|
Associated
Press
April
9, 2008
by Samantha
Young
McCLOUD, Calif.—Like many
small towns across America, this was a community that once
rallied around high school football. Today, the school
enrolls too few students to even field a team.
Most families moved out after the lumber mill shut its doors
in 2003, leaving this town of 1,300 in the mountains of far
Northern California without the industry it had relied on
since its founding more than a century ago.
No longer able to sustain itself
through timber, McCloud turned for economic salvation to
the other natural resource in abundance along the icy flanks
of Mount Shasta—water.
"When they had the mill, this town was jumping," said
McCloud 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."
Whether that void should be filled by the bottled water
industry has become a point of contention in this sparsely
populated region about 200 miles north of California's state
capital. Similar debates are playing out across the country
as water bottling companies seeking to expand are being met
with increasing resistance.
Plans to tap local water sources are being greeted with
skepticism from New Hampshire to Florida to California, as
many parts of the country face drought and dwindling water
supplies.
"It's no longer this limitless resource," said
Elaine Renich, a Lake County Commissioner whose central Florida
county is opposing plans by California-based Niagara Bottling
LLC to pump water from the region's shrinking aquifer. "It's
beyond me how you can expect people to conserve water and
you turn around and say a water bottling plant is OK."
Supporters view bottling plants as job generators that can
bring much-needed revenue to regions in need of an economic
boost.
Others fear that diverting thousands of gallons a day from
aquifers and natural springs will drain private and municipal
wells, creeks and streams.
A House of Representatives committee held a hearing last
year to assess the environmental risks of the bottled water
industry and question the privatization of water sources.
Community and environmental groups are taking an increasingly
aggressive stance, asking water bottlers to scale back their
plans or filing lawsuits seeking to have them stopped.
In drought-stricken central Florida, residents and commissioners
in Lake County are urging the regional water district to
deny a pumping permit to Niagara Bottling. The company wants
to pump about 480,000 gallons a day. Meanwhile local officials
are planning for water shortages they say will come as early
as 2013 when the aquifer runs dry.
In southern New Hampshire, residents are trying to block
New Hampshire-based USA Springs from pumping more than 300,000
gallons a day from the 100 acres it bought in the area. The
state has given the company a permit that critics fear will
deplete local homeowners' wells, lower the Bellamy and Oyster
rivers and drain wetlands.
"They are people who want to bully their way in and
take our water," said Barrington resident Denise Hart,
a board member of the citizens group Save Our Groundwater. "This
water is our lives, our community and our public health."
Opposition in Wisconsin forced Nestle to abandon plans by
its Perrier subsidiary to build a $100 million bottling plant
east of Wisconsin Dells. Residents sued Perrier and the state
for failing to properly evaluate the environmental effects
of pumping up to 500 gallons per minute from wells near a
spring. They argued the bottling operation could deplete
a local aquifer used by the community.
In Michigan, about 200 miles northwest of Detroit, residents
are engaged in a legal dispute against Nestle Waters North
America Inc. over groundwater pumping that a court said might
reduce flows into a local lake.
Last September, the city council in Napa, the heart of Northern
California's wine country, rejected Crystal Geyser's application
to tap into the city's aquifer to bottle mineral water. The
mayor and others worried about the effects on the city's
groundwater supply and the industry's contribution to global
warming.
"These cases pop up in these small communities, and
it takes a while to realize this is a national trend," said
Noah Hall, an assistant law professor at Wayne State University
in Detroit who specializes in water law.
California is home to 40 percent of the nation's 300 water
bottling operations, according statistics by the California
Department of Public Health and the Beverage Marketing Corp.
The conflicts between bottlers and local communities across
the country are partly a reaction to Americans' conflicted
relationship with bottled water.
Americans drink more bottled water than milk, fruit juice,
beer and wine. In 2001, bottled water was at the bottom of
that list, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp.
Soda remains the most popular purchased drink, but the demand
for bottled water is growing by 8 percent a year, pushing
water bottling into a $10.8 billion-a-year industry nationwide.
