The city of Grigny pushes Coca-Cola to stop drawing from the water table

The city of Grigny (Essonne), which asked the local Coca-Cola factory to stop drawing water from the groundwater to produce its drinks, said Wednesday that it had reached an agreement with the company. “An agreement in principle” so that the Coca-Cola factory in Grigny “stops pumping into the groundwater” was found between the municipality and the multinational and “we are in the process of creating the technical conditions” for a connection from the plant to the city's public water distribution network, said the mayor (PCF), Philippe Rio.

The city councilor told the newspaper Le Parisien on Tuesday that he had "recently" asked Coca-Cola to stop drawing from the groundwater. For its part, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), the bottler in Western Europe of the American soft drink giant, indicated in a press release that “at this stage the agreement with the municipality [was] under discussion”. The company says it is working “with the municipality on terms to buy city water for part” of its drinks.

Established since 1986 in Grigny, 22 km south of Paris, the factory employs 266 people and produces bottles of Sprite, Coca-Cola and Fanta. For this, it would draw nearly 780,000 m3 of water per year from the groundwater, according to a source familiar with the matter. This model is today "has been", according to Philippe Rio, for whom "we must protect the resource [in water] because we do not know what tomorrow will bring".

Coca-Cola was the only one to draw from this water table, Grigny being supplied with water by the Seine, also explains the mayor. "There was no conflict of use on the water table", he underlines, adding that the city does not have a "problem of supply" in water. "We are even overcapacity" and "we can therefore provide them with water, they do not have to touch a natural environment, which must be preserved", insists Philippe Rio. “Perhaps in 20 years, we will have done well not to touch it,” he pleads.

For its part, CCEP assures in its press release that it has “invested” on the Grigny site “in order to limit its water consumption as much as possible, investments which, according to the company, have allowed “savings of more than 50,000 m3 per year” . “Our drilling is subject to prefectural authorizations which are revised and issued regularly, and which can evolve according to the situation of water stress in the territory, by decision of the State services”, also underlined CCEP.

Water withdrawals "change regularly according to the activity without ever exceeding, at any time, the limit of 1.2 million m³ authorized", indicated the prefecture of Essonne. These samples were authorized "after study of the hydrogeological impacts", she added. According to this same source, the company has "the right to freely dispose of spring water and groundwater lying below" the land it owns, and "like all water abstractors, a fee is due to the Seine-Normandy Water Agency”. The French subsidiary of Coca-Cola employs in France some "2,500 employees", in five factories, according to its website.