Update on Nestlé Bottling Plant

Threatening Mount Shasta’s Aquifer
by Diane Lowe, Concerned McCloud Citizen
It has been two years since Nestlé snuck into McCloud and within three months sweet talked our McCloud Community Services Board (MCSD) into signing a 100 year deal for the sale and purchase of spring water from McCloud’s three springs. The District agreed to multiple terms of which the most egregious is the sale of the insufferable amount of 1,250 gallons of spring water per minute to be bottled at a plant in McCloud, becoming one of the biggest water bottling facilities in the country. The district would drill bore holes and wells for the proposed plant. At full build out, the plant size, one building, could accommodate every existing building in the community of McCloud.
The project is pending however, based on the completion of the CEQA processes and the results of a court appeal by Nestlé.
Not only is our watershed threatened by this sale, but hopes for a solid diversely based and economically sustainable community of McCloud is at risk.
The Siskiyou County planning department has announced that it is attempting to release the Nestlé Waters of North America draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) prepared by Pacific Municipal Consultants of Mount Shasta, related to this contract. The environmental review document is slated to be issued before the end of 2005 or early next year. The public will have 45 days to participate in the written responses under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)...forty five days to respond to a report that will have an effect on the area for 100 years.
Plans are to have an informational meeting in McCloud within two weeks of the release of the EIR. Those associated with or questioning the contract will participate at this event. Several weeks later, we will host several work sessions, one in McCloud and the other in Mount Shasta. At that time several EIR special-ists will be available to help sort through the issues.
Nestlé is moving along rapidly. Their purchase offer of the CalCedar mill site was accepted in July of 2004, with a closing date pending the issuance of permits related to the project, according to Dave Palais, Nestlé’s water resource manager. Instead, he has announced that the property may close escrow as early as the end of this year or early next. With this purchase come the rights to acquire more water and the options for water rights associated with the Cal Cedar mill. “The water rights entitle the owner to use approximately 5,400 gallons of water per minute flowing from the McCloud River out of Lakin Dam (Upper McCloud) onto the mill site via a 22 inch pipe,” the Mount Shasta Herald reported earlier this year. The McCloud Services District has also claimed this water for emergency and a back-up water supply. Palais has stated that they may not determine how they will use this water until the discretionary permits are in place concerning the purchase and sale of spring water from McCloud’s three springs. This excessive amount of water draw is sure to be examined by the state agencies involved. The endangered Sheepheaven Trout (red band trout) still survive in the McCloud River watershed above the Lakin Dam.
As readers may recall, Concerned McCloud Citizens were pleased when Siskiyou County Superior Court Judge Roger Kosel ruled in March 2005, in favor of our lawsuit requesting that the contract between Nestle and the McCloud Community Services District (MCSD) be set aside. Judge Kosel ruled on the grounds that Nestlé and the MCSD were not in compliance with CEQA as no environmental review had been completed before the MCSD signed the contract with Nestlé.
On July 23, 2005, Nestlé returned to court request-ing that certain clauses remain intact concerning the contract. Nestlé argued that only those sub-ject to the CEQA process should be voided, leaving the remaining issues, including economics and contract length intact. Judge Kosel ruled that the entire con-tract would remain void because the signing of the cont-ract const-ituted “an initial and integral state of the proposed project.”
Nestlé and the MCSD immediately announced that they would appeal the rulings. With many people in McCloud voicing their concerns over this project, it is surprising that the District Board remains deaf to the voices of their constituency. To date the appeal has not been filed.
The services district signed this contract without historical measurements of the water flows of the three springs, and yet, the contract awarded rights to drill at all three springs. New data indicates the flow figures were overstated by more than 40% at the contract signing.
Protecting our water resources of the McCloud watershed and that of Mount Shasta's aquifers is of vital importance to all of us. The water companies and water purveyors clearly have identified the Mount Shasta region’s source waters as being some of the best water in the country. Other springs in the region are threatened. We are continuing to study this potential water mining and water draws elsewhere and to supply this information to those who request it. We can be reached via concernedmccloudcitizens@earthlink.net.
If you have not done so, please request a copy of the NWNA/MCSD Spring Water Sales Environmental Impact Report from the Planning Department, Siskiyou County, P.O. Box 1085, Yreka, CA 96097.
 
 
 
 

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