I think if you are going to show fishing,you should leave you’re environmental crap to yourself. I have young children that don’t need to be raised on your paranoid beliefs.Stay in California and quit spreading your brainwashing. I’m sorry that you can’t see that you have been raised in a confusing culture that wants to blame the people instead of the governmental and world wide destroyers. Get you’re crap together. Wake up and stop selling what you think THEY want to hear.

Speaking for paranoid, confused, brainwashed types worldwide, I’d like to say “thanks” for waking me up to what I so clearly missed – the work of that insidious band of “governmental and world wide destroyers” (Wait a minute – isn’t that Nestle? Err, well, uhhh… Has the new administration appointed a “World Wide Destroyer” Czar? I think he has.)

Besides making me want to invest heavily in aluminum foil-lined hat futures (and perhaps a bodyguard), the Underground is happy to recognize anyone capable of providing this level of comic relief. We salute you.

And Now, a Little Fly Fishing. Well, Not Really.

I look out the window at my just barely passable driveway and reflect on the concept that over the last week, better than four feet of snow fell on it – and that I invested the equivalent of four afternoon fishing trips keeping it barely passable.

It’s not the kind of thinking that generates a warm fuzzy feeling (in fact, it causes me to question my personal values surrounding snow removal, as confused and brainwashed as they clearly are), and because the weather’s warming and you can see the snow softening, you know that river flows are probably heading up the next two days – about the time you’ll actually be clear of deadlines and able to fly fish.

Still, right now the Upper Sac seems to be bouncing around 1100/1200 cfs, which is plenty fishable – especially at the higher reaches of the river (remember, the gauging station is just above Shasta Lake). Of course, the best BWO hatches are typically found in middle sections of the river, creating something of a connundrum for greedy fly fishermen (aren’t we all).

The Hostile, Confused, Brainwashed Underground

Taken as a whole, all of the above means one thing: I’m in what you might deem a pretty hostile mood (just try me Barton, try me).

Naturally enough, this makes me want to stick another pin in Nestle Waters of North America (perhaps I’m just hoping to attract another entertaining email), so I’m posting a YouTube trailer for an upcoming documentary called “Tapped.” It’s 341 seconds the water bottling arm of Underground Axis of Evil Member Nestle would rather you didn’t see, but even those not connected to the Nestle issue will find the trailer soundtrack worth their time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

See you milling around with all the other world wide destroyers, Tom Chandler.

In a brazen attempt to help Nestle Waters understand the error of their ways, I launched something that will no doubt brighten the mood around their corporate offices: StopNestleWaters.org

Go ahead and click through. We don’t bite – not you anyway.

Despite the fact Nestle’s recently taken a beating, they’re still up to their old tricks: suing tiny towns for their water, negotiating secret deals out of site of the public, and just generally being a massive corporate pain in the ass.

Undeniably, they’ve provided many hours of mirth and lazy target practice for the Undergrounders, and that hasn’t wholly ended.

It was just time to ramp things up a bit.

Bad Multinational: Put That Rural Town Down

You see, Nestle’s doing less-than-pleasant things in small communities around the country, and while citizens groups form to fight the Chocolate-Covered Swiss Menace (which sounds better than it is), they tend to remain local in their focus.

In other words, there are a lot of people fighting the same fight – but in different places.

Why not a site that brings them together?

Viola! (or) Voila!

A couple weeks of sleepless nights, and StopNestleWaters.org was born.

As much as anything, it’s an exploration of the idea that the Internet can level the playing field between a handful of locals and the world’s largest food and beverage company – complete with multi-bazillion dollar PR budgets and people in suits dedicated to turning the world’s freshwater supply into one big Nestle bottling plant.

Today is the site’s soft launch; I’m slowly letting the online world in on the joke gig.

Why am I telling you? Because some of the Undergrounders may simply want Nestle to keep their filthy paws off the McCloud River’s water.

Others may want to check in from time to time, or register for the site’s RSS or email feeds.

