LETTER: Adverse effects? There are plenty

In the shadow of Glacier National Park, on a peaceful, pristine bend of the Flathead River, someone has applied for and will soon be granted a permit to plop down a factory that will truck in plastic, turn it into water bottles, fill up to 2 BILLION of them every year, truck them back out to sell, then output all chemical and geothermal waste on the banks of the river as well as back into the surrounding environment.

I am a local resident who has water rights, but like most others in the area, Lew Weaver (owner of the Montana Artesian Water Co.) has “seniority” on the water right totem pole, making it impossible for us to fight his permit request for millions of gallons more for use in this plastic water bottling plant.

DNRC has stated that no “adverse effects” are in store for residents as far as sucking millions of extra gallons from the aquifer that lies under the valley, but they have, in the same statement admitted that well depths could go down by as much as 20 feet. When we have to drill down furher and further for our precious resource, that is indeed an “adverse effect.”

With the top news story being the waste spill from Big Sky, that is our crystal ball! WASTE PONDS FAIL! I do not want to be handed a water test kit as are many Montanans this month because of the failure of waste areas near rivers in “The Last Best Place.”

“Rinsing” the factory-made plastic bottles requires chemicals. In California’s Crystal Geyser plant, the soil tests reveal toxins such as barium, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, lead, nickel, chromium, thallium and sulphate. (See Huffington Post, May 20, 2015)

I wonder why a longtime resident of beautiful Montana would even CONSIDER this bottling factory a good idea? Possibly there is a corporation which has done its homework and sought out the property owner with the oldest water rights? In the case of the Crystal Geyser factory, the corporation swooped into the small town of 92 people and dangled the prize of 80 new jobs. Too late, with nearby water supplies gone, residents were too poor to fight back for their right to clean drinkable well water.

How sadly ironic that should this insane manufacturing plant be introduced to the area, many, many, many residents would be forced to buy bottled water!

Let’s stop this madness and also speak for the wildlife in and around the river and look past the initial jobs this could provide for a few. Fish, waterfowl, and fauna have rights too.

Plastic water bottles are not something for Montanans to be proud to produce.

—Jean Rachubka, Kalispell