Rural Communities Exploited by Nestlé for Your Bottled Water

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One of the biggest and most voracious of the water gobblers is Nestlé, which controls one-third of the U.S. market and sells 70 different brand names -- such as Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Perrier, Poland Spring and Ice Mountain -- which it draws from 75 springs located all over the country.

Nestlé's latest target is McCloud, located in the shadow of Northern California's snow-capped Mt. Shasta.

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The town has less than 1,400 people and a high school of four students. But one thing McCloud does have is an abundance of water -- pristine spring water that comes from Shasta's glaciers and feeds some of the world's best fly-fishing rivers.

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Four years ago, residents learned that Nestlé, the world's largest food and beverage company, intended to build a 1 million-square-foot water-bottling facility in McCloud. Without any public input or environmental impact assessment, the multinational was given a 100-year contract to pump 1,600 acre-feet of spring water a year and a seemingly unlimited amount of groundwater.

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An Unfair Contract

For Nestlé, the deal seems too good to be true. The Ashland Free Press broke down some of the details of the contract:

* A 50-year term, renewable for another 50 years

* The right to take 1,250 gallons per minute of spring water

* The right to take qualified water on an interim basis from district's springs for bulk delivery to other bottling facilities located in Northern California

* The right to construct pipelines and a loading facility

* Use of an unknown quantity of well water for production purposes

* Exclusive rights to one of the town's three springs

* One hundred years of exclusivity, during which time no other beverage business of any type may exist in McCloud

* Use of an undisclosed, perhaps unlimited amount of ground water

* The right to require the McCloud Community Service District to dispose of process wastewater

* The right to require the McCloud Community Service District to design, construct and install one or more ground water production wells on the bottling facility site for Nestlé's use as a supply for nonspring water purposes.

As if all that weren't enough, under the terms of the contract, Nestlé will make out handsomely. The McCloud Watershed Council has reported that Nestlé will pay .000087 cents per gallon for the water it takes from McCloud's springs. Its website explains:

In other words, that's only 8.7 cents for 100,000 gallons. Meanwhile, the rest of us who use a fraction of what Nestlé will, pay almost 20 bucks each month, just for water. On the other hand, Nestlé can sell a 16-ounce bottle of the same water for around $1.29, or $10.32 per gallon.

It's no wonder that Nestlé wanted to rush the current contract through and is fighting so hard to keep it intact. It's a sweetheart deal for Nestlé, but not for McCloud. At a shelf price of $10.32 per gallon, 1,600 acre-feet would gross $5,380,451,712. If Nestlé nets one-fifth of what that water sells for, it would make over $1 billion a year.

http://alternet.org/environment/52526/