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Water the New Gold: Nestle Corp. coming to siphon a spring or river near you

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omega minimo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 09:32 PM
Original message
Water the New Gold: Nestle Corp. coming to siphon a spring or river near you
Colorado agreed. McCloud, California said Oh Hell No. Sacramento City leaders are sliming a stealth deal in without involving the public. The American River flows are CRUCIAL to the health of the San Francisco Bay Delta, where the Gubernator and SoCal interests want to put a Peripheral Canal voted down by the public decades ago. The clean American River water is highly sought after by Bay Area municipalities, who wanted to divert it BEFORE the American water merged with the dirty Sacramento River water and flowed to the Delta naturally. They were deterred. Now this. The Water Wars are ON.


http://www.sacramentopress.com/headline/14622/Fluid_controversy_Nestle_wants_Sacramentos_water
http://www.saveourwatersacramento.org/
http://www.saveourwatersacramento.org/?cat=5

What Nestle doesn’t want you to know
about its plans to open a water bottling plant in Sacramento

• Nestlé and the City of Sacramento worked hard to quietly fast-track this project so Nestlé could open its South Sacramento bottling plant by January 2010.  The project was only announced in a brief back page article in the Sacramento Bee at the end of July.

• While Sacramento residents are required to abide by city-imposed water restrictions, Nestlé would be able to siphon water from our municipal water supply 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. According to one staff member at the Economic Development Department, the only limit on the amount of water Nestlé can pump is the size of their pipes.

• Nestlé claims the Sacramento plant would be a “micro-bottling plant,” bottling only 50 million gallons of water per year. However, according to the Department of Utilities, the estimated water usage is 215 thousand – 320 thousand gallons of water per day (78 – 116 millions per year). This would make Nestlé one of the top ten water users in Sacramento at a time when we are in our third consecutive year of a drought.

• According to Nestlé, approximately 30 million gallons of water would come from Sacramento’s municipal water system and 20 million would be trucked to the plant from “private springs.” City staff have refused to answer questions about the springs and Nestlé has provided no information about their location, other than telling the Sacramento News & Review that they are somewhere in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

• Bottling 50 million gallons of water a year would create 800 million water bottles annually.  It takes over 400,000 barrels of oil to produce that much plastic.  Only 14% of plastic bottles get recycled – the rest end up not only in our landfills, but also in our forests, streams, and oceans.

• The diesel fuel required to truck 20 million gallons of water from the “nearby springs” to Sacramento and 800 million bottles across the state is enormous.  Diesel truck emissions contain carbon dioxide and diesel soot, which both contribute to global warming.  Diesel exhaust also contributes to air contamination, which is known to cause cancer and other health problems.

• Nestlé would take our tap water and sell it back to us after marking it up over 1,000 times what they paid for it. If Nestlé is allowed to build a water bottling plant in Sacramento, they can take as much water as they want, for as long as they want, without any limits or accountability.

• Water is becoming scarcer as the population grows and the drought continues. The water in Sacramento should be for the plants, animals and humans in this region to live on, not for big companies to amass enormous wealth. If Nestlé is allowed to build this plant, we give up even more control of our water for as long as that plant exists.  The City says that Nestlé has a right to move here.  Shouldn’t Sacramentans have a right to a secure water supply?

CA. AG Cracks Down On Nestle Bottling Plant
http://cbs13.com/local/nestle.bottling.plant.2.782999.html

:spray: :toast: :spray: :toast: :spray: :toast: :spray: :toast: :spray: :toast: :spray: :toast:
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Dawson Leery Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 09:34 PM
Response to Original message
1. You can get dirt cheap water from the kitchen faucet.
Bottled water is one of the greatest scams brought upon society.
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enough Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 09:37 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Until the time comes when you can't. (nt)
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Barack_America Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 09:41 PM
Response to Reply #2
6. But Nestle' would be happy to see you municipal water, of course.
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omega minimo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 10:56 PM
Response to Reply #1
12. Exactly. They want bottle a city's tap water without paying for it, to resell as their own product.
:thumbsdown:
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XemaSab Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 09:39 PM
Response to Original message
3. The McCloud project was more contentious than the article lets on
but I agree, bottled water is a scourge.
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msongs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 09:39 PM
Response to Original message
4. this water belongs to the people of California, not Nestle or that city. no sale nt
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Liberal_in_LA Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 09:40 PM
Response to Original message
5. awesome post
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hfojvt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 09:54 PM
Response to Original message
7. I know that our water department would love such a huge customer
we could easily handle them pulling that much water too. They really should put their plant on the Missouri or the Mississippi river, but perhaps our water is not mountain water. I would think that with restrictions on water that water would be much more expensive for a large user like that. Our pricing is backwards, in that large users get water much cheaper than smaller users.

