segunda-feira, junho 08, 2015

While Californians Struggle With the Drought, Nestle Wants To Pump Even More Water From The Stricken State


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http://stopnestlewaters.org/

While Californians Struggle With the Drought, Nestle Wants To Pump Even More Water From The Stricken State

nestle, nestle waters, , 
About the only thing you can’t say about Nestle is that they’re inconsistent.
They’ve always been a corporate predator, and the remarks made to the Guardian (by the CEO of Nestle Waters of North America) suggest they’ll always be a corporate predator:
The boss of Nestlé Waters has said the company wants to increase the amount of water it bottles in California despite a devastating drought across the state that has triggered demonstrations at the corporation’s bottling plant.
Tim Brown, chief executive of Nestlé Waters North America, said the company would “absolutely not” stop bottling in California and would actually like to “increase” the amount of ground source water it uses.
Asked in a local radio interview if Nestlé would consider following Starbucks’ lead and stop bottling water in California during the drought, Brown said: “Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would.
Just to be clear; California is in the grip of a devastating, historical drought. Five of the last seven years have been drought years, and California’s residents are being told to cut their water use 30%.
For most, that means saying good-bye to landscaping, using buckets to catch the cold water coming out of the shower, idling farmlands (and those who work on them) — and waiting for the day that tap opens and nothing comes out.
Meanwhile, Nestle would pump more water if it could (and wasting approximately 30% of the water they pump).
It’s irresponsible in the extreme, but even more startling is the rhetoric coming from the company; not only are they seemingly overjoyed at the drought, they’d happily make it worse for California’s residents if only they could.

Nestle Taking Water From National Forest Land Using Permit That Expired 27 Years Ago

arrowhead, bottled water, nestle, nestle waters, , , 
Nestle would like you to believe they’re a “good corporate citizen” — one that monitors the health of the aquifers it plunders and gives back to its communities.
Which makes you wonder exactly how it was they mined water from a National Park — under a permit that expired in 1988 — 27 years ago.
(No, that’s not a typo.)
Nestle Waters North America holds a longstanding right to use this water from the national forest near San Bernardino. But the U.S. Forest Service hasn’t been keeping an eye on whether the taking of water is harming Strawberry Creek and the wildlife that depends on it. In fact, Nestle’s permit to transport water across the national forest expired in 1988. It hasn’t been reviewed since, and the Forest Service hasn’t examined the ecological effects of drawing tens of millions of gallons each year from the springs.
Even with California deep in drought, the federal agency hasn’t assessed the impacts of the bottled water business on springs and streams in two watersheds that sustain sensitive habitats in the national forest. The lack of oversight is symptomatic of a Forest Service limited by tight budgets and focused on other issues, and of a regulatory system in California that allows the bottled water industry to operate with little independent tracking of the potential toll on the environment.
Nestle would like you to believe this is just a paperwork snafu, but in the same article, retired Forest Service Biologist Steve Loe had this to say:
“They’re taking way too much water. That water’s hugely important,” said Steve Loe, a biologist who retired from the Forest Service in 2007. “Without water, you don’t have wildlife, you don’t have vegetation.”
The Desert Sun’s article covers a lot of ground, including the usual Nestlespeak, which suggests everything is peachy with Nestle’s water-taking operations — despite the fact the state is in the grip of a record drought, and Nestle’s water use is increasing.
You simply have to wonder — in a state gripped by drought, why is the Forest Service selling water to a bottling company at all?
The habitat is very delicate, and there’s no way Nestle can argue that removing water from a drought-stricken habitat doesn’t affect fish and wildlife.
And what does the public get for allowing Nestle to plunder this precious resource?
$524. A year.

Does Nestle’s Infiltration Of Maine’s PUC Make An Unconflicted Decision About Its Water Operations Impossible?

Fryeburg, Maine, nestle waters, Poland Spring, , 
Nestle is not a corporation that treads lightly on a place — especially Maine, where its tentacles infiltrate the politics so deeply, it seems it’s not possible for a decision to be made by political people untouched by the company. Witness this story from the Press Herald:
FRYEBURG – When the Maine Public Utilities Commission this week takes up a controversial 25-year contract between the company that owns the Poland Spring brand and the family-controlled utility that supplies its water, it will do so under troubling and unprecedented circumstances: All three PUC commissioners, as well as the state’s public advocate, have ties to the company.
If you can’t tell, this is my shocked look.
“Every commissioner on the PUC has been touched by Nestle,” said Fryeburg resident Scot Montgomery, who manages a restaurant kitchen in the nearby White Mountains and has been involved in local water issues. “Everyone who’s supposed to be looking out for the ratepayers, communities, and resource seems to have this other interest.”
Bingo.
While many at the state and PUC level go to great pains to say they believe the commissioners and public advocate aren’t biased, it’s largely impossible to believe that someone who once had a financial interest in Nestle’s success can now be expected to turn around and render an unconflicted decision.
And let’s be clear — in public proceedings, the mere appearance of a conflict of interest should be avoided. In this case, the conflicts are real (and financial in at least one case), yet at least one commissioner has yet to recuse himself despite having had a hand in preparing the very same situation he’s being asked to vote on.

