[env-trinity] Daily Kos - Water coalition to hold press conference regarding 'shutdown' of Nestlé Plant

[Dan Bacher]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/16/1371402/-Water-coalition-to-hold-press-conference-regarding-shutdown-of-Nestle-Plant

Water coalition to hold press conference regarding 'shutdown' of  
Nestlé Plant

by Dan Bacher

The city of Sacramento is in the fourth year of a record drought - yet  
the Nestlé Corporation continues to bottle city water to sell back to  
the public at a big profit, local activists charge.

The Nestlé Water Bottling Plant in Sacramento is the target of a major  
press conference on Tuesday, March 17, by a water coalition that  
claims the company is draining up to 80 million gallons of water a  
year from Sacramento aquifers during the drought.

The coalition, the "crunchnestle alliance," says that City Hall has  
made this use of the water supply possible through a "corporate  
welfare giveaway," according to a press advisory.

A coalition of environmentalists, Native Americans and other concerned  
people announced the  press conference will take place at March 17 at  
5 p.m. at new Sacramento City Hall, 915 I Street, Sacramento.

The coalition will release details of a protest on Friday, March 20,  
at the South Sacramento Nestlé plant designed to "shut down" the  
facility. The coalition is calling on Nestlé to pay rates commensurate  
with their enormous profit, or voluntarily close down.

"The coalition is protesting Nestlé's virtually unlimited use of water  
– up to 80 million gallons a year drawn from local aquifers – while  
Sacramentans (like other Californians) who use a mere 7 to 10 percent  
of total water used in the State of California, have had severe  
restrictions and limitations forced upon them," according to the  
coalition.

"Nestlé pays only 65 cents for each 470 gallons it pumps out of the  
ground – the same rate as an average residential water user. But the  
company can turn the area's water around, and sell it back to  
Sacramento at mammoth profits," the coalition said.

Activists say that Sacramento officials have refused attempts to  
obtain details of Nestlé's water used. Coalition members have  
addressed the Sacramento City Council and requested that Nestle’  
either pay a commercial rate under a two tier level, or pay a tax on  
their profit.

In October, the coalition released a "White Paper" highlighting  
predatory water profiteering actions taken by Nestle’ Water Bottling  
Company in various cities, counties, states and countries.  Most of  
those great “deals” yielded mega profits for Nestle’ at the expense of  
citizens and taxpayers.  Additionally, the environmental impact on  
many of those areas yielded disastrous results.

Coalition spokesperson Andy Conn said, "This corporate welfare  
giveaway is an outrage and warrants a major investigation. For more  
than five months we have requested data on Nestlé water use. City Hall  
has not complied with our request, or given any indication that it  
will. Sacramentans deserve to know how their money is being spent and  
what they’re getting for it.  In this case, they’re getting ripped off.”

The press conference and protest will take place just days after Jay  
Famiglietti,  the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion  
Laboratory/Caltech and a professor of Earth system science at UC  
Irvine, revealed in an op-ed in the LA Times on March 12 that  
California has only one year of water supply left in its reservoirs.  (http://touch.latimes.com/#section/ 
-1/article/p2p-83043355/)

"As difficult as it may be to face, the simple fact is that California  
is running out of water — and the problem started before our current  
drought. NASA data reveal that total water storage in California has  
been in steady decline since at least 2002, when satellite-based  
monitoring began, although groundwater depletion has been going on  
since the early 20th century.

Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in  
its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is  
rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a  
persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega- 
drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying  
for rain."

Meanwhile, Governor Jerry Brown continues to fast-track his Bay Delta  
Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels to ship  
Sacramento River water to corporate agribusiness, Southern California  
water agencies, and oil companies conducting fracking operations. The  
$67 billion plan won't create one single drop of new water, but it  
will take vast tracts of Delta farm land out of production under the  
guise of "habitat restoration" in order to irrigate drainage-impaired  
soil owned by corporate mega-growers on the west side of the San  
Joaquin Valley.

The tunnel plan will also hasten the extinction of Sacramento River  
Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt,  
green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperil the salmon  
and steelhead populations on the Klamath and Trinity rivers. The  
peripheral tunnels will be good for agribusiness, water privateers,  
oil companies and the 1 percent, but will be bad for the fish,  
wildlife, people and environment of California and the public trust.

For more information about the crunchnestle alliance, contact Andy  
Conn (530) 906-8077 camphgr55 at gmail.com or Bob Saunders (916) 370-8251.
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