01 Apr Corruption and the MAWC Bottling Plant
Wherever bottling plants arise, so too does corruption and the defilement of public governance.
After months of rigorously adhering to the requirements to expand their zoning district, the Egan Slough neighborhood group faced off with the county commissioners. Along with the neighborhood group came over 140 other supporters who requested that the county give the community the right to determine their own local character, and the right to protect their own natural environment. Instead, the commissioners, perhaps swayed by the Helena hotshot, big-money lobbyist employed by the bottling plant, decided they only needed to take into consideration the rights of the bottling plant owner to the exclusion of everyone else’s rights.
Now, a District Judge has ruled that the commissioners abused their discretion — the commissioners warped the process of governance to impose an outcome only they and the bottling plant owner wanted. Which is to say, this bottling plant has, like everywhere else they are found, introduced the corruption that they always need in order to steal the community’s goods to peddle around the country for their own private gain.
The bottling plant will not bring community cohesion (it brings only strife), it will not bring jobs commensurate with the degradation it will cause to our roadways, waterways, and greater social fabric. The bottling plant and its big-money lobbyist lie when they say that the bottling plant is no different than a common agricultural center-pivot irrigation system; a lie that must be called out wherever and whenever it is spouted.
The owners don’t care about the community we live in, or the welfare of the people who will have to pay the costs incurred as a result of the plant’s operation. Their goal is to make their millions and to split town, leaving us just like everywhere else bottling plants invade — picking up the pieces after the carnage and paying the cost for their greed for decades to come.