The Fryeburg Deal: Controversial From The Start

The Press Herald’s Colin Woodward writes one of the most cogent explanations of Nestle’s involvement in Fryeburg’s water system, which isn’t without its shadier elements:
Fryeburg Water Co., which serves Fryeburg and East Conway, N.H., is unusual in that it is a privately held water utility. (About 15 percent of the nation’s water utilities are privately held.) It was founded in 1883, but by the 1990s the majority of the shares were held by members of the Hastings family, whose patriarch, Hugh Hastings, has served as company president since 1969 and as an officer since 1950.
Recognizing that Fryeburg had excellent water — the result of quartz-rich geology and clean, copious runoff from the Presidential Range in the White Mountains — Hastings hoped some could be profitably sold to bottlers. But in the interest of fairness, the PUC prohibits utilities from selling water to any entity at a higher price than it charges its ordinary customers, so Hastings and a business partner, Eric Carlson of the engineering firm Woodard & Curran, came up with a workaround.
In 1997, Hastings and Carlson created a company, Pure Mountain Springs, that bought water from the utility at its ordinary rate and sold it to Nestle Waters at a much higher — but undisclosed — rate. Pure Mountain Springs was headed by Hugh’s son, John, who shared ownership with Carlson. PUC filings show Hugh Hastings maintained power of attorney over his son for the first five years of the company’s operation.
Between 2003 and 2007, previous PUC proceedings revealed, this pass-through entity had revenues of $3 million and paid Fryeburg Water Co. $700,000 in rents and water fees. Hastings wrote in 2004 that the initial capital financing was “over $100,000.”
“Fryeburg’s water had the right geological recipe for Poland Spring,” said Mark Dubois, Nestle Waters’ Maine-based natural resource manager. “But it also had entrepreneurs who saw the spring and invested in their business and started selling that water to us. Here was a willing seller; we were a willing buyer.”
Cliff Hall, a longtime opponent of Nestle’s operations who served on Fryeburg’s Board of Selectmen from 2007 to 2010, takes a dimmer view of the situation. “They set up a nepotistic arrangement which bypassed the (utilities) laws that say if you take an excessive amount of money, you’re supposed to reinvest it in infrastructure,” he said. “It seems to me this was a dummy company set up … to take the money and put it back in the Hastings’ trust.”
Others share these concerns. “A public utility is supposed to do the best they can for the customers, the public and the municipality,” adds Bill Harriman, one of four Fryeburg-area residents who have formally intervened in the current PUC case. “And if you look at what these guys were doing back then, they weren’t looking out for the people of Fryeburg.”
Which brings us to the heart of the issue. Nestle — one of the world’s largest (and most distrusted) corporations — is a lot better at watching out for itself than the small towns it preys on.

Best Nestle Bottled Water Video Ever (So Far This Week)

bottled water, nestle waters, Nestle Worldwide,
Sure, StopNestleWaters.org has been dormant, but this is simply too good to pass up. Political satirist Steven Colbert takes aim at Nestle’s latest bottled water, which offers its drinkers “Electrolytenment.”
Whatever that is.
The Colbert Report 
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive
 
(To see the video in a bigger format, click here).

StopNestleWaters.org Site Is Dormant, But Will Remain Online A Little Longer

nestle waters, Nestle Worldwide
As you can tell, the StopNestleWaters.org site is dormant. I simply don’t have time to keep it running.
This site still ranks quite high in search engine results, so those looking to research Nestle’s operations online will read more than Nestle’s somewhat slanted perspective on their water mining operations — and their willingness to bludgeon small towns in rural areas into submission using legal means.
Nestle is not a good corporation — witness their unconscionable actions in the USA and around the world (the baby formula issue is particularly sickening) — so I’ll leave this site up a little longer as a “gift” to them. Enjoy.
TC

The Nestle Water Talk Digest

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More Greenwashing From IBWA? This Time It’s “Fake Reporting”

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The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) is no stranger to greenwashing (anyone who says bottled water is the most eco-friendly packaged beverage isn’t motivated by the planet’s well-being).
Now – in the face of “The Story of Stuff” viral video maven Annie Leonard turning her attention to bottled water – they’ve been forced to fire up the FUD machine (that’s Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt), in this instance, coloring the debate with what we (and Huffington Post blogger Jason Likins) charitably call “pretend journalism.”
The bottled water industry, fighting back against accusations that they are a significant contributor to environmental degradation, has released this magical video of glorious greenwashing, redolent of the famous video news releases in which Karen Ryan pretended to a journalist while promoting the Bush White House’s “No Child Left Behind” Act.
The New York Times’s Sindya N. Bhanoo reports that this video, sent out by the International Bottled Water Association, is a direct response to Annie Leonard’s The Story of Bottled Water (which you can read more about here). In the video, the IBWA touts the manufacturers of bottled water as “good stewards of the environment.” It features blissed-out coffeehouse acoustic guitar music, bucolic scenes of nature and a pretend reporter from pretend outfit “BWM Reports” pretending to pose pretend questions in pretend journalistic settings. The unnamed interlocutor serves up softballs, and happily nods along, like the Liz Glover Of Corporate Evil.
Ouch.

Proposed Cascade Locks Water Bottling Plant Drawing Widespread Opposition (Nestle can’t be happy)

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The proposed Nestle water bottling plant in Cascade Locks (the Colombia Gorge) is heating up again, and Nestle – perhaps the least-loved water bottling company on the planet – can’t be happy to see this:
The video caption:
On March 29, 2010, a coalition of environmental and social justice organizations, Keep Nestle Out of the Gorge, led by the consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch, (www.fwwatch.org) launched a coordinated campaign to prevent Nestle Waters North America from opening a water bottling facility in Cascade Locks Oregon.
The coalition gathered at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) offices to speak out against the plant, and to then deliver petitions to the ODFW signed by 4,000 Oregonians who oppose the proposed facility. Keep Nestle Out of the Gorge opposes the deal because a bottled water facility would lead to the commodification of Oregons public water resources, and potentially jeopardize local wildlife, especially native salmon and steel head species.
- See more at: http://stopnestlewaters.org/#sthash.Qfb2EeGD.dpuf
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