Nestle saga moves toward next chapter

As one chapter of Nestle closes, a new question hangs in the air. How will the next chapter in the saga of the battle over the privatization of water in Chaffee County be written?

To recap . . . During public hearings on Nestle Waters North America plan to harvest 65 million gallons of water per year from springs at the mouth of Brown’s Canyon for sucking, piping, trucking, bottling and selling as Nestle’s Arrowhead bottled water brand, hundreds of citizens unequivocally expressed opposition to Nestle. Only a tiny band of about a half dozen folks, each of who stand to directly gain financially from the project, voiced support for Nestle.

Last week, the commissioner voted unanimously to support conditional approval of Nestle’s operations in this county. The permit approval contains 44 conditions totaling 11 pages which County Commissioner Chair Frank Holman said he trusts the world’s largest food and beverage company will abide by, adding that he also calls on local citizens to serve as watchdogs of the project. A final, formal resolution on the project is expected to be reviewed for adoption before Oct. 18.

Nestle assured the Citizen it would abide by the conditions and be a “good neighbor.” Yet nothing about Nestle’s actions throughout the public review process lead me to share in Holman’s naïve optimism and Nestle’s verbal assurances that Nestle will be a good neighbor and happily comply with all 44 conditions of approval of their permit. At best this project will be an ongoing series of unwieldy hassles for county staff; at worst, a complete environmental disaster.

So what’s on tap next? First, let’s try to take a look at the situation as clinically as possible.

The citizens of Chaffee County own some responsibility for this, albeit seemingly grotesquely flawed, decision. Given a similar springwater opportunity in, for example, the Roaring Fork Valley or Boulder County, Nestle could not have even gotten through the door since sustainability is written into guiding policy and codes.

Of course until Nestle, most of us never gave a second thought to groundwater resources or the unimaginable prospect that some multinational corporation might think it’s a good idea to harvest water from an aquifer in the arid West and sell it to consumers at astronomical prices as compared to the fraction of the cost for the same quantity of tap water.

Property owners, whether they are local ranchers or your neighbor downtown, have every right to sell their property to anyone willing to pay whatever price the landowner feels is fair for the property in question. It’s up to local planning and zoning authorities to approve any subsequent changes of land use. Now, if ranchers believed there were more sustainable opportunities to repurpose or otherwise reap better returns from their land, short of selling, that could be a productive avenue for us all to explore.

Nestle and its team of lawyers and consultants did what any good business person would do, which is do their best to control costs in order to maximize profit. From all appearances, only public pressure and opposing county consultant analysis moved Nestle to make major concessions like the removal of the Bighorn Springs parcel and promise of a permanent conservation easements. There are clear indications Nestle spun facts and the truth in its pursuit of county approval, most notably in a tense debate with Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District General Manager Terry Scanga.

But it  also seems like an unfair fight when a giant multinational corporation picked as its first target in Colorado, a small rural community of limited financial resources, dearth of technical expertise and glaring voids in regulations at the local and state level to definitively protect it against such commercial water grabs. And there’s no question Nestle can and still may well overpower this community with its vast resources in order to win any future argument about any aspect of the project.

While the commissioners had the opportunity to reject the proposal, thereby concurring with public and staff testimony that the application did not satisfy all the terms of the 1041 permit process, they chose instead to approve the project with a lengthy list of conditions they felt addressed the public’s concerns and brought the project into 1041 compliance. In so doing they also reneged on campaign assurances and stump speeches about green being the color of the future here and vowing to keep water in the valley.

Pondering next steps is Chaffee Citizens for Sustainability, a group galvanized in its opposition to Nestle but also interested in maintaining vigilance to insure all future land use applications, policies and initiatives support a sustainable future for the county. CCFS donned the mantle of leadership in the fight against Nestle. It can be argued CCFS won several important skirmishes but ultimately lost the war, though not for lack of persistent and thought-filled effort.

CCFS’s eight-member board was joined by more than 200 citizens who spoke in public, and others who submitted letters to the county, strongly objecting to Nestle. It is now up to the people to demonstrate how sincere they were in their anti-Nestle rhetoric. It is worth noting that the battles against Nestle elsewhere around the country are being led by volunteer citizen groups who, like CCFS, are generally short on funding but long on a passion for justice for the environment and future generations.

Coincidentally, CCFS is hosting the Colorado premier of “Tapped,” a documentary about the privatization of water. Jim Olson, the environmental lawyer who was instrumental in Michigan’s nine-year battle against Nestle, will be on hand to discuss lessons learned from Michigan and what they may portend for any future course of action here in Chaffee County. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 27 at the SteamPlant Theater and Event Center on the riverwalk in downtown Salida for this evening of community education and dialogue. Suggested donation is $10.

CCFS has already received calls from citizens groups in Flagstaff, AZ, Maine, California and Michigan as well as Food and Water Watch.org, StopNestleWaters.org and others outside our tiny county urging CCFS to keep up its spirits and know that it is not alone in the global debate and fight against Nestle’s march to privatize a natural resource for shareholder profitability. Increasingly citizens around the US and other developed nations are waking up to a fact Third World residents know all too well: access to clean water should be a basic human right.

If you’re not sure where you stand, attend the SteamPlant to learn more about this issue and then decide. If you already believe CCFS should continue to lead the fight to block Nestle from Chaffee County, attend the meeting at the SteamPlant to step up and voice solidarity.