No, the following email is not about the Santa Fe River basin, but it is about what the owners of Ginnie Springs water bottling plant is doing in California.
You may want to follow what happens to this BlueTriton bully in the upcoming hearing and we hope that the State of California has more sense than the State of Florida, which has a DEP and water districts which simply forget the environment and give away all the water to just about anyone asking for it.
And give it away free.
Read more at The Story of Stuff. Check out the movies and info about water.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
Just before the New Year we let you know that 2022 would bring a reckoning in our years-long campaign to stop Nestlé’s water bottling operation in California’s bone dry San Bernardino National Forest.
Now, with a California Water Board hearing on the Arrowhead Springs case set to start this Monday, the moment of truth for Nestlé and its successor, BlueTriton Brands, may have finally arrived.
Story of Stuff Community members like you have been dogged defenders of public water against bottlers like Nestlé, which had a sordid history of draining watersheds to fill plastic bottles. From Maine to Oregon, Michigan to Florida, you’ve supported local activists waging David vs. Goliath struggles to defend their water.
And for good reason: we know water is a precious, life-giving resource that has become even more important in the era of runaway climate change. We also know that single-use plastic bottles are one of the greatest sources of marine and other plastic pollution and, increasingly, a dangerous source of CO2 emissions.
In fact, as The New York Times reported, the pressure you and others put on Nestlé’s brand over the years played a big role in the company’s decision to sell its North American water bottling business to two private equity firms last year, which now call the company BlueTriton.
But to paraphrase the old saying, Nestlé may have run, but BlueTriton can’t hide!
So, with the hearings starting Monday and BlueTriton facing serious questions about who owns the water it bottles from Arrowhead Springs, we wanted to share a bit about how we got here and what’s happening next week to keep you in the loop!
A Trail of Destruction
In 2015, we met Steve Loe and Amanda Frye, two intrepid local activists who were organizing to stop Nestlé’s water removal, which they knew was having devastating consequences for Strawberry Creek, a critical water source not only for the endangered public forest, but for downstream water users in drought-parched southern California.
Steve is a retired Forest Service biologist whose efforts to protect Strawberry Creek were stymied by his former supervisors, one of whom secured a lucrative consulting contract from Nestlé when he retired. Amanda is an avid hiker and a researcher and writer with a knack for sniffing out a story.
Aided by a series of award-winning investigative reports in the regional Desert Sun newspaper – and by our own short documentary on the controversy – the duo and their allies brought global attention to Nestlé’s cozy relationship with the Forest Service, which hadn’t reviewed the company’s permit to operate on public lands in the nearly thirty years since it had expired and charged Nestle only $524 a year to remove millions of gallons of water.
While together we forced the Forest Service to take another look at Nestlé’s operation, resulting in a new permit being issued several years ago, a nagging question kept coming up: did Nestle and its predecessors even have a right to the water it removed in the first place?
In 2020, after four years of investigation spurred in no small part by Amanda’s research, the state Water Board said no, in fact it didn’t!
For decades, BlueTriton, Nestlé and their predecessors spun a folksy tale about their right to the water and found a receptive audience for their story with Forest Service staff and other public officials. It’s a tale as old as time: as the removal of water gained the patina of time and the Arrowhead brand grew into a regional corporate force, efforts to constrain the operation at numerous levels met brick walls.
But then Steve, Amanda and others didn’t quit. And neither did we.
What Lies Ahead
Now, at the hearing before the California Water Board that starts Monday and will continue through February, we’ll bring our case against BlueTriton before the State Water Board’s hearing officer, who will recommend action to the five-member Board appointed by the Governor. We’ll be pressing the state to finally take enforcement action against the company and force it to cease its water removal.
To get up to speed on the controversy, you can watch our 2015 short documentary This Land is Our Land.
Then, if you’re interested, we invite you to tune in to all or some of the hearing on the Water Board’s YouTube channel. The hearing will take place Monday through Wednesday this week, beginning at 9am, then continue in early February.
In the coming weeks, we’ll also keep our social media channels updated and send periodic reports, so stay tuned.
Thank you for the longstanding and generous support you’ve shown this effort and for your continued interest. When we join the hearing Monday, we know there will be thousands of you with us, cheering us on.
Water is Life!
Michael O’Heaney
Executive Director
