Victorian town ordered to pay $90,000 after losing bottled water battle with farmer

Stanley residents fail to stop farmer mining groundwater that is sold on as bottled springwater

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Residents from a tiny Victorian town have been ordered to pay $90,000 in legal costs after they launched a failed bid to prevent a farmer from extracting and selling groundwater as bottled springwater to a subsidiary of the Japanese beverage giant Asahi.

The supreme court of Victoria made the costs ruling last week, four months after a residents association in the town of Stanley, which has a population of 400, was denied leave to appeal previous decisions allowing the water extraction.