As a resident of Michigan and a voter, I am deeply disturbed by your current handling of the Nestle Corporation’s intention to increase its level of water extraction to 400 gallons per minute in Osceola County.

My experience with Michigan waterways goes back many years. As a youth I spent almost every weekend at Lake Michigan or visiting our local conservation club where I learned to swim.

Later, my family spent the summers circumnavigating the 3,300 miles of Michigan’s shoreline. We cast flies upon the sparkling surface of many of the 35,000 ponds.

Most recently, on a hike in the Nordhouse Dune Wilderness, my husband and I paused for a rest, suddenly surrounded by a cloud of dragonflies. I mused, “this is what it used to be like when I was a kid.”

The buzz of a thousand tiny wings in our ears, our eyes catching their phosphorescence. Walking back to the camper, I paused in silent reverence surrounded by emerald green moss, ferns and orchids.

I slid my walking stick under one of the ferns. When my husband saw me and asked what I was searching for, “fairies.” I replied.

It was that magical.

Michigan’s ecology, including that of her water resources and other treasures of rivers, dunes, fens and streams, is our state’s crowning glory. Its jewel in the crown, is its endowment of 20 percent of the world’s fresh water supply.

It is our right and ours alone to claim and maintain this resource for future generations.

What a travesty and injustice is the shortsighted resource management that allows you to sell off that treasure to the highest bidder — the utter depravity to let it go for a $200 permit.

JILL MEUNINCK

Edwardsburg