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| Sign-on letter to Governor Granholm opposing
Halliburton's plan to bottle and divert Great Lakes water to the
Middle East for the U.S. Military. To sign on, email
snakeman1549@yahoo.com |
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Dear Governor Granholm,
We the undersigned are writing to bring a current
threat to the conservation of the Great Lakes to your
immediate attention so that you can act decisively on
behalf of Michigan’s future.
Michigan is in the process of allowing a new point
source for water diversion. This new site will be
located in Saginaw. You are aware and have been
involved in the process of dialogue over establishing
the first point of water diversion, Nestle’s Ice
Mountain plant in Mecosta County. The issues in this
new site are different.
In a series of contracts and sub-contracts, the
Premier Manufacturing Group of Detroit has contracted
with the Shay Water Company of Saginaw to produce 3
million bottles of drinking water a week. These
bottles of Michigan lake water will be exported
exclusively to the Middle East for Halliburton. This
is clearly a diversion of water out of the local area
and out of the Great Lakes watershed entirely.
We first learned of the project through a news article
in the Bay City Times (enclosed). According to the
article, the water will be sourced from the Bay City
water department, a municipal utility.
There are complex legal rights that must be balanced
surrounding the local use of water to benefit the
community and the conservation of water to preserve
the environment. It is another set of legal questions
altogether to send these same waters out of the basin.
This new plan is exactly that—a cut and run strategy
that sets an extreme and detrimental precedent in
terms of the conservation of the Great Lakes.
With the Charter Annex’s comment period having just
come to an end, and many other water protection
measures working their way through the system, now
would be a terrible time to set another precedent
against the conservation of the lakes. The approval of
this project would counteract the intentions of these
different laws and proposals.
Furthermore, the plan is unacceptable on a political
level. The U.S. military, Halliburton, and the other
contractors operating in Iraq and Afghanistan are
attempting to cover up their inept management skills
by bottling the Great Lakes for their use in the
Middle East. They have not been willing to invest in
fixing the water infrastructure that was compromised
by bombing during the two Iraq wars and the 10 years
of sanctions and intermittent bombing campaigns.
We should not squander our natural resources and
natural heritage to prolong these corporations’ time
as taxpayer subsidized operatives in the Middle East.
These corporations have already been paid billions by
taxpayers in “no-bid” contracts. If they had actually
fixed the water treatment plants when they were paid
to do so, they would not need to bottle Great Lakes
water for their workers.
The article describing the new diversion project
states that Premier Manufacturing Group and Shay Water
would begin operations by January 2005. There is
little time to prevent this project from beginning.
Now is your opportunity to act for the Great Lakes, as
you have promised so many times. This project is
certainly under the jurisdiction of the Federal Water
Resources Development Act. This law gives you the
power to block such diversions.
We look forward to hearing from you about your plans
to stop this newest Great Lakes diversion.
Sincerely,
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