Ben Smim refuses to have its spring bottled

At this hour of toil in the fields, Ben Smim slumbers. A mosque, a school, a dispensary, houses made of adobe and brick. This village of 3,000 inhabitants, 70 km from Fez, contrasts with the surrounding lands, watered last autumn by rains that Morocco had not seen for thirty-five years. "This green is deceptive," warns Moulay Ali Tahiri, 72. This dean of the zaouia (religious and tribal community) of Ben Smim is, along with a dozen villagers, being prosecuted by the justice system for having opposed the construction of a water bottling unit at the spring.Since the beginning of the work in 2006, popular demonstrations, repressed by law enforcement, have not prevented the factory from rising from the ground. Bulldozers are still active on the hillside, and operations should begin "by the summer," announces the Frenchman Nicolas Antaki, director of Euro-Africaine des eaux (EADE). Created i…