Maybe you’ll even want to participate in the discussion, which – given Nestle’s prediliction for shooting itself in the foot – promises to be amusing. In the meantime, expect regular service on the Underground (if such a thing exists) to resume.

So please place your tray and seat in the upright and locked position: We’re ready for takeoff.

See you on StopNestleWaters.org, Tom Chandler.

Nor have I pounded the Underground’s favorite whipping boy good corporate neighbor Nestle lately, but – via This is Fly – I found the perfect means for doing so while still providing a high quality, marketing-related entertainment experience for the Undergrounders:

See you drinking “Mitch,” Tom Chandler.

The California Attorney General’s office has weighed in on Nestle’s proposed McCloud bottling plant (.pdf document alert), and like seemingly everyone else on the planet, they don’t much like what they see (excerpted from scan of letter):

These days, bad PR is falling on Nestle like rain in a Midwest thunderstorm. Their Web site says “Good Food. Good Life.”

Judging by the sheer volume of anti-Nestle rhetoric flying in the mass media and on the Internet, it might be time they started looking for a new tagline.

After all, I’ve been happily fly fishing in Montana, and they’ve taken a pounding all over the USA at the hands of suddenly energized rural towns which are no longer happy to see them suck the local aquifers dry, and do so in exchange for a handful of sub-living-wage jobs.

With Nestle being turned away by small towns everywhere, we’d like to suggest an alternative liquid for them to bottle

There’s even rumors floating around the Underground’s neck of the woods that Nestle’s willing to do almost anything to make the bad press stop, which… (wait for it) is the Underground’s cue to pile on.

Our first cannonball into the bottled water pool?

First up Is Kennebec, Maine, where Nestle’s plant proposal was soundly trounced by vigorous citizen opposition, who forced the trustees to cancel a vote on the project:

When local citizens became energized in opposition to a proposed public/private partnership between our water district and Nestle/Poland Spring, they invited the water district officials to what was a spirited and well-attended meeting on June 22 in Kennebunk. The uproar caused postponement of the anticipated vote at the June 25 trustees meeting.

That, my furry group of Undergrounders, is one Maine-sized can of whupass.

Next comes the story of a small town in rural Washington which didn’t even let Nestle unpack their bags – they kicked the minions of the cloven hooved deceiver multinational to the curb right away:

Last month, without so much as a public hearing, Enumclaw sent a message to the multinational corporation: Go tap someone else’s spring.

In the past several years, as the bottled-water industry has boomed, Nestlé has set up 26 plants in towns across the country, tapping into local springs. Enumclaw was its first shot at a Northwest plant.

It did not go well. As word spread of the proposal, residents unleashed a torrent of e-mails and letters to the local paper, concerned about a possible water shortage, the potential for invasive corporate control and the damage plastic bottles can do to the environment.

Ouch. And this in-your-face rejection happened to none other than Dave Palais — Nestle’s McCloud operative, who’s taken so many lumps over Nestle’s proposed McCloud plant and subsequent retreat from their original proposal that we’re almost (not really) starting to feel sorry for him.

Next we look to an AFP story outlining the backlash against bottled water that Nestle and other bottlers are “enjoying” right now:

Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute, cites a “backlash against bottled water as more people are realizing what they get out of the bottles is not any better than what they get out of the faucet.”

The Pacific Institute, a California think thank on sustainability issues, contends that producing bottles for US water consumption required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil in 2006, not including the energy for transportation.

Haven’t read enough about the backlash against bottled water? Here’s another:

Across the country, opposition to bottled water is building, amid growing concerns about the industry’s environmental impact and rising fears about private control of public water supplies.

“There’s no question that there is a groundswell,” said Ruth Caplan, coordinator of Defending Water for Life, a Washington, D.C.-based campaign that opposes the bottled water industry.

Sadly, the news isn’t all good; the Underground’s heart goes out to the citizens of Fryeburg, Maine, who are facing their umpteenth (Ok, third or fourth) round of litigation at the hands of Nestle’s legal department.

