Coca-Cola Buys Massive Stretch of Grand River

In a deal that has angered Six Nations but toward which the settler community of Southern Ontario has remained largely indifferent, Coca-Cola has purchased a vast area of the Grand River watershed. The move comes amidst revelations that the Grand River, a source of drinking water to about 500,000 people, contains record levels of artificial sweeteners.

“We saw this incredible opportunity and negotiated a deal with the city of Kitchener immediately,” said Sheridan Winegum, a spokesperson for the multinational soft-drink company. “The Grand River contains the highest levels of artificial sweeteners of all rivers in the world. We're not just talking sucralose either. It's got acesulfame, saccharin, and even cyclamate. It's a gold-mine.”

The move comes on the heels of a study concluding upwards of 190,000 cans of diet soda are being consumed daily in the region. “If you think about all those cans of pop floating down the river, it's quite an image,” said Sherry Schiff, a biogeochemist at the University of Waterloo. Because the sweeteners are neither broken down by the body nor eliminated in waste-treatment plants where urine and feces are converted into drinkable water, they enter the watershed intact. That's how they were found at 23 test sights as well as pouring from household taps.

To local residents the thought of drinking sweeteners that have been excreted through their neighbours' urethras might be repulsive, but to Coca-Cola the circumstance has undeniable appeal. “What you have to understand is that we use millions of litres of water a day to produce diet soft-drinks that need to be artificially sweetened,” Winegum says. “If we source our water from the Grand River we're basically killing two birds with one stone because the candied chemicals are already in the water.”

There are fears amongst Six Nations and environmental groups that the move will bring an already stressed watershed to its breaking point. “We don't really see how this is going to benefit anyone but Coca-Cola,” said a man who stood outside Kitchener city hall yesterday with a protest sign. But Winegum says the move is the best thing the region could do with its water. “Soon Enbridge is going to reverse its line 9 pipeline and a rupture is inevitable. Once that happens the river will be irreversibly contaminated. It's best we take advantage of it while it's still here and convert as much of it to diet-soda as possible.”

When asked about the long-term impacts one of Schiff's colleagues had a similar outlook. “Look, there is no doubt that this is going to massively deplete the watershed but we can rest assured that if our taps run dry there will always be plenty of soda to drink.”

He also had this hopeful insight. “The Grand River not only contains sweeteners but also very high levels of excreted birth control. If we all switch over to diet-soda as our primary beverage, it could potentially reduce the population of the region, thus minimizing our impact on the watershed and bringing things back into balance. Nature has a way of harmonizing.”