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Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

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Re: Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

#131

Post by Turing_Machine »

portofcall wrote: post #118
Turing_Machine wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not "misinterpreting" anything, aggressively or otherwise. He is lumping all states together as "the state", giving an example of some unethical states, and arguing from that that no state is ethical, or pays any attention to ethical concerns. That argument is pure garbage.

You said He is arguing that the government of Michigan's laws are bad because the Nazis had bad laws. Which simply isn’t true. He actually said outright: If you use the state as a metric for ethics you'll end up disappointed. Now, you may think that’s garbage, but you’re not free to pretend that he said completely different things he didn’t actually say. Remember how you hate inaccuracy? Do you think that what you we…

There is no "the state" to "use as a metric". That's what's dishonest.

> Do you think that what you were doing before was accurate?

Pointing out that the government of Nazi Germany and the government of Michigan aren't the same in any meaningful way? Yes. That's accurate.

Re: Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

#132

Post by portofcall »

dang wrote: post #122
Turing_Machine wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, eventually it will, for values of eventually which may exceed the average human lifespan. Pure nonsense.

Please don't break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how nonsensical some other comment is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How on Earth is that guy not rate limited?

Re: Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

#133

Post by Turing_Machine »

zzzeek wrote: post #130
Turing_Machine wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the people hated Nestle because its factories were painted green, they have the right to complain and ultimately vote for leadership that would disallow Nestle to paint their factories green. What if they didn't like Nestle hiring black people? You have the right to complain, yes. That doesn't mean you automatically get your way. Not even if everyone votes for it.

again, the Civil Rights Act was passed by a politically elected congress. Not sure why everyone is so upset by my post that essentially is reiterating, "the people have a right to be heard and they ultimately elect how their town/state/country is run".

> again, the Civil Rights Act was passed by a politically elected congress.

Imagine a hypothetical world where the South won the Civil War and successfully seceded.

The elected government of the Confederate States of America says that black people have no civil rights whatsoever.

Okay by you?

Re: Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

#134

Post by falcolas »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #50
a2tech wrote: post #35

You’ll read a lot of comments on this, both good and bad. A lot of passionate arguments have been made on both sides. I have two things to add to it—and feel free to take them as you will. People I know in the area with wells had them go dry after the nestle plant opened. These were wells that had previously been high (for wells) throughout, just drying up. The plant also got special tax rebates and other incentives…

> People I know in the area with wells had them go dry after the nestle plant opened. These were wells that had previously been high (for wells) throughout, just drying up. That (if true) is a legitimate complaint and Nestle should make them whole. Edit: as someone else noted, this is less than one swimming pool's worth of water per day. If wells are going dry because of that, they were marginal at best.

Wells in aquifers don't work quite that way - they aren't open bodies of water that can flow freely.

When a well draws water, it creates a cone-like depression of the water level around the well (think of all those nifty gravity diagrams of planets). A well which was drilled sufficiently deep to work with existing draws can be made "dry" by getting a new neighbor who draws enough to lower the aquifer below their well head.

Those wells can be made to work again, but only by having a company come in and make the well (perhaps significantly) deeper.

An search on "aquifer drawdown" will provide a lot of reference material.

Re: Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

#135

Post by Retric »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #105
Retric wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Muskegon feeds into the Lake Michigan which is thus upstream of Niagara Falls and a lot of hydro power generation. Granted we are not talking about a huge amount of energy, but it is one of many costs that are not being compensated.

Compare the amount of water they're taking out per day (576,000 gallons) to amount of water that goes over Niagara Falls in a day (about 54,345,600,000 gallons). "Not a huge amount of energy", indeed.

In the short term perhaps, but it's not going to take that long to hit 10,000$ worth of energy and again that's just one of many uses of this water which as far as I can tell is uncompensated.

Re: Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

#136

Post by craftyguy »

cameldrv wrote: post #125

I know that we live in an outrage culture that doesn't respect orders of magnitude, but "he who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense"[1]. They propose to withdraw 0.5E6 gal/day. We have data for the state of Michigan (in 2004, but probably not too much different today)[2] If we're only talking about ground water, industrial is 89.1E6, irrigation is 197E6, and electric generation is 4.1E6 usage. Why is…

You're comparing water usage for necessary infrastructure to the completely unnecessary, and wasteful, usage of bottling it for consumption. With a few rare exceptions, tap water in the US is safe for consumption. There is no good reason why this industry should exsit at this scale.

Re: Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

#137

Post by ucaetano »

larkeith wrote: post #93
ucaetano wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just as much so as comparing a local watershed-impacting factory to a state's usage. Well, since you ask, here's the watershed comparison: http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-dwmad-eh-swpu-Fina... 4) The supply potential of the water source, considering quantity, quality, and reliability and safe yield of hydrologically interconnected water sources; Application materials, extensive evaluation and consideratio…

That's excellent information to have, thank you for the link!

No problem, I happen to be very close with a professional environmental engineer. It is amazing the amount of work put into modeling environmental impact, especially on hydro models. A lot of the original models and methods still used today were developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Re: Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

#139

Post by tkxxx7 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #46
ucaetano wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is all covered by the environmental report, as it should be: http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-dwmad-eh-swpu-Fina... 4) The supply potential of the water source, considering quantity, quality, and reliability and safe yield of hydrologically interconnected water sources; Application materials, extensive evaluation and consideration by staff, along with experience with the aquifer in the area, lead staff…

If you can't understand why there's so much ruckus and commotion by the public you shouldn't be calling it pointless or useless. People are angry because of the disaster that was Flint. When government officials refuse to answer for large-scale disasters, people resort to other outlets and places to direct their anger. People are angry because they see corporations swooping in to bottle and sell more water in the sam…

Flint is not even close to the only issue. Locals are aware of the damage Nestle has already caused to the local ecosystem by dropping the water supply. There is also much worry that legal draw limits were not set with that area's situation in mind, but Nestle is pointing to the legal rate and saying everything will be okay.

Re: Michigan OKs Nestlé Water Extraction, Despite Public Comments Against It

#140

Post by dang »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #133
zzzeek wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

again, the Civil Rights Act was passed by a politically elected congress. Not sure why everyone is so upset by my post that essentially is reiterating, "the people have a right to be heard and they ultimately elect how their town/state/country is run".

> again, the Civil Rights Act was passed by a politically elected congress. Imagine a hypothetical world where the South won the Civil War and successfully seceded. The elected government of the Confederate States of America says that black people have no civil rights whatsoever. Okay by you?

You've been breaking the site guidelines by getting into flamewars. Please don't do that—it's just what we don't want here.

A comment like this one also breaks the guideline that says: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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