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California Fights Nestle's Plan to Bottle Pristine Waters
SACRAMENTO, California - The State of California will challenge the environmental plan for a bottled water plant that Nestle Waters North America intends to build in Siskiyou County if the company does not revise its contract to pump water from the McCloud River, says the state's top lawyer.
"It takes massive quantities of oil to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States," said California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.
"Nestle will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles," Brown warned in a letter to the company July 28.
On the same day, the company issued a press release agreeing to a study and evaluation of the intended primary source of water for the project, Squaw Valley Creek, a tributary of the McCloud River.
Nestle has contracted with North State Resources to conduct the study, while scientists from the University of California-Berkeley and UC Davis will supply data and oversight of the evaluation.
Data on the existing hydrology and biology of the Squaw Valley creek watershed will be used to develop baseline information to improve understanding of the watershed.
"Nestle Waters is committed to ensuring that our projects are consistent with the sustainability and long-term availability of water in the communities in which we are located," said Nestle project manager Dave Palais.
"We are excited to get this important work started to help us better understand the watershed. The combination of North State Resources understanding and expertise in Northern California with the knowledge of some of California's leading scientists from the University of California will result in the development of valuable data that will benefit the McCloud Community for years to come," said Palais.
The press release states that Nestle will conduct further studies on air and water quality, traffic conditions, hazardous materials and also will explore the potential impact of climate change on water supply which will be included in a new draft environmental impact report.
Nestle, the biggest food company in the world, signed a water supply contract with the town of McCloud in 2003, but many residents oppose the deal, which they contend was signed without public participation.
The attorney general said the company's draft environmental impact report, DEIR, "fails to address in any meaningful way the project's likely environmental impacts."
"The DEIR fails to analyze the global warming impacts of the project even though bouling and transporting water are highly energy-intensive," wrote Brown. "Nor does the DEIR adequately examine the impacts of the project on air quality, water quality of the McCloud River and its tributaries, biological resources, or solid waste.
The McCloud River is unique among California's larger rivers in that most of its water derives from springs and underground lava aquifers rather than from rainfall or snowfall. The river and its associated riparian area provide habitat for over 200 wildlife species. The Lower McCloud has been designated a Wild Trout Stream by the state Department of Fish and Game.
As originally proposed. the project would allow Nestle to bottle 520 million gallons of spring water, and potentially unlimited groundwater, from the McCloud River watershed each year for the next 50 years for sale and distribution. Nestle would construct a one million square foot water bottling facility on the site of a former lumber mill, where it would bottle spring water and other beverages.
Nestle recently indicated that its revised proposal will reduce the size of the facility to 350,000 square feet and the annual water take from 1,600 acre fect per year to 600 acre feet per year - a reduction of approximately 60 percent
In a letter sent to Siskiyou County Planning Department Interim Planning Director Terry Barber on July 28, the attorney general said that "the environmental review for the previously proposed project had serious deficiencies."
Brown said "the suggested changes would require significant revision of the contract between Nestle and the McCloud Community Services District, a new, formal project proposal, and circulation of a new Draft Environmental Impact Report."
Brown also said the environmental analysis fails to consider the global warming impacts of producing and transporting millions of gallons of water including greenhouse gases from producing the plastic bottles, electrical demand for the project, and diesel soot and greenhouse gas emissions from trucks transporting the bottled water to market.
The attorney general has asked Siskiyou County to revise its environmental impact report and circulate a new draft of the environmental impact report.
© Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008
21 Comments so far
Show AllWhen will the governor Be Back to banish plastic water bottles from his domaine?
Nestle has generated countless lawsuits all over the globe with it's plunder of the waters of life for it's own profit.
"While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government."
Robert Kennedy. Jr.
Water is NOT a commodity. All water belongs to the commons of the people of the world. It should not be for sale at any price. It is just like the air we breathe. That is not for sale either. Free access to both clean air and water is a human right which cannot be compromised. It is weird that this concept can be challenged legally. Put another way, how do you assert your right to life if you cannot assert your right to clean water, the source of all life?
This is one of just a few wild rivers in California, and to take water out of it for this ecologically destructive destructive market is the outrage of outrages.
www.StudentsForTheEarth.org
So Nestle is going to pay a disinterested party to study the environmental impact.
I'm sure this will insure that the studies' findings will be strictly impartial.
Big tobacco commissioned such sleight-of-hand scientific studies for decades.
This is a classic maneuver to keep critics quiet while deals are being made, land bought, officials bribed, etc.
Most of the McCloud River is in National Forest and Lassen County. It doesn't flow through the town of McCloud. This is being done to enable local politicians to claim they have brought jobs and millions of dollars to town coffers.
It is one of the major feeds to Lake Shasta. It, and the Sacramento River, headwaters are from the natural springs and snow melt of Mt Shasta's high slopes.
To allow a European company to exploit and pollute an American clean river for a few lousy jobs, while it receives tax incentives and huge profits for an essentially free resource is fucking criminal.
