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

Clearly, I’m no fan of multinational predator corporation Nestle, but you have to admire their ability to squelch, throttle, and drown out opposition to their watershed-killing water bottling plants.

In this case, Nestle Waters’ local minions re-released a bought-and-paid for Economic Impact study (based on data supplied by Nestle) on the same day the McCloud Watershed Council released their independently conducted study detailing the negative economic effects of the Nestle plant on McCloud.

Nice touch, Nestle. When you can’t intimidate the opposition with subpoenas, try to drown them out with bullshit studies.

Given the sad state of journalism today, the tactic works more often than not, so I though I’d pass along a few items you might find interesting (but won’t read in the Redding Wretched Record Searchlight)

Here’s What You Really Need to Know

Just so we’re clear about what we’re talking about, here are a few bullet points about the pro-Nestle study that Nestle would rather you overlooked:

• The Economic Development Council (pro-Nestle) report was based solely from Nestle’s data and projections. (In other words, it’s Nestle’s version of Fantasy Island, only on paper.)
• The report writer admitted the report didn’t even consider negative economic or environmental impacts (Apparently, Nestle Corporate only sees the good in everything…).
• The writer admitted the report wasn’t significantly different from the earlier report it replaced (suggesting it was simply revised and released to compete with the Watershed Council’s Report)
• The Nestle report is only five pages long (the Watershed Council report is 63 pages long)

Why Was Nestle Afraid Of The Watershed Council’s Report?

Lots of reasons. Within the 63 carefully researched pages of the ECONorthwest report (you can read the executive summary here), you’ll discover Nestle’s paying $26 an acre foot for water that everyone else is paying at least 3x times as much for (water’s selling for $2,000+/acre foot in the Southern half of the state).

In other words, not only is the McCloud Services District selling its soul to Nestle for a whole century, they’re doing so for next to nothing.

Of course, I keep reading about all the jobs this plant will bring (less than 240 at full build), yet the only jobs the locals will see are sub-living wage menial gigs — the same jobs which go begging at nearby bottling plants.

Hot damn.

Fishermen? Who?

It turns out Nestle’s concern for the local fly fishing-based economy didn’t motivate them to study the downstream environmental impacts of their water bottling plant, which means their environmental impact report somehow neglected to actually study environmental impacts.

Simply put, they want to pull 500 million gallons per year out of the McCloud river watershed, yet they couldn’t be bothered to study the flows in Squaw Creek — the stream most affected by the withdrawals and a major trib of the McCloud River.

It turns out this isn’t an accident — it’s part of the Nestle Playbook we’ve seen at their other plants. Nestle fiercely resists any pre-construction flow studies, so later — when it’s clear they’re harming the watershed — they plead ignorance and keep pumping through the litigation.

Of course, it’s not all bad news for McCloud. In addition to a sinking tourist economy, the town will enjoy the benefits of 600 truck trips per day, (including noise, dust, pollution and accidents), and they’ll never have to worry about getting any additional money for their water for the next 100 years, so presumably their accounting costs will be low.

For a less pissed-off look at this issue, visit the Aquafornia blog.

Technorati tags: mccloud, mccloud river, squaw creek, nestle, bottled water, corporate predators