Asahi is bottling this town dry
- Details
- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
- Written by editor
One of the world’s largest beverage companies is bottling up a tiny Australian community’s water and selling it off for millions.
Tell Asahi to switch off the pumps and stop selling Stanley’s water now.
A,
The water tankers started rolling up the only road into Stanley village almost two years ago. Since then they haven’t stopped.
Every week, water miners pump hundreds of thousands of litres of groundwater from the town, then truck it away to be bottled and sold by one of the world’s largest beverage companies: Asahi-Schweppes.
There are no rivers in Stanley. This tiny community in the Australian state of Victoria is totally reliant... on groundwater to sustain the fruit and nut orchards which have provided the livelihood of the town’s 370 residents for over a century.
The community had no say when Asahi started bottling their water.
Even their elected local representatives, despite all their efforts, were powerless to stop it. And when residents went all the way to the Supreme Court, they lost.
The Stanley community is now scrambling to find $90,000 they’ve been ordered to pay in costs or the local community association - which runs the former school as a community centre and post office - risks facing bankruptcy to pay for it.
Corporate power is trampling over the rights of this community but SumOfUs members like you can help stop this -- by helping make sure the residents of Stanley have their story heard.
With your help, we can show Asahi that it won’t get away with riding roughshod over a community’s right to the most precious natural resource we have: water.
Demand Asahi put community rights over profits.
SumOfUs members like you have supported communities fighting to protect their water from greedy corporations across the world and have proven that when we come together, we are powerful.
In the US state of Michigan, SumOfUs members raised over $50,000 to help the small town of Osceola fight off a lawsuit from Swiss giant Nestlé which pays just $200 a year to pump millions of litres of water from near the town’s water reserves.
Members like also you worked with community activists and helped win a nine-year battle in Cascade Locks, Oregon, killing off Nestlé’s plans to start pumping there.
Now we need your help to support Stanley’s 370 residents in their David and Goliath battle with Asahi and the water miners.
Please sign the petition now and send a message to Asahi that people and planet come before profit.
Thanks for all that you do,
Nick, Kat and the team at SumOfUs
More information:
The village that fought and lost a war against the new water merchants The Age, 15 February 2018
Victorian town ordered to pay $90,000 after losing bottled water battle with farmer Guardian Australia, 30 April 2018
What happens to small towns whose water becomes big business for bottled brands? ABC, 16 May 2018
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