A Canadian businessman is hoping to make his fortune by harvesting icebergs in Greenland and melting them down into trendy drinking water. Sidling up against them in his fishing boat, Ron Stamp from Newfoundland uses a giant mechanical claw to rip 1,500lb chucks from Greenland’s bergs and deposit them in tanks below the deck. Read the full story

Swiss-based drinking water company, Greenland Spring Water received its long-awaited green light from the local government to begin processing and bottling mineral water from deep within the island of Greenland. Read the full story

Canada’s largest city, Toronto is considering banning bottled water in all municipal offices after another Canadian city, London in Ontario, issued a ban on bottled water after environmentalists began a public awareness campaign against it, Fiji Broadcasting Corporation reports.

David Miller, Mayor of Toronto, is threatening to do the same – despite the Toronto International Film Festival (North America’s biggest) fast approaching.

The festival is known as a showground for Fiji Water, which makes a huge effort to supply its product to all the main celebrities and associated hotels and functions.

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The water bottling industry in Fiji wants a tax-free status like other industries and says it is working on the compensation it needs from the government.

Jay Dayal, industry spokesman, said the industry also wants the government to help in marketing incentives and subsidise tax-free imports. “That way, the industry would be able to generate more foreign revenue for the country”, he said.

Dayal said they were trying to figure out what levels were paid to the water industry in other countries before making their own demands. “We are working on some form of compensation we are expecting from the Government.”

In July, Fiji’s Cabinet approved a 20 cents/litre export duty on all mineral water exports and a 20 cents/litre excise duty on mineral water sold for domestic consumption.

Mahendra Chaudry, the former finance minister, said that the main reason for the new tax was to stimulate conservation of Fiji’s natural resources. “Mineral water is a scare resource which will deplete and a fair share of returns has to be passed on to the nation,” he said.

Bottlers responded by stopping production and saying the new tax structure made it “highly unprofitable for our industry to bottle water”.

A BBC Panorama documentary made earlier this year revealed that a third of Fijians live without access to clean water.

A health centre in Fiji had to be closed last Friday because there was no water in the area, reports The Fiji Times.

Nawaicoba resident Rup Narayan said a notice was posted at his shop informing residents in the area that this was due to the water problems.

Mr Narayan said, “I then called the water supervisor in Lautoka to inform him of the problem and he assured me that three water trucks would service the area. We only got water that Friday and that was it.”

Mr Narayan said having irregular water supply was an everyday occurrence. He said residents in the area and the health centre were always affected by the poor water supply and that they relied on the service of the water trucks to store their water.

Senior water engineer Nemani Waqanivalu claimed water trucks were sent out last Friday and that another truck would go out on Tuesday. “Parts of Nawaicoba are getting water,” he said.

Despite the fact that one third of the population of Fiji has no access to clean drinking water, natural mineral water from Fiji is a common sight in restaurants and stores across the US and Europe.

Related stories:
Fiji families use water from polluted stream
The bottled water industry that leaves a third of Fijians with dirty water

Several small towns in Fiji have had no access to clean water for the past six days, reports the Fiji Daily Post News.

Residents of Delainavesi, Lami and surrounding areas have been plagued by continuous water shortages with some people forced to taking water from nearby polluted streams. Many are questioning whether the Fijian Water Department is aware of the problem which has been affecting them since the beginning of the year.

A third of the population in Fiji does not have access to safe fresh water according to a BBC Panorama documentary, despite the south Pacific nation’s thriving bottled water industry. Bottles of Fiji mineral water are a common sight in the US where the largest brand, Fiji Water, shipped the equivalent of 200 million bottles last year.

Sitiveni Weleilakeba, 51, of Delainavesi said the whole area had run out of water from Wednesday last week and life was hard for many ordinary families.

“We have been facing this almost a year now, and we have been asking the Water Department to have mercy on us with our children,” he said.

Weleilakeba said that the situation had become so bad that some people had resorted to using nearby polluted streams to get water. He also said that students of Ballantine Memorial School had to go home early because of the water problems, which had been a regular occurrence.

Weleilakeba said that residents in the affected areas wanted to know the reason for the water shortages since they paid the same bills as other people from unaffected areas like the capital Suva.

