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Water News
Bottled Water Backlash: Environmental Concerns are Sending People Back to Their Taps
EMagazine, May 6, 2008
Jennifer Phillips always felt guilty that her large Nashville law firm didn’t recycle. So after big client meetings, she collected all the empty plastic water bottles, took them home and added them to her own curbside recycling bin. Now, she is proud to report that her firm, Bass, Berry & Sims, serves an icy pitcher of tap water during meetings. “We even have glasses with the company logo on them,” she says. Phillips estimates switching to tap keeps 3,000 plastic water bottles per week out of the landfill.

Cal Trout: Monitoring should start soon for new Nestle report
Siskiyou Daily, Monday, May 5, 2008
MCCLOUD - When the draft Environtental Impact Report (EIR) on the proposed 1 million-square-foot Nestle spring-water bottling plant in McCloud was first released in July of 2006, it received over 4,000 comments from the public.

THE U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS EXAMINES THE IMPORTANCE OF MUNICIPAL WATER
The Nation’s Major Cities Investigate the Economic and Health Benefits of Public Investment in
Clean Water, Water Infrastructure
New York City, N.Y. – The U.S. Conference of Mayors convened today in New York City a joint meeting of the Mayors Water Council and the Municipal Waste Management Association, an environmental affiliate of the Conference, to examine new information on the economic and public health benefits of local government investment in municipal water and sewer infrastructure and services.

DWR May Snow Survey Shows Low Water Content

[Note: The Department of Water Resources (DWR) final snow survey of 2008 indicates snow water content is just 67 percent of normal for the date, statewide. Snow depth and water content have declined since April, when statewide snowpack water content figures were just under 100 percent of normal, despite a dry March...]

DWR Press Release, May 1, 2008
SACRAMENTO – The Department of Water Resources (DWR) final snow survey of 2008 indicates snow water content is just 67 percent of normal for the date, statewide. Snow depth and water content have declined since April, when statewide snowpack water content figures were just under 100 percent of normal, despite a dry March.

Vermont Deals a Blow to the Bottled Water Industry
Christian Science Monitor. April 29, 2008
The state's legislature has passed a bill that limits how much groundwater bottlers and other companies can draw.

Butte Falls measures bet on hoped-for bottling plant: They'd give residents a share in the profits from a plant that remains a dream
Butte Falls Mail Tribune, April 23, 2008
BUTTE FALLS — The city is so confident that its dream of bottling and selling its pristine spring water will become a reality that it has put two measures on the May 20 ballot on how revenue would be distributed.

EBMUD may start rationing water if no rain
SFGate, April 23, 2008
San Francisco -- Nearly 1.3 million East Bay residents could be forced to ration water as early as next month if rains don't increase.

McCloud Watershed Council & California Trout Enlist Manatt: National Law Firm Joins Efforts to Protect Communities Rights against Nestle Waters North America
MCCLOUD, Calif., April 23 /PRNewswire/ -- The McCloud Watershed Council and California Trout, who, along with Trout Unlimited, comprise the Protect Our Waters Coalition, announced today that they have engaged the national law and consulting firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP. The firm will represent the Coalition in their fight to safeguard the rights and quality of life for residents of McCloud, California and beyond who would be affected by operation of a planned Nestle Waters North America water bottling plant in the Mt. Shasta area. Progress on the proposed plant, which would be the nation's largest, is mired in unanswered questions and conflicting economic and environmental assessments.

Town turns down Nestle Waters offer
Boston Globe, April 17, 2008
The town of Clinton has turned down a proposal from Nestle Waters North America Inc. that would have allowed the company to pump 240,000 gallons of water daily out of underground aquifers for bottling.

Bottling plants face opposition as fears grow over water supplies
Associated Press, April 9, 2008
McCLOUD, Calif.—Like many small towns across America, this was a community that once rallied around high school football. Today, the school enrolls too few students to even field a team.

A Town Torn Apart by Nestlé
How a deal for a bottled water plant set off neighbor against neighbor in struggling McCloud, Calif.

Officials in the old mill town of McCloud, Calif., figured a bottled water plant would bring good times. Instead, the deal they made set off a bitter, neighbor-against-neighbor feud. Photo by Stan Kennedy

BusinessWeek, April 3, 2008
Tucked into the foothills of Mount Shasta, the Northern California town of McCloud has no stoplights and one grocery store. A former logger's El Dorado, McCloud fell on hard times in the 1980s when it started running out of trees to cut down. But with its drop-dead panoramas and crisp, clean air, the burg started to limp back in the 1990s. Today it is a world-renowned paradise for trout anglers, a respite for burned-out boomers looking to escape the status race, and a hotbed of New Age seekers, some of whom jet in from Japan to meditate and chant in what they regard as a spiritual vortex. Read more...

McCloud divided on reports
Mt. Shasta Herald, April 2, 2008
Since the Nestle Waters bottling plant contract was signed in 2003, many McCloud citizens feel the community has become divided into two separate groups: those who support the project and those who oppose it.

[Note: The town of McCloud and the local Nestle debate has hit the international media scene, with the release of a great article in the International Herald Tribune on March 19th. This media outlet reaches 180 countries, and is the largest international publication in the world! Just goes to show that this issue has garnered far-reaching interest and implications for those outside looking in, and not just for us.]

Nestlé's thirst for water splits small U.S. town
International Herald Tribune, March 21, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO: McCloud, a former lumber company town in the far north of California, has the charm of a small village and a breathtaking setting among pine and fir trees on the southern flank of Mount Shasta.

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MWC Update
Community groups challenge McCloud Community Services District Board on legality of Water System Master Plan
January 28, 2008
On January 16, 2008, attorneys for California Trout, Trout Unlimited, and the McCloud Watershed Council delivered an 18-page letter to the McCloud Community Services District Board questioning the legality of the Board's approval of a Water System Master Plan (WSMP). The letter cautioned that the WSMP was adopted in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), in part because it appears to be closely related to the Nestle Water Bottling Plant Project currently undergoing environmental review.

Memorandum on authority of the McCloud Community Services District regarding Nestle's proposed water bottling facility
Attorney at law Donald B. Mooney has issued a Memorandum to the MWC expressing his legal opinion concerning the authority of the McCloud Community Services District regarding Nestle's Proposed Water Bottling Facility. This insight is very valuable, as it puts into perspective the legal position the MCSD is in at this point, based on the Third District Court of Appeals ruling. Click here to view the memorandum.