11 ms·

Review of Nestle water permit neglected for decades

262 points by umeboshi 11y ago

tracker1 11y ago
I think if funding is an issue, they should simply shut Nestle's operations down.. their permit is expired, period... if they want a new permit, part of that deal would they should have to fund said impact study. It's really not a difficult problem with a difficult solution here. It's pretty obviously a combination of apathy and corruption.
- saganus 11y ago
  Especially considering Nestlé's resources. It's not like you are taking away a permit from a local community cooperative or something like that.
jotux 11y ago
>But the agency’s records clearly show that efforts to review the permit were initiated between 1999 and 2003. Then those efforts suddenly stopped, and nothing in the records indicates exactly why. >Gene Zimmerman, the forest supervisor who was in charge at the time, retired in 2005. He now does paid consulting work for Nestle. >Zimmerman has said he doesn’t see any conflict in working for Nestle in his retirement. I wonder if he sees any conflict working for Nestle before retirement.
- abduhl 11y ago
  People often express opinions like yours when talking about any subject that has to do with the government. Where does this inherent distrust come from? Is it really so weird that a company would hire someone with intimate knowledge of a system in order to help navigate that system? This type of hiring occurs all the time, it literally has a name in the tech community - "acquihire". Do you find acquihires just as distasteful and filled with conflicts of interest? Why do you doubt Zimmerman due to his current relation to Nestle but not Loe and Earney due to their current relation to the conservation movement? Surely, Zimmerman's position as forest supervisor actually makes him more credible than a biologist and a permit administrator?
  - beambot 11y ago
    It's not a conflict that he works at Nestle now. It would be a conflict if he treated them differently while holding his old position... especially if the preferential treatment was quid pro quo for a consulting gig post-retirement.
    - abduhl 11y ago
      Sorry, maybe my post isn't clear. My question is why is the distrust only applied towards the big business side? Notice how Zimmerman's integrity and past ethical performance of his job is called into question due to his current relationship to Nestle while Loe and Earney's integrity and past ethical performance of their jobs is not also questioned. How do we not know that Loe and Earney didn't attempt to sabotage Nestle's legal extraction of groundwater as quid pro quo for a post-retirement gig as an activist?
      - obstinate 11y ago
        Because: P(quid pro quo | quid∧quo) > P(quid pro quo | ¬quid∨¬quo) Where in this case, "quo" is, "we'll pay you for 'consulting' after you retire" and "quid" is "I'll stop working on your permit review." The reason for the distrust has to be obvious, so maybe there's some other question you're trying to get at with your comments? As to your question about who might be paying Loe and Earney, well, we don't know. We don't know that they're being paid at all, and there isn't anything anomalous about a biologist calling for environmental review. Conversely, we know Zimmerman is being paid, and we know that there were anomalies in the permit review process. So that objection basically boils down to, "If we suspect foul play in this one situation, why don't we suspect it in this completely different situation where the facts are not analogous." Well . . .
      - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
        >How do we not know that Loe and Earney didn't attempt to sabotage Nestle's legal extraction of groundwater as quid pro quo for a post-retirement gig as an activist? Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?
      - 11y ago
- fla 11y ago
  Why always assume everybody is evil ? From reading the article, I noted a few things: The forest employees did reject demands for expansion multiple times. They care about their forest (of course). These people love and protect the environment. If Nestlé was destroying it, they wouldn't let it happen. If it was easy to re-evaluate a license in a proper way, they would do it (they did for smaller installations). They seem to lack the resources to do a proper licensence evaluation at that scale. Maybe Nestlé is hiring people with life-long experience protecting the nature because they are good at it ?
  - mexicanindd 11y ago
    Not evil, but focused. Nestlé as a company is focused on profits, whereas forest employees are (or should be) focused on the forest environment. These different focuses may conflict with oneanother. On a different topic, if the water licensing does not provide enough resources for a proper re-evaluate, then there is something fundamentally wrong
    - fla 11y ago
      I think it's not that simple. Companies like Nestlé do have to care about environment for alot of reasons. Thats basically why they hire people who have these skills. The lack of license re-evaluation resources is sad and tells alot about how much some govs actually care about the environement. Strangely nobody would care about nature if oil was flowing in these pipes.
  - dspillett 11y ago
