Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumForest Service Considers Nestle Mountain Water Withdrawals
Source: Associated Press
Forest Service Considers Nestle Mountain Water Withdrawals
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. Mar 18, 2016, 9:23 PM ET
The U.S. Forest Service on Friday proposed giving Nestle a five-year permit to keep siphoning millions of gallons of water from the Southern California mountains to bottle and sell.
The Forest Service said it was starting an environmental analysis of the request for a special permit to continue drawing water from the Strawberry Creek watershed in the San Bernardino National Forest east of Los Angeles.
Nestle Waters North America a subsidiary of the Swiss multinational food giant and the largest bottled water company in the nation has been drawing 25 million gallons of water a year from mountains springs under a permit that expired some three decades ago. The company pays the government about $500 a year and markets the product as Arrowhead brand spring water.
The water flows from about a dozen wells down through a 4.5-mile pipeline and is trucked to bottling plants.
Critics contend that the extraction particularly in the midst of California's drought could harm the creek environment that supports California spotted owls and other sensitive species.
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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/forest-service-considers-nestle-mountain-water-withdrawals-37766265
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)how is it that the average homeowner has to live in fear of their water bill, and make sure no pipes are leaking, but this massive "legalized theft" by Nestle Corp of California's major resource continues and continues!
Who in the Forest Service Agency is getting paid off? Keep in mind, in this day and age, a person doesn't meet someone in a back alley and get a briefcase filled with cash. Rather than money,they get a job for their wife or relatives - a nice cushy, attendance not necessary kind of job!
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)Sell millions of dollars worth of water for $500, so one of the world's largest companies, foreign owned, by the way, can enrich itself by selling a product that should be provided to all citizens by the neglected infrastructure. And we get all upset when somebody uses the SNAP card to buy the more expensive bagels.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Too much already! They took so, so, so much!
NO
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)I can keep my garden going. That means that I carry bucket after bucket of water out from my kitchen into my yard for my trees -- to keep them alive.
That's how we live in California.
And you take OUR water, the water in the public parks in our state, pay a pittance for it, and then we are supposed to save water.
It's OK that you sell water, but please don't take the water you sell out of the California water household at this time. When we have plenty of water you can have your share. But we who live in California with our infamous low-flush toilets and our "waterwise" gardens and our drought can't afford for you to take our state's water or water from our national parks and sell it back to us at a profit.
Please stop. At least until we get a spate of very rainy years. Please.
I have been dreading carrying out my shower bucket to the water barrel- procrastinated and let it get a bit too full. Why isn't there a boycott of Arrowhead water, even all Nestle products? I'm not flushing my toilet and they are taking my water supply for free and selling it back to my neighbors for a profit!
kacekwl
(7,025 posts)I guess the market is free after all.
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 19, 2016, 09:40 AM - Edit history (1)
they probably want the mountain water because fracking has contaminated most of the ground water
Diremoon
(86 posts)Nestle should be fined for several times what they sold the water for that was illegally extracted. If joe average had done that, he would have been tossed in prison.
hopemountain
(3,919 posts)no one even blinks an eye at this theft and very questionable 'agreement' - who is getting a kickback and what is the kickback and why is the info 'below the radar'? what does this swiss company have on whom and why do they have carte blanche with our water?