Still, there’s hope, as evidenced by this lengthy passage from a story on the Corporate Accountability International site. It’s long, but the last paragraphs are worth it:

One reason community members were concerned with Nestlé’s practices was the fact that the corporation was getting local water for a relative bargain, while most residents of Fryeburg got the short end of the stick.

Nestlé secured a deal with a handful of local investors giving the corporation exclusive access to the town’s primary wells. While Nestle and a few local investors reaped large profits from the deal, other residents received no tangible benefits – instead, it became more difficult for Fryeburg residents to protect a water source that had once been designated to serve the needs of the local community.

In response to the local opposition, Poland Spring opened an office in Fryeburg.

“When Poland Spring decided to open an office in Fryeburg to offer ‘free coffee and real communication’ as part of their ‘good neighbor policy,’ they also offered to give away free cases of Poland Spring water,” said Mike Dana, a Fryeburg resident. “I was amazed at how ludicrous it was to pump water from the aquifer into tanker trucks, ship it to a bottling plant, put it into plastic bottles, ship it back to Fryeburg and offer it to the local residents as a ‘free gift.’”

Dana, along with Dearborn (the two are neighbors), had an idea about what Poland Spring could do with its free gift.

I think the Underground has the same idea Dana and Dearborn do, but I’m too polite to say it.

In truth, what’s happening is nothing short of revolutionary.

Nestle’s grown used to walking into small rural towns and having their way with the locals, buying water for a pittance and selling it at prices that make gasoline seem cheap.

Suddenly, communities are recognizing the risks, and seeing battles being fought and won by others.

The battle for McCloud’s water may prove to be a turning point in the bottled water saga; Nestle’s operative arrived and played the usual gambits — pitting community members against each other and using Nestle’s legal department to intimidate opponents (including a heavy-handed attempt to subpoena personal financial records).

Yet here we are a few years later, and Nestle’s on the mat, thanks largely to a committed community effort and the involvement of groups like CalTrout.

See you fighting the good fight, Tom Chandler.

Nestle announced they were going to reduce the size of their plant (it’s still too damned big, but…), take less water than originally proposed, and renegotiate that ludicrous contract with the McCloud Services District:

After years of battling the proposed Nestle water bottling plant in McCloud, CA, the Protect Our Waters Coalition (POW) announced today that it is optimistic about Nestle Waters North America’s (Nestle’s Waters) recent announcement that the company intends to begin negotiations this year with the McCloud Community Services District (MCSD) on a new contract to replace its 2003 contract with the MCSD, and will undertake additional scientific research on their proposed scaled-back water-bottling project in McCloud, California.

At this point, McCloud’s fate is in its own hands, and one hopes the McCloud Services District learned enough from its last disastrous encounter with Nestle’s legal department to get it right this time.

That includes hiring a real negotiator and a real attorney to construct the contract (the last was so lopsided it should have been written sideways, and Nestle paid for McCloud’s attorney review).

And this time, public comment and input must be part of the process (it wasn’t last time).

Larger questions remain, and they’re worth raising here.

This isn’t over — and I’ll keep the Undergrounders up to speed on the potential water/noise/traffic impacts on one of NorCal’s favorite fly fishing destinations — but the bigger picture still needs painting.

For starters, it’s clear counties and states need to implement groundwater regulation.

The current laws were put into place when hand pumps were the norm, and groundwater seemed endless.

It’s not, and we’re seeing a lot of damaging "groundwater strip mining" operations popping up around Siskiyou County — and the rest of the country.

Tapping one spring isn’t a disaster, but tapping a couple dozen could become disastrous when it comes to our coldwater fisheries.

And mark my words — this is exactly what Nestle has in mind (they’re already doing it in Maine).

As water becomes the next oil, and California’s Water Wars heat up, this will become a real problem instead of an abstract concept, and quickly too.

See you painting the bigger picture, Tom Chandler.

This is cautionary tale for any company. Time was when multinationals could arrive in economically depressed communities and pretty much have their way. But in the age of hyper connectedness, residents in McCloud were able to turn their issue into an international sensation.

