Corporate giant Nestlé continued its privatization creep on Thursday as it won approval to take over another Canadian community’s water supply, claiming it needed the well to ensure “future business growth.”
Nestlé purchased the well near Elora, Ontario from Middlebrook Water Company last month after making a conditional offer in 2015, the Canadian Press reports.
In August, the Township of Centre Wellington made an offer to purchase the Middlebrook well site to protect access to the water for the community. Consequently, the multinational—which claimed it had no idea the community was its competitor—waived all its conditions and matched the township’s offer in order to snag the well for itself.
Those conditions included conducting pump tests to determine if the watershed met the company’s quality and quantity requirements, the Canadian Press reports.
Moreover, Nestlé has stated that the Middlebrook site will only be a backup for its other nearby well and bottling plant in Aberfoyle, where the corporation already draws up to 3.6 million liters (roughly 951,000 gallons) of water a day. The company reportedly plans to extract as much as 1.6 million liters (almost 423,000 gallons) a day from Middlebrook to be transported to its bottling facility.
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