Facing Droughts, California Challenges Nestlé Over Water Use

“Should we really be pulling water out of a national forest to stick in plastic bottles to sell at a significant markup?” said Michael O’Heaney, the executive director of Story of Stuff, an environmental advocacy group based in Berkeley, Calif., that has filed complaints against Nestlé. “It’s a poor use of our resources.”

The U.S. Forest Service charges the company an annual fee of $2,100 to maintain its infrastructure in the Strawberry Creek area, according to The Desert Sun, which investigated Nestlé’s activities in California in 2015 and reported that the Forest Service had been allowing the company to take water from the forest using a permit that had a 1988 expiration date.

Battles over the water diversion carried out by Nestlé — and, now, BlueTriton — have been brewing for years. State officials released a report on Nestlé’s water collection in 2017, and a revised report last week. Both said the company was diverting more water than had been permitted, which the company denies.

“This investigation has been a long time coming, and it’s taken several years due to its complexity, from both a technical and a legal standpoint,” said Robert Cervantes, a supervising engineer with the state’s water board.

“We just want BlueTriton to comply with California law,” he said, “especially now that we’re heading into another drought.”

The water board officials argue that BlueTriton is allowed to collect only about 2.4 million gallons of surface water in the area annually. That restriction applies to water in creeks and streams, as well as the springs that contribute to creeks and streams — not to water that percolates underground.

The company said it collected 59 million gallons from the water system last year, of which about 40 million gallons of overflow were returned to the area.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/us/nestle-water-california.html