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California attorney general cracks down on Nestle water bottling plant plans

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Attorney General Jerry Brown on Tuesday said he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California unless its effects on global warming are evaluated.

Nestle Waters North America wants to pump about 200 million gallons of water a year from three natural springs that supply McCloud, about 280 miles north of San Francisco. Brown's office said that's enough to fill 3.1 billion 8-ounce plastic water bottles.

The water would be bottled at a 350,000-square-foot facility on the outskirts of the former lumber town.

The Swiss-based company scaled back its plans in May after years of opposition from environmentalists and a group of McCloud residents. It originally sought to pump more than double the amount of water.

David Palais, Nestle's Northern California natural resource manager, said the company already was planning studies on air and water quality, hazardous materials, traffic conditions and climate change for a new environmental review of the bottling plant.

"We appreciate the attorney general's letter and share his commitment to ensuring that new projects in California do not negatively impact the environment," Palais said in a statement.

He said the company will conduct environmental studies over the next two or three years. Afterward, Siskiyou County will prepare a new environmental impact report for the project.

Brown said the company must put its revisions into a new contract with the town of McCloud. He wants proper study of the environmental consequences of the bottling operation, saying the previous draft review had "serious deficiencies."

He said it failed to include an examination of whether the operation will contribute to global warming through the production of plastic bottles, the operation's electrical demands and the diesel soot and greenhouse gas emissions produced by trucks traveling to and from the plant.

"It takes massive quantities of oil to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States," Brown said in a statement. "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."
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This boggles my mind. California is in a drought in most of the state with more wildfires reported this year, and all Nestle can think of is pumping millions of gallons of water from a spring to put it in plastic bottles to make a profit from it? Another company without a moral center!
JanforGore

18 responses // California attorney general cracks down on Nestle water bottling plant plans

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    Isn't Nestle making enough money as it is?
    As usual, taking natural resources from a community, shipping those resources to other people and places, the money goes right into whoever decides to make profit from those resources - leaving the area bereft of the resources in the first place, and earning and leaving very little for most of the people in the immediate area.

    SeaJade
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    Perhaps they'd like to melt the Alps and sell that to us instead...

    logicpocket
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    Every big water company should start a program where they recycle their bottles and build their own Islands.

    Bigdog_mike
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    Thanks for posting this story, JanforGore.

    Good for the California Attorney General.

    The earth needs its natural springs, just like it needs its oil and minerals to function right, just like our bodies.

    TouchArt
    1 response to this
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    It's time for consumers to start boycotting all environmentally irresponsible companies and it is time for shareholders to start demanding better on that front from the companies they are invested in.

    JanforGore
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    In a situation like this it's hard to balance the needs of industry and the concerns over the environment. Maybe Nestle should try desalination instead. It'd be more expensive but the impact on the environment would be lessened.

    Pattyhax
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    Privatizing water and proliferating plastics are just a couple of the ways Nestle is irresponsible.

    UNICEF estimates that a non-breastfed child living in disease-ridden and unhygienic conditions is between six and 25 times more likely to die of diarrhea and four times more likely to die of pneumonia than a breastfed child. Yet, Nestle has continued the promotion of infant formula over breast-feeding developing nations.

    According to the World Health Organisation, 1.5 million infants die around the world every year because they are not breastfed. The World Health Assembly has adopted marketing requirements for baby foods to protect breastfeeding and to ensure breastmilk substitutes are used safely if necessary.

    Nestlé is singled out for boycott action as monitoring shows it to be responsible for more violations of the requirements than any other company.

    As capitalist we vote every time we make a purchase and Nestle does not deserve the empowerment of our dollars.

    Join the boycott.

    RyanBWylie
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    The "needs" of industry? Nestle doesn't "need" to take water and bottle it in oil plastic that will wind up in the ocean to make a profit. They make enough profits with everything else they make. Water is a human right not a commodity, and it is time these companies were given that message loud and clear, especially now with drought becoming more prolonged and persistant in the Western United States and globally.

