• Christian Science Monitor covers Nestle issues in Salida (CO) http://tinyurl.com/yjmqsf9 #
• Nestle's Sacramento water bottling plant coming under scrutiny, multinational wondering what's hitting them: http://tinyurl.com/yjzaz6s #
• Michigan's Terry Swier warns Maine residents about Nestle's watershed damaging presence in Michigan: http://tinyurl.com/yhav5wo #
• News&Review article about Nestle in Sacramento: "Aren't we being a bit shortsighted here?" http://tinyurl.com/yjk9sda #
• Blogwatch: The Bottled Water Scam http://bit.ly/q3SLu #
• Chicago suburb considering action against bottled water: http://bit.ly/18X1jt #

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(Found on an IndyBay article about Nestle in Sacramento)

**The following is a Dan Bacher Op-Ed piece about Nestle’s water bottling project in Sacramento**

Oct. 19, 2009 – Councilmember Kevin McCarty again raised the issue of the plan by Nestle to build a new bottling plant in South Sacramento at last Tuesday night’s Sacramento City Council meeting as grassroots community activists mobilized against the internationally boycotted corporation coming to the Capital City.

McCarty asked for the issue to be agendized for a future city council meeting so that an “urgency ordinance” can be passed, according to Save Our Water in Sacramento, the grassroots group fighting against Nestle’s plan to come to Sacramento after being kicked out of McCloud by massive local resistance.

“Councilmember McCarty will be asking the council to pass an urgency ordinance that would require a special permit for water bottling facilities in the city,” said Evan Tucker, an activist with Save Our Water. “This would require this type of project to come before the city council and be subject to environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.”

“We are excited about this development, but concerned about the timeline,” Tucker stated. “If the council does not agendize this issue soon, it could be too late for the new law to affect Nestle. We want to make sure the ordinance would affect Nestle, not just bottling plants in the future.”

Vice Mayor Lauren Hammond also said she was concerned about water bottling in this city and wanted this issue addressed by the council, noted Tucker. However, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson supports the proposal by Nestle to open up the plant, claiming it would bring “jobs” to Sacramento.

Nestle claims the Sacramento plant would be a “micro-bottling plant,” bottling only 50 million gallons of water per year. However, according to the Department of Utilities, the estimated water usage is 215 thousand – 320 thousand gallons of water per day (78 – 116 millions per year). “This would make Nestle one of the top ten water users in Sacramento at a time when we are in our third consecutive year of a drought,” emphasized Tucker.

At a time when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Dianne Feinstein and California Legislators are campaigning for a peripheral canal to steal more water from the Sacramento River to supply unsustainable corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and unsustainable development in southern California, we don’t need a huge corporation such as Nestle making immense profits off a public trust resource, Sacramento’s water supply!

Human rights activists and breast feeding advocates from throughout the world have boycotted the Swiss-based Nestle Corporation since 1977 because of the millions of deaths of infants it has caused over the decades. The boycott, coordinated by groups including Baby Milk Action, International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) , Infant Feeding Action Coalition (INFACT) and Save the Children, was prompted by concern about the company’s marketing of breast milk substitutes (infant formula), particularly in less economically developed countries, which campaigners claim contributes to the unnecessary death and suffering of babies, largely among the poor.

“Nestle is targeted with the boycott because monitoring conducted by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) finds it to be responsible for more violations of the World Health Assembly marketing requirements for baby foods than any other company,” according to Baby Milk Action.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.5 million infants die around the world every year because they are not breastfed. Where water is unsafe, a bottle-fed child is up to 25 times more likely to die as a result of diarrhea than a breastfed child. “Marketing practices that undermine breastfeeding are potentially hazardous wherever they are pursued,” according to UNICEF.

Anti-Nestle organizations are sponsoring this year’s Nestle-Free Week from October 26 to November 1 in an effort to raise the profile of the boycott.

Do we want a criminal corporation responsible for the deaths of millions of infants come to Sacramento to make immense profits off our water supply?

Please spend a moment to contact Kevin McCarty and Lauren Hammond and let them know that you want the urgency ordinance passed in time to apply to Nestle. Contact Kevin McCarty at (916) 808-7006 or KMcCarty [at] cityofsacramento.org and Lauren Hammond at (916) 808-7005 or lhammond [at] cityofsacramento.org

Also, Save Our Water will be holding a screening of Tapped at the Crest Theater at 1013 K Street, Sacramento, on Wednesday, October 21. There will be screenings at 5:30 pm and 8 pm. Tickets will be regular box office prices: $9.50 for general admission, $6.00 for students & seniors. You can also purchase them online prior to the event at:
http://www.tickets.com/browseother.cgi?minpid=6622428

For more information, go to http://www.SaveOurWaterSacramento.org

Editor’ Note: Dan Bacher is editor of The Fish Sniffer: www.fishsniffer.com

• Protect Wells Water (Wells, Maine) launches new Web site (MI's Terry Swier speaking there 22-24) http://www.protectwellswater.com/ #

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• Surprise inside your water bottle: Dallas TV station discovers bottled no better than tap: http://tinyurl.com/yhwbbam #
• Nestle meeting stronger-than-expected opposition to Sacramento bottling plant; citizens have unanswered questions http://tinyurl.com/yf9cojo #

