McCloud, CA

Mount Shasta, Calif. —

More than 100 community members offered vocal support during Monday night’s Mount Shasta City Council meeting for an ordinance that would prevent corporations from cloud seeding and bulk water extraction within city limits.

The council heard dozens of passionate appeals during public comments, then voted unanimously to order a special report on the Mt. Shasta Community Water Rights and Self Governance Ordinance, which will appear on the November election ballot.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson recently told The Bee that, "We need to light a fire under the city's efforts to save water." Most Sacramentans did not interpret this as meaning we should save water for Nestlé to truck away in disposable plastic bottles.

Nestlé wants to start taking a reported 30 million gallons of local municipal water a year in early 2010, despite objections that there was no public input or environmental review for their proposed water-bottling plant.

After six years of surprisingly contentious and frustrating attempts to bottle the glacier-fed spring water flowing in the small Northern California town of McCloud, Nestlé is giving up.

With Nestlé’s announcement to withdraw its water bottling facility plans only four days old and a public hearing on the issue of raising district water service rates, it was no surprise that last Monday’s McCloud directors meeting was packed.

With a public hearing for protest against a proposed water rate increase scheduled first, many residents presented their concerns on the issue.

McCloud, Calif. -

Nestlé Waters North America has decided to withdraw its proposal to build a bottling facility in McCloud.
The decision followed what Nestlé Waters described as “a thorough analysis of its business operations in Northern California,” including the new facility the company has secured in Sacramento that it sees as a replacement for the production expected from McCloud.

McCloud, Calif. -

There are no plans to pull out of McCloud quite yet, which was reported in Monday’s Siskiyou Daily News, according to Dave Palais, Nestlé Waters North America’s natural resources manager for Northern California.

Palais, who has been involved with the plans for a bottling plant in McCloud for several years, said in an interview Monday that Nestlé has selected a site in Sacramento for a new proposed bottling facility, but the impact that facility will have on plans for McCloud is yet to be analyzed.

In this issue:

* Changes to the bulletin
* Nestle Project Update
* Local News and Water Media
* MCSD Updates
* Supporter's Corner
* Community Outreach & Events

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Nestlé Waters North America Inc. will pump $14 million into the local economy to convert a warehouse in the Florin Fruitridge Industrial Park into a two-line water bottling plant.

The company announced Friday that it will create by early next year a bottling plant that will employ about 40 people. The plant will be created from 214,434 square feet of existing warehouse space on Younger Creek Drive in Sacramento.

McCloud, Calif. -

Dear Editor,

In Nestle’s science meeting on June 2, Nestle’s natural resource director Brendan O’Rourke said, “I think we have different ideas about what adaptive management means.”

This is concerning.

The preliminary scientific studies being conducted are important for establishing thresholds of impact, but adaptive management is a long term iterative process that addresses the uncertainty inherent in complex ecosystems.
New data and new understanding often requires a change in behavior in regards to the use of a resource — water in McCloud’s case.