    > Why always assume everybody is evil ? Perhaps not actively evil, but maybe amoral? Some people do things others consider bad not explicitly to be evil or for personal gain but because they "don't see the problem so why not?" or because they are focused on other priorities and are either simply unaware or consider the problem(s) being caused elsewhere to be worth a movement toward some "greater good" by there assessment of good. It happens in politics all the time: things like "we'll never get X to agree to Y so we'll have to let that slip even though we are vehemently against it, but if we do let that slip (despite the resulting anger back home) we'll probably get them to agree to Z which otherwise they never would and that is a big bonus". That is a very active and large scale example, but people make similar rationalisations on a smaller scale day-in-day-out, sometimes almost completely subconsciously.
- sillygeese 11y ago
  >> Then those efforts suddenly stopped, and nothing in the records indicates exactly why. Nothing indicates why? It's not like they'd write down: "Got bribed. Stopped permit review."
nugget 11y ago
''The answer to 99 out of 100 questions is money.''
- mcguire 11y ago
  I think you have your numbers backwards.
whyenot 11y ago
As the article mentions, the USFS is underfunded and understaffed. As a result, (and as is also the case with USFWS and NMFS), permit related matters are often "triaged" with items having a low percieved environmental impact (or politically risky, or risk an expensive lawsuit) put off so that limited resources can be spent on more pressing matters. That doesn't mean corruption and regulatory capture aren't issues, but they aren't a complete (or even major) part of the problem. I guess also it doesn't bother me too much if drinking water is being extracted from a national forest as these forests are required by statute to be managed for multiple uses including resource extraction. Relatively speaking, siphoning off water for drinking seems like it is likely to be a relatively low impact activity, even when it's a bigevilcorporation like Nestle who is doing the extraction.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  What downside do they face by simply prohibiting further use until they review the permit? What's the USFS or the country getting out of this deal?
  - resonanttoe 11y ago
    A large lawsuit that chews up time and money for delaying a business critical permit that Nestle would unnecessarily stack a large sum per day of lost income for the water rights. Remembering its a review of the permit to decide whether they can continue, not a cessation of operations. The only reason that Nestle haven't taken the regulator to court at the moment is that the review process failed open allowing business to continue. If they voluntarily close it and take forever to complete the review, Nestle has grounds for compensation on the waiting time. The USFS is getting not sued out of the current arrangement and continued barebones operations, thats about it. :/
  - whyenot 11y ago
    They can't "simply prohibit it." National Forests by law are managed for multiple uses including resource extraction. The USFS faces a very large downside because reviewing a permit like this would trigger an environmental impact statement, likely result in lawsuits, and tie up limited staff resources that then can't be used to review 50 (completely arbitrary number) other less controversial permits.
joshu 11y ago
Here's an idea: You cannot take material gain that would have been illegal in your employ for 2x your time of employ, or four years, whichever is longer. > Gene Zimmerman, the forest supervisor who was in charge at the time, retired in 2005. He now does paid consulting work for Nestle.
KevinEldon 11y ago
Any article about corporate consumption of public water in California feels a little silly without reference to San Francisco's $30k/year right to Hetch Hetchy. Yosemite Valley's neighboring valley, on a national park that every American pays for, is flooded and destroyed and San Francisco doesn't even pay enough to even cover the human maintenance of the land, let alone the benefit they get from the water.
joshuaheard 11y ago
I have hiked up in these mountains and seen some of the springs Arrowhead uses to get its water from. The ones I have seen are small pipes running from small springs, taking a small amount of the spring water. The San Bernardino mountains are next to LA. I am not an expert, but I don't think a large amount of water is used by anyone from these mountains. The US Forest Service probably just thinks it is an insignificant amount of the total water supply to pay tons of money to experts to come up with the required bureaucratic report. It really wasn't until the media starting referring to Arrowhead Mountain water company as "Nestle" that it started getting any coverage.
- Rebelgecko 11y ago
  I'm curious how much water they actually take down the mountain (especially since I believe they have another well down the hill in San Bernardino... or "San Bernadino" as the article says half a dozen times). Even if it isn't much, it is seems silly since the communities up there have to import water from elsewhere, and a big part of the cost of doing that is pumping the water up to an elevation of ~1 mile. That said, you're probably right that they're sending down a negligible amount of water, especially compared to what the water agencies up there pump locally or even compared to the declining water levels of the lakes in Arrowhead and Big Bear
MichaelCrawford 11y ago
