In September of 2016, Nestlé Waters Canada bought the Middlebrook well, outbidding the local municipality’s attempt to secure their groundwater supply from more water bottling. Prompted by the public backlash to this aggressive purchase, the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change established a two year moratorium on new permits to take groundwater for water bottling. As part of this process, over 20,000 comments were submitted by Canadians to the Environmental Registry, and became part of the public record. 

D&S Projects used this watershed moment to explore the tenuous relationship we have to our groundwater reserves and the creeping infringement of corporate interests on public water resources. To contrast between the slow pace of regulatory change and slick branding of corporate water bottling interests, D&S displayed ~2000 of the submitted public comments at the 2017 iteration of the Gladstone Grow-Op exhibition, along with content from an imagined life-style brand of bottled water, allowing speculation about the future of corporate involvement with a common resource.