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Water bottlers facing growing community opposition

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 9, 2008 at 12:21 pm

From the Associated Press:

The lumber mill closed five years ago, and so many families moved out that the town can no longer even field a high school football team. But McCloud is hoping to turn things around by exploiting the other natural resource in abundance along the icy flanks of Mount Shasta — water.

The town of 1,300 people in far Northern California struck a deal with Nestle in 2003 under which the Swiss company would build the nation’s largest water bottling plant to tap three of the many springs on the mountainside and bottle up to 521 million gallons of water a year.

The project is still awaiting an environmental review from the county and could be several years away from approval, having run into opposition from scientists, fishermen, conservationists and some members of the community 280 miles northeast of San Francisco.

But others in town are growing frustrated by the delays and want to see something, anything, to replace the lumber mill that was driven out of business by the logging restrictions that have hurt the timber industry across the Pacific Northwest.

“When they had the mill, this town was jumping,” said homeowner Paula Kleinhans. “As soon as the mill closed down, people moved, they lost their jobs, and now there are no children here. It really needs industry here.”

Read the rest of this story from the Associated Press, which highlights the opposition water bottlers are facing in McCloud and throughout the U.S., by clicking here.

April 9, 2008 · Filed Under Bottled water

Comments

One Response to “Water bottlers facing growing community opposition”

The Trout Underground on April 9th, 2008 3:16 pm

Half the town of McCloud is living in fantasy land; a handful of $10/hour jobs are not going to revitalize McCloud or bring back the good old days.

While those folks cling to that fantasy, Nestle’s negotiated a contract that allows them to buy water for less than 1/10 the going rate elsewhere.

In fact, a recent economic report (the one which studied both positive and negative effects) made it clear that Nestle’s saddled McCloud with many of the expenses associated with the plant, and that as the 100 year contract runs its course, it’s likely the town could suffer a negative economic effect — especially since Nestle’s paying practically nothing for the water.

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