I commenced my boycott of Nestle products the very same day their head honcho asserted that water is not a human right. There are many other good reason not to purchase Nestle's wares it's just that that single statement drove home my understanding that Nestle employers and stockholders are notorious criminals. My boycott is difficult not just because I enjoy many Nestle products but because it is not always easy to determine what products Nestle actually makes. I have learned to read product labels very very carefully. Many fine foods and beverages that were once prepared by other, independent businesses that are now Nestle subsidiaries. Even if Nestle does not own the manufacture it distributes their products. Just for grins, read the ingredients from a few Nestle foods soldin the United States, fly to Geneva then read the ingredients of their Swiss products. One of the greatest scams in all of human history resulted in American children drinking nonfat milk. Here in Vancouver I drink "Swiss Chocolate Milk", made in the United States b Alpenrose with whole milk. For a parent to feed their children nonfat milk is child abuse.
- sosborn 11y ago
  You heard that one soundbite and didn't even look at the context. From this article (http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/24/nestle-chairman-time-to-turn-off-the-water-taps.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/24/nestle-chairman-time-to-turn-...): --- "Water is a human right. I fully agree with that," Brabeck-Letmathe said, noting that the around 30 liters a day needed for basic living should be provided without charge to those who can't afford it. But that amount is only accounts for around 1.5 percent of the fresh water destroyed daily, he said. He's more concerned about the other 98.5 percent. "I don't think it's a human right to fill up a swimming pool. I don't think it's a human right to wash cars. I don't think it's a human right to water a golf course," he said. --- How do you feel about that quote now?
  - MichaelCrawford 11y ago
    I stand corrected. Than you for pointing out my error; sometimes, what one reads on Facebook may not really be true. However that does not imply that I should stop Boycotting Nestle products. There are many other good reasons that I will explain but not just now as I am posting from my iPad. I will post my explanation at http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays but my consultancy is on fire so It will be a little while.
MichaelCrawford 11y ago
One way to dampen Microsoft's enthusiasm is to spread the word that in the entire confederation of Canada it is a civil offense to denote yourself as an Engineer of any sort unless you are a licensed Processional Engineer. A computer science degree does not count; one needs a software engineering degree and that is quite a different thing. If you happen to spot any Microsoft Certified Solution Engineers the Ontario Society of Engineers will be happy to have a jury tear them a new one. Most offensive to me is that one can develop industrial control system software provided one's job title is "computer programmer". I kept insisting that we were software engineers then resigned in protest from Trihedral.
- redblacktree 11y ago
  What does this have to do with the parent post?
  - MichaelCrawford 11y ago
    Did you read the parent post?
    - ajkjk 11y ago
      Yes, it seems unrelated to what you wrote except for vague associations with the words "Microsoft" and "Canada".
      - MichaelCrawford 11y ago
        If it is not plainly apparent to you that my OP is on topic, I am sorry but there is not much I can say that will improve your reading comprension. I have Dyslexia myself si I know very well how hard it can be. In my case I am unable to read written music, so I can only play mu sic that I compose myself.
        ajkjk 11y ago
        You were widely downvoted because everyone agrees with me and the person who originally questioned you. Our inability to agree has nothing to do with dyslexia, and I don't have problems reading. You're just wrong. Lose the arrogance.
sergers 11y ago
Here in BC Canada, nestle has been tapping our natural water resources for free. They have been tapping a well in hope bc Our government in turn setup a deal where nestle pays $2.25 CAD per million litres of water they extract starting in 2016. They took 265 million litres last year, what a farce, they will only by charged about 600$ a year at the new price... Better than nothing but still... I pay out of my ass for water. Nestle in turn sells bottled water for about $1 to $3 per litre... Recent article on the matter: http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/british-columbia/nestlé-b-c-water-deal-too-cheap-says-ndp-1.2964709 http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/british-columbia/nestlé-b-c-...
- javert 11y ago
  Water is free, if you take it out of the ground yourself. Lots of people where I live (North Carolina) have wells. Like Nestle, I could also go up to BC and take water out for free. By the way, if you don't like it, you can always join the winning team and buy Nestle stock.
  - rpcope1 11y ago
    I seriously hope you're being sarcastic. People with that sort of attitude are becoming part of a huge problem where I live (Colorado). You can not treat water like that and expect to not have huge problems; the front range here is perhaps beyond sustainable use for our watershed, yet people insist on watering their lawns as though it's nothing. That sort of short sighted and self-centered behavior is sort of disgusting.
    - javert 11y ago
      Water is plentiful in many places. Where I come from, you can't dig a hole in your yard deeper than about one foot, because it'll fill in with water. I guess you just don't like the facts. Separately, you aren't going to make much progress with people if you go around appealing to vague and abstract principles in a way that is disconnected from their values.
    - Aloha 11y ago
