Pennsylvania, not unlike many states in the Union, is fighting a multi-pronged attack on their public water. Whether Pennsylvanians are trying to keep their drinking water from being contaminated by fracking operators, or just trying to stop bottling companies from privatizing public water, they have their hands full. Kunkletown, Pennsylvania has earned a small victory in one of those battlefields.
Eric Andreaus, a hydrogeologist and spokesperson for Nestlé Waters North America, stood up during a monthly Eldred Township meeting in Kunkletown, Pennsylvania, on June 8, 2016, and announced that Nestlé was abandoning its plans to extract 73 million gallons of water per year from the local aquifer for its bottled water business.
Sitting in the crowd with the other members of the public was Donna Diehl, a local school bus driver and one of the community organizers who had been helping lead the fight against Nestlé's proposal for over a year. She, like most everyone else who attended the meeting, was shocked.
"They were going through the agenda, and [the] Nestlé water issue came up. All of us were surprised when Eric stood up to speak, and at first I was wondering where he was going with it. Then the last sentence came," Diehl told Truthout.
Not everyone was shocked. Nestlé tried their best to get strict zoning laws changed in order to grease the wheels of “justice” in their favor but community activists sued and put more pressure on Nestlé.
"I felt very confident right from the very start; they couldn't meet the zoning rules," said Don Moore, an engineer who maintains a blog where he has documented the fight to keep Nestlé out of Kunkletown. "But, Nestlé could have made billions on this aquifer. I thought it had to be worth it to them to stay in it as long as they could. I was pretty surprised when they withdrew."
When asked why he thought Nestlé walked away when it did, Moore reflected on the lawsuit filed on December 17, 2015, by Diehl and four others against the Eldred Township Board of Supervisors, alleging that the area's zoning rules were surreptitiously and unlawfully changed.
Lawsuits meant depositions and the bile that rises out of depths of greed can be unseemly, especially in the days of social media and increased scrutiny.