Nestle in Chaffee County: Goliath 1, David 0; end or extra innings?

It took Tim Glenn, Frank Holman and Dennis Giese 40 minutes to be done wiping their hands of Nestle. But it will likely take years to prevail against the damage done by county commissioners who failed to uphold campaign promises, put the interests of  a giant multinational corporation ahead of the will of the citizenry, and effectively put the reins to the future of the valley in a foreign-owned company’s hands.

Earlier today, the three elected Chaffee County Commissioners gave the formal green light to a plan by Switzerland-based Nestle Waters North America to extract 65 million gallons of spring water that flows beneath ranchland at the mouth of the Arkansas River, pipe it four miles to a truck loading station where it will then be driven two hours to Denver for bottling and selling as Nestle’s Arrowhead brand of bottled water. Citizen opposition continued to the end, as a rally in the park opposite the county courthouse in Salida attracted more than 120 people, many of whom packed the commissioner’s chambers for the final public hearing on Nestle.

Of the dozen or fewer people who testified in favor of Nestle over the course of its public review, almost without exception, all stood to enjoy direct financial benefit from approval of the project. I hope these good, hard-working folks and neighbors understand that the opposition to Nestle was never about them. Like any private property owner in this country, the ranchers can sell their land to whoever they believe gives them a fair price for it. What happens after the sale is no longer the seller’s responsibility. However, when the new landowner proposes to change the existing uses on the land, in particular in this case when the property is deemed to be “an area of state interest,” then the matter must be considered by elected officials during a public process in which the public has a chance to air their concerns about how that new land use designation may impact them, for better or worse.

Over nine months of public hearings, hundreds of citizens passionately voiced their unambiguous opposition to Nestle. This, in the face of a hearing format that seemed biased in favor of giving Nestle every courtesy and consideration while on more than a few occasions showing visible irritation at testimony by local residents. In packed meeting rooms in Buena Vista and Salida, taxpaying voters waited patiently through inhumanely long meetings for their turn to speak out. The commissioners allowed Nestle to run beyond their allotted agenda time by – on some nights – hours, yet when citizens went a few seconds over their 3-minute allotment of time at the microphone, Commission Chair Holman threatened to forcibly remove the speakers. The bias was apparent again today when in the waning moments before they unanimously agreed to approve Nestle, the commissioners haggled over language pertaining to a Nestle-funded community endowment. In refusing the quantify – at all – Nestle’s annual programmatic contributions to the fund, the commissioners left it to Nestle – rather than the community – to define the dollar amount of philanthropic giving that constitutes being a “good neighbor.”

Face to face with a cadre of Nestle lawyers and high-priced experts, campaign promises by Giese and Holman, made less than a year ago, melted away as quickly as butter in August. Holman pledged that on his watch, no more water would leave this valley. How then could he sign a resolution permitting 65 million gallons to be sucked and trucked beyond county lines? Giese famously said that green is the color of the future of this valley. How could Giese possibly interpret as good for green all the warnings thrown up by the county’s own consultants and referral agencies warning that Nestle could have negative impacts to surface water quantity and quality, groundwater quantity, air quality, wetlands and the plants and critters that depend on the riparian habitat.

Public opposition to Nestle boiled down to several key themes: Incontrovertible evidence prior to their arrival in Chaffee County and even during the public hearing process made it hard to believe Nestle could, without very specific legally binding stipulations, be the “good neighbor” they purport to be; the intentionally weak and sugar-coated science Nestle presented during its testimony belies lurking danger to surface and groundwater resources as well as riparian habitat that is bad for the longterm sustainability of the environment, as well as future economic development prospects for the valley. Even the county knows this as implied in the Special Land Use Permit where the county writes “Future development outside the subject parcels may impact the quality or quantity of spring water related to the Project.” It would be naive to think Nestle won’t assign some of its vast resources to block any future housing or commercial development upgradient of its Bighorn and Ruby Mountain springs. It’s hard to imagine any small developer or business person being able to prevail against a fight waged by the world’s largest food and beverage maker.

As county special counsel and 1041 permit expert Barbara Green often reminded them, the commissioners were faced with three options when considering the Nestle proposal: They could have simply said yes, they could have simply said no, and they could have done what they did, which was grant conditional approval. In part in response to citizen testimony and in part due to the incomplete nature of the application when it was originally submitted, Nestle’s proposal morphed so many times during nine months of testimony that county staff and commissioners had trouble remembering exactly what was promised. Yet when they began their deliberations, the commissioners never once even  considered the “no” option nor did they seem particularly compelled to explain to the public their decision to proceed directly to a discussion of conditional approval. Despite overwhelming public sentiment against the project as well as the county’s own staff finding the proposal deficient in 20 key criteria, it remains a mystery why the commissioners failed to ever consider “no” as an option and instead crafted a shopping list of conditions – 44 in all – that “should” help Nestle satisfy the permit criteria.

The Nestle case is a travesty of public process. The tragedy would only be magnified if the citizens of Chaffee County allow today’s decision by the commissioners to go unanswered. To that end, at a minimum we need to work toward electing officials who are accountable and have the political courage to turn a deaf ear to special interests and vote the will of the people like the they did recently in Flagstaff, AZ. After city council turned down their Nestle proposal, the Flagstaff mayor told the media such water harvesting schemes, especially in the arid West, “don’t pass the common sense test.” Future elected officials, and their appointees in our municipal and county governments, must also understand and demonstrate commitment to sustainability balancing both the environmental and economic sides of the equation. We need to demand and enact changes to our local comprehensive plan and zoning codes that give teeth to what has clearly emerged as a citizen-led mandate for sustainability. Nestle preyed on Chaffee County because we were an easy mark – politically less sophisticated, under-resourced at the staff level, no mention of the word “sustain” in our county’s guiding planning documents. and no organized community watchdog group. Chaffee Citizens for Sustainability  have assumed the mantle of watchdog but to win the bigger battles that lie ahead, they will need the support of like-minded neighbors to succeed in a protracted campaign that will require giant doses of time, money and willpower.