Networker Denis Wilson - who has provided me with an eyewitness account of the meeting in Bundanoon on Wednesday night to ban bottled water in the town - has now given a detailed account and critique of the meeting here on his own blog, The Nature of Robertson. Please pop over and have a read. Clearly, this meeting should make the text books on community decision-making. As a decision at one level occurs there is no discussion of the topic really motivating the community.
In Bundanoon, there were two issues: one was bottled water, one was the bottling of water.
The extensive long-standing community campaign had been about the bottling of water which is to continue. The other is a one town ban on sales of bottled water in Bundanoon. It sounds to me like some people might have been willing to do a trade-off. Let's take the community's mind off the local water bottling and get that through Council. Then they can have the consolation prize of the ban on bottled water and Bundanoon will get some publicity as an eco-friendly community - when actually that is not true. Meanwhile, the citizenry who want to continue to drink bottled water in Bundanoon will import their supplies one way or another - and little, in reality, will have changed. Dumbing on down Bundanoon?
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