For the Toronto Star’s Tainted Water project, a nation-wide investigation into growing scarcity of safe drinking water, I reported an 3,800-word investigative feature on global beverage behemoth Nestlé S.A.’s operations in tiny towns in Ontario where communities fear that they won’t have enough water for their rapidly growing populations.
To learn about the publicly-traded company’s Canadian operations, known as Nestlé Waters Canada, I spent a year reviewing stacks of water monitoring reports, combing through years of town council meeting records, pouring over hundreds of pages of hydrogeology studies, and interviewing dozens of local residents, politicians, scientists and industry experts. The investigation, in collaboration with Toronto Star investigative reporter Rob Cribb, was published on the front page of the print issue.