steveax 11y ago
Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown [1] [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert
dghughes 11y ago
In BC Canada Nestle is also causing a stink over water use but it's not why you think. NAFTA says that once bulk sales of water begin it that's it Pandora's Box can't be shut. People in BC and Canada are worried if Nestle is charge even a small amount that will be seen as a bulk sale of water and then that's it game over the US will demand we sell water to the dry western states. Sure it isn't exporting it but it is the sale of water to a corporation and it is the water not the service to deliver the water, but that all may be step one to exporting it.
- gcb0 11y ago
  that only happens because they also have the few politics that care about environment in the pay roll. i mean, they donate to campaign... nobody cares or win elections with water rights. so it's very cheap to lobby that area. nobody cares! this excuse about the mass sale is nonsense. several countries have limits on number of wells someone/company can have and limits on water extraction. it's freaking simple.
kw71 11y ago
I'd like to use this precedent to drive with an expired driving license. It's discriminatory to allow some parties to continue engaging in licensed activity while penalizing others for "the same conduct."
kyledrake 11y ago
It's amazing to watch one of the most sprawled-out car cultures I've ever experienced bogeyman water bottling and almond production for their CO2-powered drought. Absolutely amazing.
novaleaf 11y ago
> A pipe running from the top of the San Bernardino mountains carries mountain spring water to Nestle North America's tanks below where its then transported to Ontario for bottling. wait, let me get this straight: a pipe runs from the top of the San Bernardio mountains carying moutain spring water to tanks below where it's transported for bottling?!?!?! (joke/sarcasm) That line is pasted like 5 or 6 times as the tagline for most the images in the article. Talk about repetitive!
prbuckley 11y ago
Government agencies have a tendancy to be incentivized to pick on small guys who are easier/simpler to harass. The beurocrat gets the same amount of credit for closing a small case as closing a lrage complicated case. For example this article cites the forest service reviewing water permits for a couple of small cabins and requiring them to install tanks at a substantial cost instead of going after Nestle who is pumping 10's of millions of gallons a year.
blondie9x 11y ago
Government failed us yet again. Remind me, why am I being forced to pay 30-35% of my paycheck to these idiots taking payouts and working like fat slugs off my dollar? This is why the climate is so screwed up. Government isn't responsive. You have to make industry pay true cost for use of finite resources. Similar to taxing the finite capacity of the atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gases. Externalities should be priced in economics. Duh? You build a model to computer GDP but you don't take off future survival. Then what is growth but short winded elations. Anthropocene needs to wise up before sixth extinction sets us free, brutally.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Funny, and here I sit thinking that it's a case of business corrupting government, for its own ends.
  - dylanjermiah 11y ago
    Businesses will use whatever systems they can for their own benefit, if the government is corruptible, it will be used. It just so happens that you can buy government, so they will.
  - llamataboot 11y ago
    To be fair, this should be a prime example of a case where free market types AND those that believe in strong public protection of resources can agree that it stinks. There can be no libertarian defense of this behavior. It is a corrupted government process keeping a company from paying the true market price for the resources it is using. All actors in this case are warping the process for the enrichment of the company and lining the pockets of a few key players. Also, pulling water out of a desert watershed, trucking it up to Canada, to ship it back down to the US to sell in little plastic bottles is the height of corporate capitalist insanity.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      That's why I align myself with neither side strongly. There are balances of power and checks required. On the market, on business and monied interests, on government (and various branches, agencies, etc.). Almost like an engineering problem where you want to ensure no one process overwhelms all others.
beedogs 11y ago
Heh. Once the TPP comes into effect, Nestle will be able to sue the USFS for "loss of future projected revenue" if they ever actually enforce the contract end date.
panzagl 11y ago
A couple of things all the 'experts' in how the government works here seem to have overlooked- 1) 'Quid pro quo' is a lot harder than it seems- it requires Zimmerman to commit a crime, then trust that Nestle will take care of him after. This is pretty rare. 2) Zimmerman does have value to Nestle, though, in the form of knowledge of USFS processes, like the renewal process. If he weren't hired by Nestle I'm sure he would be hired by another company for this knowledge. 3) If any corruption did occur, it was probably in the form of one of Nestle's senators tapping the shoulder of the director of the USFS, leading to direct or indirect pressure to not review the permits. This could be very subtle (i.e. budget is cut, word comes down from on high that something else is highest priority, and if it ain't broke don't fix it).

