Posted by John Ester on Feb 12, 2019
Peggy Case is the President of the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC), a grass-roots nonprofit dedicated to water conservation and water justice.  She sees the major threats to water supply as sewage and fertilizers, chemicals, and the oil and gas industry.
 
A major part of MCWC's work in Michigan concerns the oil and gas industry. Oil and gas businesses can adversely affect the water supply in the transportation of their products (as in pipelines), in oil and gas well sites and in injection wells built to bury fracking wastewater.
 
MCMC is concerned that Michigan is becoming a toxic waste dump for the oil and gas industry.  The EPA is responsible for monitoring injection wells but has limited personnel and resources. The major problem with injection wells is that the used water is not contained, so any toxic chemicals within the water can seep into the drinking water aquifers. Such wells also can cause earthquakes, as they have most notably in Oklahoma, Kansas and Ohio.
 
Another major focus of MCWC has been bottled water in general and Nestle in particular, MCWC's  basic premise being that water belongs to the public and should not be privatized. Thus in 2000 the group launched a legal battle against Nestle, which was then pumping out water at the rate of 400 gallons a minute. After nine years MCWC got a partial victory when Nestle was limited to pumping out 280 gallons a minute.
 
Peggy noted that the real solution with respect to problems caused by the oil and gas industries would be to go to alternate sources of energy, leading to a spirited discussion on the subject of balancing our needs and goals. More information on this subject is available on the MCWC website.