Help Wellington County aquire ownership of Aberfoyle, Elora and Erin wells to ensure water as a human right
Aquifers provide water for drinking, irrigation, industrial processes, and environmental uses. Aquifers are also drained by multinationals who bottle and sell it for profit outside the watershed.
Photo: Provided by Water Watchers
March is World Water Month! And, March 22nd is World Water Day! So, raise a glass of tap water to toast the fact that Canada is home to about 20 per cent of the world's freshwater reserves! A large portion of that fresh water is found in lakes, underground aquifers and glaciers.
Unfortunately, Canada is home to only seven per cent of the world's renewable freshwater supply. And, yes, that is important to the whole fresh water issue.
Fossil water, which often goes unmentioned, is ancient groundwater that accumulated in aquifers over thousands, or even millions, of years. Fossil water typically formed during wetter climatic periods anywhere from 4,000 to 20,000 years ago depending on the site. Fossil water is considered a non-renewable resource.
Aquifers provide water for drinking, irrigation, industrial processes, and environmental uses like generating geothermal energy. Aquifers are also drained by multinationals who bottle local ground water and sell it out of the watershed and even the country.
While most communities in Ontario draw their water from the Great Lakes, cities like Guelph, Aberfoyle, Elora and Erin, among others located in Wellington County, rely on aquifers and surface water to fill all their water needs.
Increasing demands are being placed on the aquifers in Wellington County due to population growth, while climate change -- including extended droughts – means aquifers can no longer replenish their stores through rain and snow falls.
Additionally, all those hard surfaces that accompany population growth like asphalt driveways and roads, concrete driveways, patios and sidewalks, as well as weeping tiles, divert stormwater to creeks, streams, and rivers.
However, the fate of Guelph, Aberfoyle, Elora and Erin essentially lies in the hands of Premier Doug Ford. That’s because Primo Brands Corporation, headquartered in both Tampa, Florida and Stamford, Connecticut, is in the process of selling the Aberfoyle well and bottling facility along with wells in Elora and Erin to Ice River and White Wolf Property Management.
Ice River maintains it’s a family-run Canadian bottled water company owned and managed by the Gott family with a subsidiary located in Hialeah Gardens, a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida.
And, that should concern folks in Wellington County, as well as all Ontarians and Canadians, given the fact that President Donald Trump would like nothing more than to take control of Canada’s fresh water.
The Wellington County wells have a long and turbulent history as a water mining battleground dating back to 2000 when Nestlé, a Swiss multinational conglomerate corporation, bought wells in Aberfoyle and Hillsburgh.
Nestlé was permitted, by the Ontario government, to mine the equivalent of up to 3.6 million litres per day in Aberfoyle and another 1.1 million per day from Hillsburgh. The potential combined total of over 686 Olympic-sized pools of water every year was bottled in plastic at the Aberfoyle facility and sold outside of the watershed and Canada.
Nestlé then bought the Middlebrook well in Elora in 2016. The private sale saw Nestlé out compete the Township of Centre Wellington that was trying to purchase the well in order to accommodate expected population growth and to safeguard their water supply.
The Elora community successfully campaigned to have the Wynne government impose a moratorium on new water taking permits for bottling in 2017 and that moratorium remains in place. Those actions prevented Nestlé from extracting 1.6 million litres of groundwater per day from the Middlebrook well. However, the potential to overturn the moratorium continues to loom large.
At the time of the Middlebrook sale, The Council of Canadians called on the province to expropriate the well and give it to the local municipality. That would have ensured the aquifer and the water it contained remained in the public commons and was used for the common good.
Photo credit: Curtis Gordon/Wellington Advertiser
Blue Triton Brands, an American company based in Stamford, Connecticut and a former subsidiary of Nestlé, purchased all three wells along with the Aberfoyle bottling facility from Nestlé in 2021 and continued taking billions of litres of groundwater from the Hillsburgh and Aberfoyle wells.
Water Watchers (WW) wanted Nestlé to exclude the Aberfoyle, Hillsburgh and Elora wells from the 2021 sales and return them to their respective public municipalities. WW, a grassroots non-profit working for water protections, asked the Ford government to step in and buy the wells when it became clear Nestlé had no intention of returning the wells to their respective municipalities. The Ford government did not intervene.
Six Nations of the Grand River, located along the Grand River in Southwestern Ontario, is the largest reserve in Canada by population and the second largest by land mass. Yet, over 91 per cent of households have no access to clean potable water. Instead, many households spend upwards of $2,500 annually buying bottled water.
The Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy Council of the Grand River Territory and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy delivered a cease-and-desist order to Nestlé Waters Canada in 2019. The order demanded the multinational corporation stop taking 3.6 million litres of water per day from their lands which are covered by the Haldimand Proclamation and the 1701 Nafan Treaty. Nestlé ignored the order and the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Parks extended the permit for five years in the towns of Erin and Aberfoyle.
