The decision on one of the most controversial projects to be proposed in the past decade in Chaffee County will wait at least a week to allow for additional public comment.
After seven hours of discussion on technical data from a mounting pile of consultant reports and impassioned pubic testimony on Nestle Waters North America proposed water harvesting project, Chaffee County Board of County Commissioners Chairman Frank Holman halted the proceedings. With more than 20 people still interested in commenting on the application, the commissioners agreed to continue public testimony on Wednesday, April 29, starting at 1 p.m. at the Salida SteamPlant Theater and Event Center.
The bulk of yesterday’s hearing before an overflow, standing room only crowd at the cramped American Legion Hall in Buena Vista focused on the two newest consultant reports reviewing the hydrology and economic impacts of Nestle’s plans to harvest water in Nathrop. Nestle’s plans call for piping spring water from the mouth of Brown’s Canyon to Johnson Village where it will be loaded onto trucks bound for Denver for bottling and distribution under Nestle’s Arrowhead brand.
A bad sound system and horrible acoustics of the hall added an extra challenge as the audience that reached nearly 200 at its peak, strained to hear testimony from a parade of Nestle and county consultants as well as comments from citizens, the vast majority of whom voiced opposition to Nestle’s plans.
Nestle and county consultants haggled over the finer points of Nestle’s monitoring and mitigation of impacts to wetlands in the project area as well as large discrepancies in calculations on the project’s local economic impact.
Among the most significant public comments yesterday, which was clearly the least understood by the the audience, was delivered by Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District Manager Terry Scanga. Scanga took issue with the proposed augmentation agreement between Nestle and the City of Aurora. The state requires Nestle to replace water it would harvest from the springs in Nathrop. Nestle’s water extraction here cannot proceed without a court-approved water augmentation plan.
Late last month, Aurora City Council approved a 10-year lease of 200-acre feet of water per year to Nestle with an option to renew for another 10 years which would seem to satisfy Nestle’s need for augmentation. Trying to describe in a nutshell technically complicated intergovernmental water agreements, Scanga told the commissioners that Aurora’s lease to Nestle creates a heavier reliance by Aurora on Upper Arkansas River Basin water that would have a “deleterious impact on our basin” and could have a negative impact on a 40-year intergovernmental agreement between Aurora, the UAWCD and the Southeast Colorado Water Conservancy District.
More complete coverage of this and other testimony from yesterday’s public hearing on Nestle will appear in future posts on the Salida Citizen.
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I live in Nathrop and would love to see Nestle’s ill-conceived project shot down. I moved here to get away from traffic and pollution and to enjoy the Arkansas River. Nestle’s plan doesn’t benefit most of us who live here at all, it will actually lower our quality of rural living. Let’s stop this nonsense now!