LETTER: Bottled water is bad; bottling plant even worse

Clean water is an absolute necessity to support life on this planet. As Montanans we are fortunate to have it at our disposal. So let’s not dispose of it!

No one but Lew Weaver stands to gain from his bottling plant proposal. The DNRC states that the use of the water must be “beneficial.” To whom? Certainly not to the citizens of Montana. It is this agency’s job to “protect and conserve” our water. They are doing neither. This is a Pandora’s box that needs to be kept locked forever. To allow this to proceed literally opens the floodgates for future endeavors of this sort.

I call on our county commissioners to draft legislation which will prohibit any present and future water rights of this type. I would love to see this done statewide, but we need to start somewhere. Now is the time for DEQ to stop this process before it heads to the courts. We must get something in place immediately (and put this project on indefinite hold) in order to save ourselves a lot of future litigation.

This operation wants to bottle the equivalent of 2 billion 12-ounce water bottles a year. And this is just round one, people. Inevitably, there will be requests for expansion. (There is rumored to be another high-volume water right application in the works.) Please write, call and e-mail your representatives, the DEQ and our county commissioners to put a stop to this. There is no up-side to approving this.

And, please, help diminish the market for bottled water by using your own re-fillable bottle and purifying your tap water as needed.

In the long run, you are doing the planet a great service and saving yourself a bunch of cash.

—Sheila Zohrer, Bigfork