Related stories:

Environmental frustration over failed bottled water tax in Fiji
The bottled water industry that leaves a third of Fijians with dirty water

A multi-million dollar bottled water company was launched in Samoa at the weekend, reports Radio New Zealand International.

The 7 million US dollar firm, called South Pacific Water company, is aiming to compete with bottled water from another South Pacific island nation famous for its water – Fiji.

The company director, Tuifa’asisina Fred Grey, said that the new product will inject millions of dollars into the local economy. He said that overseas business partners had spoken of huge markets for South Pacific Water in the US as well as in New Zealand and Australia.

At the opening ceremony the Samoan Prime Minister, Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, said he was happy that Samoa was finally producing purified bottled water that could compete overseas.

The chairman of Icelandic Water Holdings, the makers of Icelandic Glacial bottled water, has been charged with tax evasion by the Icelandic government, reports BevNET.com

Jon Olafsson was charged with evading taxes between 1999 and 2002, when he failed to pay a total of 361 million Icelandic kronur, or approx. $4.65 million.

Olafsson, who lives in the UK, said the case would not affect “in any way the current day to day operations of Iceland Water Holdings.”

“He has paid all taxes,” said Garrett Waltzer, an attorney with the firm Skadden who represents Olafsson.

Waltzer said that an investigation into Olafsson was undertaken in 2002 and 2003 by Iceland’s Directorate of Tax Investigations, although no charges were filed until 2008.

“The criminal charges must be dismissed because he has already paid tax penalties to the Icelandic tax authorities based on the same matters that are at issue in the case,” Waltzer wrote in a statement to BevNET. “The criminal charges violate Mr. Olafsson’s rights under Icelandic law, which prohibits punishment of an individual twice for the same offense.”

The case is expected to resume in September.

Anheuser-Busch owns 20 percent stake in Icelandic Glacial and is the US distributer of the bottled water product.

The Fiji government’s decision to repeal a proposed tax on bottled water has revived concerns that bottled water companies in Fiji are continuing to deplete the islands’ natural resources.

The Finance Minister Mahendra Chaudhry announced a 20 cent per litre tax on bottled water exported from the country in early July. The impetus behind the tax was to conserve the islands’ natural resources in a country where many people still suffer from contaminated water.

“Mineral water is a scare resource, which will deplete and a fair share of returns has to be passed on to the nation,” said Mr. Chaudhry. He said that “it was about time that water bottling companies pay duty for using Fiji’s mineral water resource”, reported Fiji Village news.

A BBC Panorama investigation in February showed that one third of Fijians do not have access to clean drinking water and many were falling ill and dying from typhoid and other diseases linked to dirty water.

The bottled water tax was proposed to correct this imbalance by stimulating the conservation of water whilst at the same time increasing government revenue.

However, the tax was dropped after pressure from the powerful water bottling lobby which said that the industry would be forced to close, resulting in hundreds of job losses.

The bottled water industry in Fiji accounts for over $150 million per year and employs more than 700 people.

A third of the population of Fiji does not have access to clean drinking water, a BBC investigation has revealed.

The report, for its Panorama documentary series, showed how many Fijians are falling ill and dying from typhoid and other diseases caused by a lack of safe, clean water.

The irony is that the South Pacific islands have a flourishing bottled water industry, worth over $150 million per year and employing around 700 people. Bottles of Fiji natural mineral water are a common sight in restaurants and on supermarket shelves across the US and Europe, and have been featured on a number of popular televisions shows.

In early July the Fijian government announced a tax on bottled water designed to conserve the island’s depleting natural resources, but it was forced to abort the project last week following pressure from the powerful water bottling lobby group.

The bottling companies subsequently halted operations and closed down factories, saying they could no longer operate effectively operate their businesses with the new tax.

The interim government’s finance minister Mahendra Chaudhry said the tax was not new and had been imposed in other countries to generate revenue in a similar fashion. “The bottled water companies do not have to observe this [tax], they can pass it to the consumers,” he said.

The protests were set to cost the country up to $3million in lost export revenue each week, forcing the government to drop the tax proposal last Friday.

For more information on the debate surrounding bottled water and the BBC Panorama investigation, visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/7247130.stm