Nestle’s representative recently published a letter suggesting Nestle was “Good Corporate Neighbor” – using a survey generated by the economic development agency in Black Diamond (WA) as evidence.
I feel Chaffee County’s residents might benefit from a more critical perspective – a transcript of an interview with residents of four communities where Nestle most decidedly was not a good corporate neighbor.
One of the interviewees – Terry Swier of Michigan – recounted her community’s collision with Nestle after the community discovered Nestle’s supposedly low-impact pumping was damaging a watershed, including a wetlands and a pair of lakes:
MCWC, Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, has spent over a million dollars in court cost and lawyer and environmental expert fees. Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation has taken Nestlé to court to prove that water belongs to the people and ask for adjustment of Nestlé’s pumping levels to prevent environmental impacts. Nestlé has continued to run communities dry in more ways than one. MCWC is again heading back to circuit court in July 2008 to ask the judge to adjust Nestlé’s pumping limits.
Friendships had been severed as people took sides in the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation versus Nestlé battle. Nestlé did interrogative telephone polling, asking questions about MCWC and its president. Nestlé sent private investigators to homes of people who had signed MCWC’s referendum asking intimidating questions. Nestlé has threatened a potential strategic lawsuit against public participation known as a slap suit against my son.
Throughout all of these, Nestlé proposed to be a good neighbor company to our area yet it continues to pump at high rates during periods of lower precipitation and recharge.
Some of it sounded far fetched to me – until several personal friends of mine found themselves the target of a Nestlé attempt to subpoena their private financial records (McCloud, CA).
Good neighbor?
And we haven’t even touched on Fryeburg, Maine – the tiny rural town that Nestlé sued five times (one lawsuit and four appeals – they lost all but the last) in order to force them to accept a 24/7 truck loading station in an area zoned rural residential.
Finally, consider the situation in Chaffee County, where Nestlé’s original promises of $80,000 property tax increases (the number’s fallen below $17,000) and sales tax revenues from the purchase of diesel in the county have both largely evaporated.
As Nestlé’s consultant’s reports and assertions have been exposed as sloppy (at best) or outright misleading (at worst), Nestlé has responded by reaching for its checkbook, promising a minimal endowment to the area – the particulars of which still aren’t available to Chaffee County residents.
Here’s a simple test: If you were thinking about buying a car from an individual who got as much wrong in Chaffee County as Nestlé has – and suffered from Nestlé’s checkered history selling cars in other towns – would you buy it from them?
Sincerely,
Tom Chandler
StopNestleWaters.org
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