To keep pace with that growth, corporate giants such as
Nestle, Coca-Cola Co. and Crystal Geyser must look for new
sources, a search that is leading them into areas where they
face more and more conflict.
In McCloud, the Swiss company Nestle is seeking to build
the country's largest bottling plant, which will tap three
of the natural springs on the flanks of 14,162-foot Mount
Shasta and bottle up to 521 million gallons a year, enough
water to supply 1,600 households.
The company promises 240 jobs and annual payments of $250,000
to $350,000, in addition to a charge based on how much water
it pumps out. It says its operations will have no effect
on the water supply for the town, which uses about 10 percent
of the springs' water.
Nevertheless, the proposal has raised concern among some
residents, environmentalists, fishermen and scientists who
say not enough study has been done on Nestle's proposal.
Debra Anderson, a real estate agent who sits on the McCloud
Watershed Council, questions the wisdom of selling such a
crucial resource to a private company.
"There's a growing concern of water bottling plants
throughout the country, and California has so many problems
right now with their water throughout the state," she
said. "I think McCloud has to take a step back and look
at the resources they have."
McCloud sits just east of Interstate 5 in the shadow of
Mount Shasta, the second tallest peak in the Cascade Range,
and the feature that dominates the local landscape.
The region, with forests stretching in every direction,
is crisscrossed with renowned trout streams. Its rivers feed
the Sacramento River, the main artery of a massive state
water system that is struggling to supply the nation's richest
agricultural fields and California's ever-growing population,
now approaching 38 million.
The dozens of springs breaking through the crust of Shasta's
lower reaches are so pure that residents drink directly from
them, filling bottles to take back home. Coca-Cola and Crystal
Geyser already run bottling operations nearby.
In 2003, sensing the demise of California Cedar Products,
the region's main private employer, McCloud's elected board
approached Nestle, whose brands include Arrowhead, Poland
Springs and Ozarka.
The company's take would be an estimated 16 percent of what
typically flows from the springs. But it's not clear how
the streams below would react to that kind of diversion.
Some could become slower or warmer, affecting habitat for
the trout that are prized by fishermen.
"Some of us are skeptical that there hasn't been any
real analysis," said Peter Moyle, a biologist with the
University of California, Davis, who is beginning to study
Mt. Shasta's springs. "These are small streams. Individually,
they don't count for much, but it's always the cumulative
effect you worry about."
In a concession last February, Nestle scaled back its initial
proposal to pump groundwater in addition to the 521 million
gallons it planned to drain from the area's three springs.
It was a strategic move by Nestle to win more community support
and avoid future lawsuits like the one it continues to battle
in Michigan.
Last year Nestle survived a challenge before the California
Supreme Court in a lawsuit arguing that McCloud had exceeded
its authority to broker a contract before the project went
through the proper environmental reviews. Those reviews are
still being performed by Siskiyou County. The approval process
could take several more years.
Preliminary reviews have shown that Nestle's plant, including
construction of its pipelines and the water pumping, would
have minimal environmental effect.
"We're all working to the same goal, sustainability
and protection of the environment," said Nestle's Northern
California natural resource manager, David Palais. "We're
not going to come in and invest money and deplete the resource."
In town, several residents and community leaders are frustrated
the plant isn't built yet. They believe McCloud has plenty
of water to spare.
At the tanks where the city collects its spring water, a
deafening 4,200 gallons a minute rushes out of a tank and
back into the ground.
The rest of town is far quieter.
Few children play in streets that see little traffic, the
McCloud Soda Shoppe & Cafe,
the bookstore and the general store are closed by 5:30 p.m.,
and visitors searching for an evening meal are out of luck
on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The only eatery open
on those nights is the bar at the local Veterans of Foreign
Wars hall.
Randy Prinz, 52, says he might support the bottling operation
if the town renegotiated its contract with Nestle to get
more money. His grandparents settled in McCloud at the height
of the timber industry, and he has watched it go from boom
to bust.
"Now all you have is your memories and your house," he
said. "And no job."
|