262 points by umeboshi 11y ago

I think if funding is an issue, they should simply shut Nestle's operations down.. their permit is expired, period... if they want a new permit, part of that deal would they should have to fund said impact study. It's really not a difficult problem with a difficult solution here. It's pretty obviously a combination of apathy and corruption.

saganus 11y ago
Especially considering Nestlé's resources. It's not like you are taking away a permit from a local community cooperative or something like that.

jotux 11y ago

>But the agency’s records clearly show that efforts to review the permit were initiated between 1999 and 2003. Then those efforts suddenly stopped, and nothing in the records indicates exactly why. >Gene Zimmerman, the forest supervisor who was in charge at the time, retired in 2005. He now does paid consulting work for Nestle. >Zimmerman has said he doesn’t see any conflict in working for Nestle in his retirement. I wonder if he sees any conflict working for Nestle before retirement.

abduhl 11y ago
People often express opinions like yours when talking about any subject that has to do with the government. Where does this inherent distrust come from? Is it really so weird that a company would hire someone with intimate knowledge of a system in order to help navigate that system? This type of hiring occurs all the time, it literally has a name in the tech community - "acquihire". Do you find acquihires just as distasteful and filled with conflicts of interest? Why do you doubt Zimmerman due to his current relation to Nestle but not Loe and Earney due to their current relation to the conservation movement? Surely, Zimmerman's position as forest supervisor actually makes him more credible than a biologist and a permit administrator?
- beambot 11y ago
  It's not a conflict that he works at Nestle now. It would be a conflict if he treated them differently while holding his old position... especially if the preferential treatment was quid pro quo for a consulting gig post-retirement.
  - abduhl 11y ago
    Sorry, maybe my post isn't clear. My question is why is the distrust only applied towards the big business side? Notice how Zimmerman's integrity and past ethical performance of his job is called into question due to his current relationship to Nestle while Loe and Earney's integrity and past ethical performance of their jobs is not also questioned. How do we not know that Loe and Earney didn't attempt to sabotage Nestle's legal extraction of groundwater as quid pro quo for a post-retirement gig as an activist?
    - obstinate 11y ago
      Because: P(quid pro quo | quid∧quo) > P(quid pro quo | ¬quid∨¬quo) Where in this case, "quo" is, "we'll pay you for 'consulting' after you retire" and "quid" is "I'll stop working on your permit review." The reason for the distrust has to be obvious, so maybe there's some other question you're trying to get at with your comments? As to your question about who might be paying Loe and Earney, well, we don't know. We don't know that they're being paid at all, and there isn't anything anomalous about a biologist calling for environmental review. Conversely, we know Zimmerman is being paid, and we know that there were anomalies in the permit review process. So that objection basically boils down to, "If we suspect foul play in this one situation, why don't we suspect it in this completely different situation where the facts are not analogous." Well . . .
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      >How do we not know that Loe and Earney didn't attempt to sabotage Nestle's legal extraction of groundwater as quid pro quo for a post-retirement gig as an activist? Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?
    - 11y ago
fla 11y ago
Why always assume everybody is evil ? From reading the article, I noted a few things: The forest employees did reject demands for expansion multiple times. They care about their forest (of course). These people love and protect the environment. If Nestlé was destroying it, they wouldn't let it happen. If it was easy to re-evaluate a license in a proper way, they would do it (they did for smaller installations). They seem to lack the resources to do a proper licensence evaluation at that scale. Maybe Nestlé is hiring people with life-long experience protecting the nature because they are good at it ?
- mexicanindd 11y ago
  Not evil, but focused. Nestlé as a company is focused on profits, whereas forest employees are (or should be) focused on the forest environment. These different focuses may conflict with oneanother. On a different topic, if the water licensing does not provide enough resources for a proper re-evaluate, then there is something fundamentally wrong
  - fla 11y ago
    I think it's not that simple. Companies like Nestlé do have to care about environment for alot of reasons. Thats basically why they hire people who have these skills. The lack of license re-evaluation resources is sad and tells alot about how much some govs actually care about the environement. Strangely nobody would care about nature if oil was flowing in these pipes.
- dspillett 11y ago
  > Why always assume everybody is evil ? Perhaps not actively evil, but maybe amoral? Some people do things others consider bad not explicitly to be evil or for personal gain but because they "don't see the problem so why not?" or because they are focused on other priorities and are either simply unaware or consider the problem(s) being caused elsewhere to be worth a movement toward some "greater good" by there assessment of good. It happens in politics all the time: things like "we'll never get X to agree to Y so we'll have to let that slip even though we are vehemently against it, but if we do let that slip (despite the resulting anger back home) we'll probably get them to agree to Z which otherwise they never would and that is a big bonus". That is a very active and large scale example, but people make similar rationalisations on a smaller scale day-in-day-out, sometimes almost completely subconsciously.
sillygeese 11y ago
>> Then those efforts suddenly stopped, and nothing in the records indicates exactly why. Nothing indicates why? It's not like they'd write down: "Got bribed. Stopped permit review."

