By BILL BERRY
of The Gazette
The president of Perrier Group of America told a Stevens Point audience Wednesday afternoon that the company has been treated unfairly by state legislators and some state regulators.
Perrier is committed to protecting natural resources, said Kim Jeffery. But that message didn't get out in Wisconsin, he told an environmental law class at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He was invited to speak by class instructor Ralph Christensen, retired chief of law enforcement for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
Perrier is also pursuing a well site in Michigan for its Ice Mountain brand of spring water. "We're probably going to be successful in Michigan. We may never be in Wisconsin," Jeffery said. Perrier, part of the international food company Nestle, has received environmental awards from groups around the country, so it found the treatment it received in Wisconsin to be "disconcerting," he said.
The company hasn't completely escaped controversy in other states. Petitions opposing Perrier have been circulated in Michigan, and citizens have complained about Perrier's water extraction in Texas and Florida.
The company first attempted to locate a Wisconsin manufacturing facility at the headwaters of the Mecan River in central Wisconsin's Waushara County. Rebuffed there, it turned its attention to Big Springs in nearby Adams County. The DNR has issued a provisional permit to Perrier for the Big Springs site. County rezoning would be needed to locate the plant there, but the company has not sought that.
"There's a sense of fairness here that I feel hasn't been delivered by legislators and regulators who are representing these people," he said. Jeffery didn't include the state DNR in that company. "The DNR has been fantastic," he said. But Jeffery added that it was a leak from within DNR to the press that squashed Perrier's efforts in Waushara County. The company was caught by surprise by that and was put in a crisis mode, he said.
He contrasted opposition in Wisconsin to support Perrier has received in Michigan. "The people in Michigan went and did their homework about who we are," he said.
Jeffery criticized a bill proposed last year by state Sen. Kevin Shibilski, D-Stevens Point, that would have put more stringent regulation on spring water bottling companies while exempting other large capacity well users, including agriculture. That bill passed in the state Senate last year but died in the Assembly.
"It's selective natural resource protection. Why wasn't anyone getting outraged at anyone else?" he said.
George Kraft, director of the Central Wisconsin Ground Water Center at UW-Stevens Point, told Jeffery his own company erred in its efforts to locate a manufacturing facility here. He cited as an example a statement by a company representative that if people didn't want Perrier in Wisconsin, the company wouldn't locate here. Still, the company has pursued a spring site, Kraft said. Jeffery admitted that the company erred in that statement but defended its overall efforts and its environmental record.
"People really concerned about water quality and water resources shouldn't be looking at us," he said. Agriculture and industry are the two biggest water users in the nation, he said. "It's better to be in business with someone like us, rather than someone mining water without regard for what's happening below."
Perrier needs a new Midwest site because of rising demand, he said. He called Big Springs a degraded spring site in need of improvement and said the company would also invest in purchasing nearby lands to keep them in a natural state.
Despite the company's difficulties in Wisconsin, the controversy has been good for the environment, he said. "For better or worse, we've become the catalyst for people to ask questions about water ecology and water resources," he said.
Jeffery found a recent phone call from a state legislator to be ironic. The lawmaker asked Perrier to donate bottled water to citizens of western Wisconsin whose water supplies were tainted by recent floods. The company donated four truckloads of water, he said.