Posts tagged: predatory multinationals

Nestle Renegotiates McCloud Bottling Contract: The Underground Looks at The Bigger Picture

June 5, 2008, by 2 comments

After what seems like years of settling the Underground’s crosshairs on Nestle’s hairy corporate butt McCloud water bottling plant proposal, it seems as if the opponents of Nestle’s million-square-foot plant and sweetheart pricing deal ($150/day for water) have what they want.

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.

Even BusinessWeek Thinks Nestle Totally Sent This One Off The Rails

May 28, 2008, by No comments yet

Even those raving, anti-business liberals at BusinessWeek have seen the writing on the wall surrounding Nestle’s predatory approach to rural water supplies:

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.