Really seems to me that they could find a much better place to build a new plant, unless they have a current plant that they are converting.
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Citizen Worker Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 09:57 PM
Response to Original message
8. Bottled water IS privatization
Several friends have told me they refuse to drink the municipal water in their various communities claiming that the water is "contaminated." When I ask if they know what standards municipal water works are required to follow and those of private bottlers they cannot answer but they know the municipal water is "unsafe." Yet, they all cook with tap water, make their coffee and tea with tap water but it's unsafe otherwise.

When I suggest to that by purchasing bottled water they are endorsing privatization they all heartily disagree.

Bottled water is nothing more nothing less than privatization.
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omega minimo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-30-09 12:29 PM
Response to Reply #8
13. Privatization of education, water -- no wonder TPTB don't want Healthcare DEprivatized
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BrklynLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 10:08 PM
Response to Original message
9. Nestle....poisoning the world for decades....
http://www.angeliciouslychew.com/2009/05/nestle.html

This is Aden's poison. Sadly, he can't seem to take any cereal from Nestle. After a few mouthfuls, little red mosquito bite looking rash will appear around his mouth. And he refuses to take NAN. What I have learnt from being Mommy to Aden is, he knows what is bad for him. So when he refuses something, I know, it is bad for him and I will stop giving it to him. So I did me some reading up on Nestle baby products:

The Nestle Boycott

Why:
In order to sell more of its infant formula in third world countries, Nestle would hire women with no special training and dress them up as nurses to give out free samples of Nestle formula. The free samples lasted long enough for the mother's breast milk to dry up from lack of use. Then mothers would be forced to purchase the formula but, being poor, they would often mix the formula with unsanitary water or 'stretch' the amount of formula by diluting it with more water than recommended. The result was that babies starved all over the Third World while Nestle made huge profits from this predatory marketing strategy.

Then:
In 1977, a world-wide boycott was launched against the Nestle Corporation, which was found to be the most unethical of the several companies selling baby formula at the time. Consumers all across the world stopped purchasing Nestle products. The World Health Organization drafted the International Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes, which was signed by much of the world in the early '80's and finally by the United States in 1994
<snip>



Boycott still going on..
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madeline_con Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 10:18 PM
Response to Original message
10. But everybody's gotta carry a bottle everywhere they go, like infants. n/t
Edited on Tue Sep-29-09 10:20 PM by madeline_con
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earth mom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Sep-29-09 10:30 PM
Response to Original message
11. Don't forget, * & family own that land in Parguay right next to a huge water source.
Water wars are next no doubt about it.
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madville Donating Member (743 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-30-09 12:45 PM
Response to Original message
14. There's a Nestle plant in my county
Some of the water they pull from the ground and some they truck to the plant from different municipal water supplies. The best thing I can say about them is the hundreds of jobs they brought to the area, pay is between $12-$22 an hour for production and maintenance, not bad in a rural area. Plus it's a fairly clean operation compared to most.

Of course we don't have the water issues here like California does.
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omega minimo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-30-09 01:31 PM
Response to Reply #14
16. When did they arrive? Was the community involved in any municipal water rights issues?
:hi: You're right about CA. This river is central in the West's water wars. It flows directly from the Sierra Nevada Mountain snowpack via three forks to join the larger, slower, dirtier Sacramento River before reaching the Delta. The Sacramento starts clean near Mt. Shasta and picks up a lot of agricultural runoff.

Here's a picture of the confluence:

http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1173156015047030101dQPQNv
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TwilightGardener Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-30-09 12:57 PM
Response to Original message
15. As long as idiots keep buying bottled water, companies will keep
buying up our water and selling it back to us for higher prices.
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omega minimo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-30-09 01:32 PM
Response to Reply #15
17. The AG of CA and this local campaign against Nestle raise the issue of plastic bottles, trucking,
global warming, carbon footprint........
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