nugget 11y ago

''The answer to 99 out of 100 questions is money.''

mcguire 11y ago
I think you have your numbers backwards.

whyenot 11y ago

As the article mentions, the USFS is underfunded and understaffed. As a result, (and as is also the case with USFWS and NMFS), permit related matters are often "triaged" with items having a low percieved environmental impact (or politically risky, or risk an expensive lawsuit) put off so that limited resources can be spent on more pressing matters. That doesn't mean corruption and regulatory capture aren't issues, but they aren't a complete (or even major) part of the problem. I guess also it doesn't bother me too much if drinking water is being extracted from a national forest as these forests are required by statute to be managed for multiple uses including resource extraction. Relatively speaking, siphoning off water for drinking seems like it is likely to be a relatively low impact activity, even when it's a bigevilcorporation like Nestle who is doing the extraction.

MichaelGG 11y ago
What downside do they face by simply prohibiting further use until they review the permit? What's the USFS or the country getting out of this deal?
- resonanttoe 11y ago
  A large lawsuit that chews up time and money for delaying a business critical permit that Nestle would unnecessarily stack a large sum per day of lost income for the water rights. Remembering its a review of the permit to decide whether they can continue, not a cessation of operations. The only reason that Nestle haven't taken the regulator to court at the moment is that the review process failed open allowing business to continue. If they voluntarily close it and take forever to complete the review, Nestle has grounds for compensation on the waiting time. The USFS is getting not sued out of the current arrangement and continued barebones operations, thats about it. :/
- whyenot 11y ago
  They can't "simply prohibit it." National Forests by law are managed for multiple uses including resource extraction. The USFS faces a very large downside because reviewing a permit like this would trigger an environmental impact statement, likely result in lawsuits, and tie up limited staff resources that then can't be used to review 50 (completely arbitrary number) other less controversial permits.

joshu 11y ago

Here's an idea: You cannot take material gain that would have been illegal in your employ for 2x your time of employ, or four years, whichever is longer. > Gene Zimmerman, the forest supervisor who was in charge at the time, retired in 2005. He now does paid consulting work for Nestle.

KevinEldon 11y ago

Any article about corporate consumption of public water in California feels a little silly without reference to San Francisco's $30k/year right to Hetch Hetchy. Yosemite Valley's neighboring valley, on a national park that every American pays for, is flooded and destroyed and San Francisco doesn't even pay enough to even cover the human maintenance of the land, let alone the benefit they get from the water.

joshuaheard 11y ago

I have hiked up in these mountains and seen some of the springs Arrowhead uses to get its water from. The ones I have seen are small pipes running from small springs, taking a small amount of the spring water. The San Bernardino mountains are next to LA. I am not an expert, but I don't think a large amount of water is used by anyone from these mountains. The US Forest Service probably just thinks it is an insignificant amount of the total water supply to pay tons of money to experts to come up with the required bureaucratic report. It really wasn't until the media starting referring to Arrowhead Mountain water company as "Nestle" that it started getting any coverage.

