Save Our Groundwater

Community Water Justice

dhart — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:13:55 +0000

Community Water Justice is based in the Fryeburg, ME-eastern NH area and working to stop Nestle Waters N.A. d/b/a Poland Spring from appropriating community water for their bottled water enterprise. Fryeburg and several adjoining towns share a privately held public water system called the Fryeburg Water Company which would like to enter into a 25+ year contract with Nestle to provide the water. The contract is before the Maine Public Utilities Commission. Your help is needed to keep corporate hands off community water.

Concord’s water bottle-banning bylaw lives on

dhart — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:03:40 +0000

Water cycle featured on Google’s Earth Day doodle

dhart — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 02:08:03 +0000

Google celebrated Earth Day 2013 with an interactive and animated look at the water cycle in four seasons. You can check it out here: http://www.google.com/doodles/earth-day-2013 Happy Earth Day!

Exxon Mobil is found negligent in New Hampshire MTBE use

dhart — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 02:09:57 +0000

Maude Barlow at Plymouth State University, NH

dhart — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:15:52 +0000

Maude Barlow, international water activist, will kick-off Plymouth State’s Water Week with a free public talk. Maude is the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians and author of 16 books, including Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. If you haven’t heard Maude speak before, this is your opportunity to learn about the state of the world’s water and what you can do to take action to protect it. For more information, visit the event’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/112374202286496/

NH Senate Bill 167 killed in committee

dhart — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:44:38 +0000

NH Senate Bill 167 was killed by a 5-0 vote of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee March 21, 2013. The bill was deemed inexpedient to legislate, exactly what the NH Department of Environmental Services and lobbyists had asked for. The bill is dead for this session. We thank everyone who took the time to go to the public hearing and to submit written comment. Click here to review the bill’s history.

NH’s MTBE settlement cache: $136m and counting

dhart — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:44:01 +0000

NH House Bill 663-FN would consolidate DES appeals boards

dhart — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:22:27 +0000

SOG encourages you to follow House Bill 663-FN which proposes to consolidate various Department of Environmental Services (DES) appeals boards into one appeals entity. The bill is assigned to the House Resources, Recreation and Development Committee. In a February 26, 2013 letter, DES asked for the bill to be retained in committee for further study. The committee voted to do this March 5th, 2013. This means that the committee will continue to study the bill and obtain more information before bringing it back for a vote.If nothing happens in this legislative session, it will be carried over into the next one.

For updates about the bill’s status, you can check the bill’s docket, which also provides the bill text.

We are bringing this bill to your attention because it would substantially change the way that appeals of DES decisions are handled. Currently, there is four appeals councils, one for each program area that issues permits. For the DES overview of how the process works now, click here.

Free Screening of “Tapped” documentary about bottled water

dhart — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:05:11 +0000

A free screening of the award-winning documentary “Tapped” will be hosted by the Canterbury, NH Transition Town committee March 26, 2013, 7 p.m., at the Canterbury Parish Hall (behind the Canterbury Country Store). Arnie Alpert from the NH American Friends Service Committee will lead a discussion after the film. The film by Stephanie Soechtig asks is access to drinking water a right or is it a commodity that can be mined from one community and sold to others? The film features many people from Maine who have stood up to protect water from the Swiss mulitnational Nestle Waters North America’s Poland Spring water bottling operations.

NH Senate Bill 167 restores town authority in LGWs

dhart — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 16:27:11 +0000

Senate Bill 167 seeks to amend NH’s Groundwater Protection Act (RSA 485-C) by removing the language that excludes municipalities from passing ordinances about large groundwater withdrawals. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a public hearing about the bill March 13, 2013 with written comments due March 19. You can track the bill by entering SB 167 on the Senate’s bill track page. SOG is following this legislation and supported it because we believe it offers communities more water security and might foster more of a partnership approach between the state and towns in the large groundwater permitting process. We encourage you to contact members of the Committee with your written comments by March 19 and to copy your local delegation to the General Court. You may email comments to the committee’s aide Chris Cote at christopher [dot] cote [at] leg [dot] state [dot] nh [dot] us

The bill, sponsored by Senator John Reagan as a constituent request of Nottingham Selectmen Chair Mary Bonser, is trying to address the power relationship between the state and towns when it comes to local water security. Municipalities already have many ways they can act to protect water and think like a watershed such as prime wetlands zoning, aquifer protection zones, shoreland protection and declaring a proposal to be one of regional impact. It just doesn’t make sense to exclude large groundwater withdrawals which could potentially affect a town’s ability to host other businesses, expand residential housing or other land uses. Towns should not have to spend thousands of dollars defending their community water from the state’s decisions.