I am a native Californian and this may just be the single most disgusting state issue in 20 years. It should be immediately squelched.
There is no Constitutional right to this corporation's action or belief it may have concerning this resource. Obviously, it has it's minions searching the country for good water to exploit, i.e. Great Lakes.
I think it's time for the Governor and state Legislature to state unequivocally OUR water resources are off limits. This state is already suffering from an inadequate supply due to population increases of people from the midwest, southeast and east coast. The cost of water here is expensive enough.
Well, I know how far this will go...
Far enough up the collective corporate ass of Nestle it will hemorrhage law suit money until it is anemic and cuts off it's own heads.
Use energy to make plastic bottles out of petroleum then use petroleum to transport the bottles then use landfill to dispose of the damn bottles which will decompose in 10 to 20 years and then refuse to drive 55 mph to save gasolene while drinking out of the unnecessary bottle. As long as America is damn dumb enough to keep up this idiotic behavior then Americans diserve the consequences of THE END OF THE OIL GRAVY TRAIN.
When I was a little girl, Nestle seemed a trustworthy name. Now I rate the name with Enron and Exxon. Nestle is a four-letter word.
Our lives (and water) are worth more than their profits.
As Rebel Farmer stated hours ago, water and air are part of the commons that belong to all living beings. This is a crime against humanity and mother Earth, and it must be punished and stopped.
I spent a good part of the afternoon out by a pond on public land. 7 dogs came running down the trail, followed by a woman with flaming red hair. The dogs charged into the pond the way I used to when I was a child. The woman was apologetic, and when they left after 10 minutes, she thanked me. I replied, no need to thank me; they have as much right to be here as I do. On the way out of the meadow, I was able to fill a lunchbag with blackberries. Such is the nature of the commons; land not yet monopolized by corporations or wealthy landowners. We must defend it with all our might.
""Nestle Waters is committed to ensuring that our projects are consistent with the sustainability and long-term availability of water in the communities in which we are located," said Nestle project manager Dave Palais."
L. O. L.
""While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government."--Robert Kennedy. Jr."
The first part is bullshit...
We have a nearly identical situation here in Lake County, FL. So far, the people have asserted their right to say "no" to the bottler for the same reasons as cited in this article. Let's face it. Producing or consuming bottled water is a bad idea.
Something to contemplate:
City Water....any city, anywhere....is it recycled from sewage?
and if so...does the treatment plant take out drugs too...or the chemo treatments from the urine of cancer patiences? Do these particles get taken out by the filters?
Are there any tests for this? Do they test for this?
Nestle, I believe was a corporation responsible for trying to get women to stop breast feeding in third world countries....anyone have more info?
tinylotus,
Contemplate the utter stupidity of your comment. Contemplate your inability to grasp the native curiosity of your own questions. Contemplate your being doing the research for it's own sense of growth and independence. Contemplate the completion of your contemplation. If you continue to doubt yourself, and those about you:
There are handy devices that you can BUY that will sterilize your tap water for you beyond any known natural source.
Now, go home and breast feed like a normal 3 year old. But you might want to have that evaluated first.
DogLeg,
As far as I could tell, tinylotus was asking and stating rhetorically (and factually) sound points.
Maybe you're be pissy early in the morning and b/c of the severity of the issue since it's in your home state.
But seriously, no need to be combative with an ally that's inquisitive.
Watch how far you'll get being a smug know-it-all.
Peace czar,
How far my smugness extends is beyond the obvious of your rather superficial understanding of the tinylotus methodology of incomplete thoughts, inaccurate rendering of facts coupled to tinylotus' pretens to a guru of dialectic thought.
And for your information, your perception that my critical acuity is a smugness of limited viability is almost tantamount to your own self-serving, self-righteousness as defender of whom you evidently sense is the victim, yet you ignore my obvious factual response to his Nestle query of trying to convince African women not to breastfeed.
Furthermore, what you infer as being my nemesis, my smugness, is in actuality an acquired taste for well-deserved impatience to the many variations of human pretensions to serious thought as I get older and my retirement acts as a deflective shield to paternalistic, prosaic moral warnings of "how far you'll get being a smug know-it-all." Which is hilarious coming from an idiot with the audacity to refer to himself as a "Peace Czar."
Now, be honest with yourself, about projecting your own smugness on others.
Kisses
:)
I think I'm more afraid of an inarticulate pompous phony like Peace czar, than polluted water.
DogLeg,....uhhh, becoming SO easily offended when maybe you didn't get the sharing style of a person commenting here is kinda like road rage...unnecessary anger and making it personal. Attacking personally in response doesn't really add much and in fact makes me recoil at this and any future comments you may make.
Some good news, Nestle has lost 1 battle:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/94150
BOYCOTT!!! all Nestle products...ice cream, water, coffee. Nestle uses GMOs except in products destined for Europe because the EU has banned them.