"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."

"When Gretchen Whitmer campaigned for Michigan governor in 2018, she took aim at Michigan’s bottled water industry — and the state policy that gave it unfettered access to free water.

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.

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."

Anna Clark reports for ProPublica with photography by Sarahbeth Maney June 6, 2024. [2]