A Bottled Water Company in Michigan Is Still Extracting Millions of Gallons of Water for Free
www.propublica.org
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had pledged to crack down on bottled water companies taking water at the same time Flint, Michigan, faced a water crisis. Six years later and in her second term, little has changed.

Nestle was extracting hundreds of millions of gallons of groundwater a year, which it bottled and sold under the Ice Mountain brand. The only cost: a $200 yearly fee per site. The company asked the state for a 60% boost in how much it could take from a well that draws from the source of two cold-water trout streams. At the time, the Flint water crisis was still in the spotlight, contributing to broad pushback. Nearly 81,000 public comments opposed the permit request; 75 supported it. Get Our Top Investigations

In April of that year, state officials said they didn’t have any grounds to deny the request and gave Nestle the go-ahead. The same week, the state said it would stop providing bottled water to Flint.

Most of Nestle’s North American water brands were bought in 2021 by a private equity firm and an investment firm in a $4.3 billion deal. The company, now called BlueTriton Brands, gave up the controversial permit, but it still pumps groundwater from the same wells at minimal cost.