Floridians Will Suffer In The Future

When you buy a bottle of water, have you ever thought about how much it cost to produce that one bottle of water? An article published by St. Petersburg Times discusses how much Nestle pays for raw materials. They pay nothing for pumping the hundreds of millions of gallons of water belonging to Floridians. They pay no taxes, no fees; all they had to do was purchase $230 permit to pump water until 2018. Nestle not only makes a profit from selling their own products, they also ship water out to private companies for additional profit.

Recently Florida has been having issues with droughts due to not enough rain and the increasing population. With the amount of water Nestle is drawing from the spring, it may cause a shortage of the water supply. Local water management district staff of Madison Blue Spring has stress the need for Nestle to cut the amount of water they draw by more than two-thirds. Nestle response to this issue is:

Nestle says Floridians should be grateful. Its bottling plant has generated taxes and created jobs. "You're talking about millions and millions of dollars in tax benefit,'' said spokesman Jim McClellan.”It's a very good deal for the state of Florida.''

Nestle and other large companies in Florida are not worried about the future. All they seem to worry about are their profits. With the amount of water they’re drawing from the spring, soon many Floridians will have issues with their water supply because the state chooses to do nothing. After many years of continuous droughts and people not having water for everyday tasks, I wonder if the state will step in and attempt to solve this problem.