Rebelgecko 11y ago
I'm curious how much water they actually take down the mountain (especially since I believe they have another well down the hill in San Bernardino... or "San Bernadino" as the article says half a dozen times). Even if it isn't much, it is seems silly since the communities up there have to import water from elsewhere, and a big part of the cost of doing that is pumping the water up to an elevation of ~1 mile. That said, you're probably right that they're sending down a negligible amount of water, especially compared to what the water agencies up there pump locally or even compared to the declining water levels of the lakes in Arrowhead and Big Bear

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

I commenced my boycott of Nestle products the very same day their head honcho asserted that water is not a human right. There are many other good reason not to purchase Nestle's wares it's just that that single statement drove home my understanding that Nestle employers and stockholders are notorious criminals. My boycott is difficult not just because I enjoy many Nestle products but because it is not always easy to determine what products Nestle actually makes. I have learned to read product labels very very carefully. Many fine foods and beverages that were once prepared by other, independent businesses that are now Nestle subsidiaries. Even if Nestle does not own the manufacture it distributes their products. Just for grins, read the ingredients from a few Nestle foods soldin the United States, fly to Geneva then read the ingredients of their Swiss products. One of the greatest scams in all of human history resulted in American children drinking nonfat milk. Here in Vancouver I drink "Swiss Chocolate Milk", made in the United States b Alpenrose with whole milk. For a parent to feed their children nonfat milk is child abuse.

sosborn 11y ago
You heard that one soundbite and didn't even look at the context. From this article (http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/24/nestle-chairman-time-to-turn-off-the-water-taps.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/24/nestle-chairman-time-to-turn-...): --- "Water is a human right. I fully agree with that," Brabeck-Letmathe said, noting that the around 30 liters a day needed for basic living should be provided without charge to those who can't afford it. But that amount is only accounts for around 1.5 percent of the fresh water destroyed daily, he said. He's more concerned about the other 98.5 percent. "I don't think it's a human right to fill up a swimming pool. I don't think it's a human right to wash cars. I don't think it's a human right to water a golf course," he said. --- How do you feel about that quote now?
- MichaelCrawford 11y ago
  I stand corrected. Than you for pointing out my error; sometimes, what one reads on Facebook may not really be true. However that does not imply that I should stop Boycotting Nestle products. There are many other good reasons that I will explain but not just now as I am posting from my iPad. I will post my explanation at http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays but my consultancy is on fire so It will be a little while.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

One way to dampen Microsoft's enthusiasm is to spread the word that in the entire confederation of Canada it is a civil offense to denote yourself as an Engineer of any sort unless you are a licensed Processional Engineer. A computer science degree does not count; one needs a software engineering degree and that is quite a different thing. If you happen to spot any Microsoft Certified Solution Engineers the Ontario Society of Engineers will be happy to have a jury tear them a new one. Most offensive to me is that one can develop industrial control system software provided one's job title is "computer programmer". I kept insisting that we were software engineers then resigned in protest from Trihedral.

redblacktree 11y ago
What does this have to do with the parent post?
- MichaelCrawford 11y ago
  Did you read the parent post?
  - ajkjk 11y ago
    Yes, it seems unrelated to what you wrote except for vague associations with the words "Microsoft" and "Canada".
    - MichaelCrawford 11y ago
      If it is not plainly apparent to you that my OP is on topic, I am sorry but there is not much I can say that will improve your reading comprension. I have Dyslexia myself si I know very well how hard it can be. In my case I am unable to read written music, so I can only play mu sic that I compose myself.
      - ajkjk 11y ago
        You were widely downvoted because everyone agrees with me and the person who originally questioned you. Our inability to agree has nothing to do with dyslexia, and I don't have problems reading. You're just wrong. Lose the arrogance.

