A Community Rights Movement Transcends Party, Age, and Gender

Tuesday, August 2, 2016
water bottles

Associate professor of sociology Cliff Brown has published a research brief through the Carsey School of Public Policy that explores how citizens in three New Hampshire towns -- Nottingham, Barrington and Barnstead -- successfully united against a private water-bottling company, USA Springs, that would have pumped 400,000 gallons of water daily from the community groundwater. Commencing their fight in 2001, community activists eventually took their case to the State Supreme Court, and, along the way, developed and passed ground-breaking local ordinances in all three towns that prohibit corporations from taking community water. USA Springs eventually went bankrupt and the plant was never completed.

READ THE BRIEF