Nestlé eventually caved to pressure from water activists including WW and sold to Blue Triton in 2021. Blue Triton ignored the cease-and-desist order when it acquired the water taking permits as well as when it applied for a renewal of Nestlé’s former permit to take water from Wellington County in 2021.
According to the City of Guelph’s website, water supplies are taking longer to replenish and are more vulnerable to overuse. Extending the mining of the local Aberfoyle and Erin aquifers runs the risk of these towns and surrounding areas running of out of water for their own needs.
Artist, activist and Hillsburgh land steward, Rochelle Rubinstein (Right) on Bela farm with Blue Triton’s Hillsburgh facility in the background Credit: Bela Farm website
The Town of Erin is in the process of actively seeking new well sources to meet current population growth targets. In addition to new wells being extremely costly to source, dig and build, the Credit Valley, Toronto and Region, and Central Lake Ontario (CTC) Source Protection Plan and Assessment Report highlighted 16 possible or existing significant drinking water threats located on nine separate parcels situated within the protection area of the proposed E9 well that could require up to seven risk management plans.
It’s ridiculous that the Town of Erin is sourcing and digging a new well when a perfectly good well already exists. The best option for Erin Township would be to purchase the Blue Triton Hillsburgh well. The same is true for Aberfoyle and Elora who also need new wells to accommodate mandated provincial growth.
Ice River maintains they are a family-run Canadian bottled water company owned and managed by the Gott family that also owns its own recycling facility. But being Canadian is not really the point. The root of the issue is that water is a human right that should never be commodified and shipped outside of the watershed for profit. Especially, during a climate crisis and to the detriment of locals.
Obvious American connections are also red flags because what happens if the Hialeah Gardens office becomes the head office for Ice River? Or, what happens if political decisions made south of the border means implementing America First or Project 2025’s right-wing agendas that may well be in the best interest of Americans, but not locals, Ontarians and Canadians?
That’s not so far fetched given the reality that Trump could effectively parlay water and water rights into being in the best interest of America’s economic, physical, environmental, food, border, and cyber security – think Bitcoin which requires massive inputs of water.
It appears that Blue Triton has tentatively sold their Ontario water bottling operations to White Wolf Propery Management in association with Ice River Sustainable Solutions. However, the sale is dependent on Ice River and White Wolf being able to convince the Ford government to issue water extraction permits for each of the three wells. Without those permits the water must stay in the ground and that would undermine the deal and allow the people of Aberfoyle, Elora and Erin to lobby the provincial government to ensure that they are given first right of refusal on the sale of these wells that really belong in the public commons for the good all Ontarians.
Better still, the Ford government could step in, expropriate the land and wells and hand them over to their rightful owners – the people of Wellington County and the people of Ontario.
Take one minute to click this link and send a message to Premier Doug Ford and Andrea Khanjin, Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, demanding they deny future permits that would allow any corporation to commodify Ontario’s water and ship it out of the watershed, in plastic bottles, for profit.
The entire globe has been experiencing longer droughts, more wildfires, and depleted aquifers. It makes absolutely no sense to allow American corporations to have virtually unlimited extraction rights during local water crises and the escalating climate crisis.
Your actions will help ensure future generations of Ontarians have access to clean, free, local water.
Additional resources:
Webinar: Defend the water, Protect the water
Thursday, March 20, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern
Join the Council of Canadians, Eau Secours, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees for a webinar with Council of Canadians founder Maude Barlow, Angella McEwen (CUPE), Gabrielle Roy-Gregoire (Eau Secours), and Garry John (St’at’imc Nation). With threats from Trump demanding Canada’s water and corporate giants vying to take control of our water, the attacks on Canada’s most precious natural resource are more present than ever.
Water is a Human Right petition
About 1,000,000 people across Canada go without access to drinking water every day in Canada. The UN has called on Canada to legalize the human right to water in our federal legal framework and Water Watchers is teaming up with people and organizations across Turtle Island to make the human right to water a reality.
Stop Salt Pollution petition
Ontario dumps approximately 3 million tonnes of salt on sidewalks, roads, and parking lots. This is turning freshwater ecosystem saline and threatening drinking water sources across the Great Lakes. We desperately need Ontario to take the lead on better winter management policies that protect water.
Hey, Ontario: Let's End Line 5! petition
Line 5 ends at Sarnia, Ontario so Ontario will play a key role in closing Line 5. Check out, send, and share our Ontario 1-click action here!
Help to protect drinking water and secure the future of the Great Lakes by calling on the Ontario government to take immediate action to advocate for the shutdown of Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline!
* This article was updated on March 27, 2025 to reflect that White Wolf Management is a Shelburne, ON company whose directors are James and Alexandra Gott and not White Wolf Capital based in Florida as originally reported.
Thanks to everyone who read today’s article. With your continued support, a little Nicoll can make a lot of change.