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• Slide show (with audio) chronicles citizen reaction to Nestle's Chaffee County water extraction project: http://tinyurl.com/yctvdk6 #

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• Nestle can't find any love on infant formula world either (YouTube) http://ow.ly/rJJG #
• More non-love for Nestle, this time from Mommybloggers… http://ow.ly/rJLt #

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• Review of Elizabeth Royte's excellent Bottlemania book (now in paperback): http://tinyurl.com/yb7o3b7 #
• "Good corporate neighbor" Nestle wants traffic lights by factory, offers to help pay, then backs out: http://tinyurl.com/yb43y93 #

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It’s a coincidence that a new adventure in my life dovetails so neatly with Nestle’s withdrawal from McCloud, but I’m going to be largely unavailable for several weeks, so I’m going to take a little hard-earned, 30-day break from this blog.

When StopNestleWaters.org began life, it was focused on a couple key goals:

• Provide rural activists with access to information about Nestle Waters of North America’s tactics in other towns, so they knew what to expect – and what to watch for
• Hold Nestle Waters of North America accountable for its actions, hopefully undermining the “every community likes us” and “we’ve never harmed an aquifer or watershed” spin that’s constantly broadcast by PR staff and on-the-ground operatives
• Generate excellent search engine placings, so those searching for information about Nestle’s bottling activities will find more than Nestle’s corporate Web sites on the first page of Google’s organic search results

Through the nearly 450 articles I’ve posted, I’ve succeeded at the latter, though the first two goals have only been partially met.

That’s a function of a lack of time, though I am gratified that we had a hand in making Nestle’s actions in other communities a real issue in Chaffee County and (hopefully) Cascade Locks.

Still, fighting a multinational like Nestle – and its surrogates, including the CEI and the International Bottled Water Institute – is a lot like putting your head in a vise, turning the handle until everything goes black, then waking up and doing the whole thing again.

At some point, you need a break, which is where I’m at now.

In addition, my business is changing – as are my priorities around my time – and so I’m taking a break from StopNestle Waters until (possibly) the end of October. At that time, I’ll evaluate the site, the effort needed to sustain it, and make some decisions.

I want to thank everyone who provided information, links and alerts, and wish everyone the best of luck in their efforts. In addition, I fervently hope that Nestle stops playing games with rural communities and the people who live in them. The divisive tactics and demonization of opponents has left a trail of broken communities in Nestle’s wake, and truly wish they’d start to become the “good corporate neighbor” they pretend they are.

Fight the good fight,

TC

• Bundanoon (Australian town which voted to ban bottled water) getting set to go bottled H2O free… http://tinyurl.com/yc4g3q2 #

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Nestle’s announcement that it was leaving McCloud wasn’t wholly unexpected, but in many ways, it’s still difficult to entirely believe the project is dead.

Nestle has chosen to continue its belated flow studies, and the MCSD was choosing a water committee to study the issue (some charge the committee was being stacked with pro-Nestle members).

And while it’s tempting to credit Nestle’s egress entirely to local activists (Concerned Citizens, McCloud Watershed Council, Protect Our Waters and CalTrout chief among them), the market clearly played a strong hand.

After all, Nestle’s bottled water revenues were down 3% the first half of this year, and it’s clear their “premium” spring water brands took a much bigger hit in favor of their tap-water derived, less-expensive Pure Life brand.

With fuel costs running far higher than when the McCloud project was first conceived, and demand shifting to the “value” priced segment of the market, Nestle’s relocation to Sacramento makes a certain sense – as does their interest in building more, smaller plants.

Which raises the obvious question; had Nestle’s original (and astonishingly lopsided) contract with the MCSD been allowed to stand as negotiated, how many of Nestle’s promised jobs would still be extant in the town of McCloud?

On StopNestleWaters.org, we’ve long questioned Nestle’s promises of jobs to communities; the only real data we’ve seen published suggests the promises aren’t always real.

Nestle may not want to admit it, but they can’t have it both ways; if market conditions truly forced the move to a smaller, differently configured production facility in Sacramento, then it’s not hard to extrapolate to a present where McCloud would have been repayed for its water with an even fewer jobs than promised (many of those jobs of the sub-living wage variety).

It’s entirely likely a Nestle factory in McCloud would be running at a fraction of its built-out capacity – and McCloud would be experiencing yet another resource-extraction related economic bust.

Should the bottled water market continue to nosedive, what of the jobs Nestle dangles in front of other communities?

After all, Cascade Locks seems to believe the jobs provided by the company will save their town – and Sacramento seems willing to give up unlimited municipal water in return for only 40-60 jobs.

But what if those jobs are illusory, especially after three more years of a declining bottled water market?

• BusinessWeek: Nestle's Patience Runs Dry on Bottling Plant (ignores Nestle's predatory behavior) http://tinyurl.com/ycb5gwj #
• Chaffee County citizens considering four options around Nestle extraction project: http://tinyurl.com/ydlz68t #
• 100+ residents meet, decry Chaffee County decision to permit Nestle water extraction project (no love for Nestle) http://tinyurl.com/yekm6r6 #

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