Now Nestle has capitulated. The management lesson: no company can afford to go forward with projects like these without engaging ALL stakeholders, not just supporters. Yes, this is still David versus Goliath. But David has a megaphone.

They got the last bit wrong. It’s not David vs Goliath. It’s a whole bunch of Davids vs Goliath (including the Undergrounders).

Here’s hoping for a renegotiation of the Nestle contract resulting in a worthwhile project for the town of McCloud — and a little instant karmic payback for Nestle’s legal intimidation, copious lies, and for consciously splitting the town of McCloud in two.

In addition, they’ve agreed to reduce the amount of water taken by more than half — pumping 200 million gallons per year instead of the originally planned 521 million acres.

This, Undergrounders, mean’s we’re halfway there.

Renegotiate!

What remains is the renegotiation of multinational predator Nestle’s rapacious contract with the McCloud Services District — the five-member elected board who negotiated the existing contract in secret and approved it after a single public meeting.

While little is official at this point, the new project looks like this:

• 350,000 sq. ft. plant (instead of a million sq. ft. monster)
• 200,000,000 gallons of water annually (521,000,000 gallons)
• Agreement to monitor flows in Squaw Creek for two years prior to building the plant

Presumably, the number of truck trips will be reduced from the mind-boggling, road-grinding 600 trips per day.

The Mount Shasta Herald suggested that changes to the specifications of the contract could mean renegotiation of all the terms of the contract, so it’s possible McCloud will be able to do away with the “negotiated-by-monkeys” contract that pays 1/100th the value of the water, and offers no increase in rates for 100 years.

This is good news, Undergrounders. And while Nestle says rising fuel costs and the construction of a Denver plant drove this decision <coughbullshitcough>, a careful look at last year’s financials suggests their water market is no long growing, and that public backlash is badly damaging correctly identifying the company’s image.

UPDATE: The Protect Our Waters Coalition (CalTrout, McCloud Watershed Council and Trout Unlimited) have weighed in:

“While it certainly is a smaller plant than it would have been, it nonetheless uses a large amount of water. It’s still a major operation,” said Severn Williams, a spokesman for the Protect Our Waters Coalition.

It plans to lobby for a higher price for the water and a clause that limits Nestle to pumping only water from the springs around McCloud while prohibiting the company from touching the aquifer.

Williams also said the coalition wants a contract with a shorter timeframe than McCloud’s current 100-year commitment to sell its water exclusively

More water news as it happens, Undergrounders. It’s not a bad way to come back home.

Technorati Tags: nestle,nestle waters,bottled water,mccloud,mcloud river,squaw creek,bottled water backlash,multinational predators

Apparently, that’s easier than fixing the problems that got them in hot water to begin with, but if you want to read an intelligent writer’s take on Nestle’s problems with the town of Fryeburg, Maine, then consider Elizabeth Royte’s soon-to-be-available book: Bottlemania

You can read an excerpt here. Frankly, it looks like fascinating stuff, and Royte is heavy hitter, with credits from Harper’s, National Geographic, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and OnEarth.

See you in Maine, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: bottlemania,elizabeth royte,nestle waters,bottled water,fryeburg,multinational predator

That’s why it’s heartening to hear the Protect Our Waters Coalition (CalTrout, Trout Unlimited, and the McCloud Watershed Council) have hired a few legal gunslingers of their own:

The McCloud Watershed Council and California Trout, who, along with Trout Unlimited, comprise the Protect Our Waters Coalition, announced today that they have engaged the national law and consulting firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP. The firm will represent the Coalition in their fight to safeguard the rights and quality of life for residents of McCloud, California and beyond who would be affected by operation of a planned Nestle Waters North America water bottling plant in the Mt. Shasta area. Progress on the proposed plant, which would be the nation’s largest, is mired in unanswered questions and conflicting economic and environmental assessments.

Are they any good? Hell if I know, but at least the good guys aren’t walking into this one unarmed.

I do know lawyers (in addition to making good bait) are expensive, so it’s probably a good time to join CalTrout (if you haven’t already).

See you in the conference room, Tom Chandler.