John McLane and Jim Maturen are active board members of MCWC and have unique skills to understand the creeks that are being tapped by Ice Mountain/ Nestlé. Currently Nestlé is taking 250 gallons per minute (gpm) from PW 101 and wants to increase to 400 gpm.
John is a retired surveyor and really understands property, pipelines, and the lay of the land. Jim is a retired State Police, an avid turkey hunter, a fisherman. He has lived his whole life in Osceola County and has served on the county commission. He knows the history in 1999 when Nestle first came to this town.
John and Jim don’t like what they see and don’t like what they hear from local people who have lived all their lives by the Twin and Chippewa creeks that flow into the Muskegon River. So, this past summer they took a thermometer and a yardstick and began measuring many of the designated areas and culverts on the 2 creeks that are also being “monitored” by the Nestlé contractors. John and Jim have made observations from their data that is quite different from what the “experts” at Ice Mountain/ Nestlé report.
MCWC heard from the MDEQ in December 2017 that they would like to know more about what our “citizen scientists” are finding. We sent the MDEQ a letter with an overview of John and Jim’s results (read the letter here).
We are hoping that the MDEQ will understand that “contracted” monitoring by Nestlé (which is making great profits off of bottling and selling this water) may lead to a different result than independent people who care about the water of the Muskegon River Watershed, our creeks, our aquatic species, and whether an increase of “water taking” is sustainable.
Read more on Nestle’s water taking in Michigan
Also published on Medium.