    JanforGore
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    http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/cms/page1698.cfm
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    Nestle's Abuses in Fryeburg, Maine

    'Howard Dearborn has lived on Lovewell’s Pond for more than half a century. His home among southwest Maine’s dense forests and bucolic waterways has long been a get away for friends and family from up and down the eastern seaboard.[1]

    But now his guests are reluctant even to swim on their visits. A “green gunk” has begun to form, something Dearborn attributes to his new neighbor – a pumping station for Nestlé’s Poland Spring.[2]

    “It’s a bad thing that [Nestlé’s water withdrawals] started in the first place, and then Nestlé overdid it,” says Dearborn, a retired businessman, now in his nineties. “People say, ‘oh, well, he’s just trying to protect his own property.’ And I say -- yes, I am trying to protect my own property. I have three little brooks, and two of them have gone dry. Those are the two that come from the north and west -- where the pumping is happening.”[3]

    The operations of America’s largest water bottler are not only impacting water quality but community access to drinking water at large – raising serious questions about who should be allowed to control water and to what end.

    The struggle between Dearborn’s community and Nestlé has stirred up a brand of community antipathy that the corporation could not have anticipated from this sleepy town in southwest Maine.

    Though Poland Spring became a Nestlé subsidiary in 1980, Dearborn’s struggles with the corporation began in 2003. In that year, Poland Spring first began drawing on the Ward’s Brook Aquifer, which sits beneath Dearborn’s hometown, Fryeburg, Maine. The aquifer feeds Lovewell’s Pond and has also been a primary source of drinking water for many of the town’s 3000 residents.

    In time, as much as 168 million gallons of water would be transported in a single year from the town’s privately-owned pump house into Nestlé’s 8,000-gallon tanker trucks, ultimately finding their way into Poland Spring bottles. [4]

    Dearborn and local business owners would be among the first to raise flags about such pumping operations.

    “The aquifers we have are our life support, and if these companies keep walking in, drilling holes, taking what they want until it’s gone and leaves, they’re actually hurting human life down here, a way of life,” said Al Davis, owner of a Fryeburg bait, tackle, and gun shop. “Are you going to hurt people just to get someone else a bottle of water somewhere else?”[5] '

    JanforGore
  •  

    Why is water so unimportant to so many people?

    Especially so many young people in this nation. This is the world you are inheriting, and by 2050 it is estimated that over TWO THIRDS of this world will not have potable water. Glaciers are melting all over this world and that does threaten water supplies for BILLIONS of people. Especially in the Himalayas and in Peru and other countries in Asia, Africa (Rwenzori Mountains for an example) and even in this country where Glacier National Park will be no more within THREE YEARS.

    These aren't just cut and paste stories to me. This is my heart and soul, and this is a crucial crisis we are facing because of so many taking water for granted and so many thinking they can waste it without any consequence because of man's utter ARROGANCE and selfishness. And Nestle exudes arrogance and selfishness with what it is doing to our water as if they OWN it like Monsanto thinks they own our food.

    Oh well, I suppose these companies will own us all lock stock and barrel and people will stilll be happy to pay for it out of their noses as long as their way of life is not changed. At least some people are standing up to this.

    JanforGore
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    Its an oil world, as long as the monopoly guys on top of the heap are raking in the uber trillions, why would it stop?

    Money, money, money, thats all that matters these days and that became evidently clear to me a few months ago when I told my friends and family that I was going to college for an ultimate goal of a Masters in Philosophy. I was greeted with skepticism and disbelief, I was told that I would never be able to find a job or make money with something like that.

    To most people all life is a type of myspace page, he/she who has the most friends/power/money is better/superior and therefore more important.

    rabidlemur
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    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac4u_4SpVTo

    H2O for Maine.

    Please watch this to know what Nestle is capable of. California, do you want this?

    This is not democratic.

    The citizens of Maine stood up to it. This must become a trend.

    JanforGore
  •  

    Well rabidlemur, that is a sad statement on humanity right there. If I heard a plant like this was coming to my town, I would lay down on the road to keep those trucks from stealing the water. We truly then have forgotten what is really important. But hey, it's National Orgasm Day, so I guess that's more important here today.

    Oh, and personally, I think we need more philosophers in the world. Good luck to you.

    JanforGore
    1 response to this
  •  

    Bottled water is used way more than it should be.

    Just get a reusable water bottle and refill it via a faucet-mount PUR or Brita filter.

    For bottles, I recommend the CAMELBAK BPA-Free ones: http://www.camelbak.com/betterbottle/

    This is what I do.

    doni83
  •  

    Good, shut their doors. Who on here doesn't use a faucet mounted water filter???

    If you don't, (or you don't just drink straight tap water, which I do not recommend) you're guilty...

    onechance
    1 response to this

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