concern, it’s crucial to preserve our Grade A drinking water and protect our watersheds, not only for the immediate future but for generations to come. We need to ensure adequate water supply for our homes, environment, agriculture, businesses, and recreation before allocating it irretrievably to private corporations. Last year we saw a multi-national water bottling company establish itself in our state with virtually no public input or state oversight. Niagara Bottling of California received local tax abatements and unprecedented discounts on water and sewer rates (Clean Water Project rates) on up to 1.8M gallons/day of Grade A municipal drinking water. No environmental review or state permitting was required. No expiration date on its claim to state waters was placed. While drought warnings were sent to much of the state asking residents to conserve, this corporation was preparing to ship millions of single-serve plastic water bottles out of the watershed and beyond state borders. To our dismay, our current state drought plans do not include mandatory restrictions on this large-scale extraction until long after residents are voluntarily cutting back and reservoirs are at dangerously low levels. SB-753 recognizes critical issues confronting Connecticut’s water supplies and environment as major water bottlers move into our state. However, study alone is essentially a call to inaction for 2 more years. As such, SB-753 is flawed if left without revision. We need legislation NOW that provides sensible, reasonable oversight of any sizeable expansion of the bottled water industry:
A STUDY BILL (SB-753) ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH! It is essentially a call to INACTION. CT's WATER NEEDS PROTECTION NOW! Water is a Public Trust, not a Corporate Asset.
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Save Our Water CT
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