sergers 11y ago

Here in BC Canada, nestle has been tapping our natural water resources for free. They have been tapping a well in hope bc Our government in turn setup a deal where nestle pays $2.25 CAD per million litres of water they extract starting in 2016. They took 265 million litres last year, what a farce, they will only by charged about 600$ a year at the new price... Better than nothing but still... I pay out of my ass for water. Nestle in turn sells bottled water for about $1 to $3 per litre... Recent article on the matter: http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/british-columbia/nestlé-b-c-water-deal-too-cheap-says-ndp-1.2964709 http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/british-columbia/nestlé-b-c-...

javert 11y ago
Water is free, if you take it out of the ground yourself. Lots of people where I live (North Carolina) have wells. Like Nestle, I could also go up to BC and take water out for free. By the way, if you don't like it, you can always join the winning team and buy Nestle stock.
- rpcope1 11y ago
  I seriously hope you're being sarcastic. People with that sort of attitude are becoming part of a huge problem where I live (Colorado). You can not treat water like that and expect to not have huge problems; the front range here is perhaps beyond sustainable use for our watershed, yet people insist on watering their lawns as though it's nothing. That sort of short sighted and self-centered behavior is sort of disgusting.
  - javert 11y ago
    Water is plentiful in many places. Where I come from, you can't dig a hole in your yard deeper than about one foot, because it'll fill in with water. I guess you just don't like the facts. Separately, you aren't going to make much progress with people if you go around appealing to vague and abstract principles in a way that is disconnected from their values.
  - Aloha 11y ago

steveax 11y ago

Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown [1] [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert

dghughes 11y ago

In BC Canada Nestle is also causing a stink over water use but it's not why you think. NAFTA says that once bulk sales of water begin it that's it Pandora's Box can't be shut. People in BC and Canada are worried if Nestle is charge even a small amount that will be seen as a bulk sale of water and then that's it game over the US will demand we sell water to the dry western states. Sure it isn't exporting it but it is the sale of water to a corporation and it is the water not the service to deliver the water, but that all may be step one to exporting it.

gcb0 11y ago
that only happens because they also have the few politics that care about environment in the pay roll. i mean, they donate to campaign... nobody cares or win elections with water rights. so it's very cheap to lobby that area. nobody cares! this excuse about the mass sale is nonsense. several countries have limits on number of wells someone/company can have and limits on water extraction. it's freaking simple.

kw71 11y ago

I'd like to use this precedent to drive with an expired driving license. It's discriminatory to allow some parties to continue engaging in licensed activity while penalizing others for "the same conduct."

kyledrake 11y ago

It's amazing to watch one of the most sprawled-out car cultures I've ever experienced bogeyman water bottling and almond production for their CO2-powered drought. Absolutely amazing.

novaleaf 11y ago

> A pipe running from the top of the San Bernardino mountains carries mountain spring water to Nestle North America's tanks below where its then transported to Ontario for bottling. wait, let me get this straight: a pipe runs from the top of the San Bernardio mountains carying moutain spring water to tanks below where it's transported for bottling?!?!?! (joke/sarcasm) That line is pasted like 5 or 6 times as the tagline for most the images in the article. Talk about repetitive!

prbuckley 11y ago

Government agencies have a tendancy to be incentivized to pick on small guys who are easier/simpler to harass. The beurocrat gets the same amount of credit for closing a small case as closing a lrage complicated case. For example this article cites the forest service reviewing water permits for a couple of small cabins and requiring them to install tanks at a substantial cost instead of going after Nestle who is pumping 10's of millions of gallons a year.

blondie9x 11y ago

Government failed us yet again. Remind me, why am I being forced to pay 30-35% of my paycheck to these idiots taking payouts and working like fat slugs off my dollar? This is why the climate is so screwed up. Government isn't responsive. You have to make industry pay true cost for use of finite resources. Similar to taxing the finite capacity of the atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gases. Externalities should be priced in economics. Duh? You build a model to computer GDP but you don't take off future survival. Then what is growth but short winded elations. Anthropocene needs to wise up before sixth extinction sets us free, brutally.

dredmorbius 11y ago
Funny, and here I sit thinking that it's a case of business corrupting government, for its own ends.
- dylanjermiah 11y ago
  Businesses will use whatever systems they can for their own benefit, if the government is corruptible, it will be used. It just so happens that you can buy government, so they will.
- llamataboot 11y ago
  To be fair, this should be a prime example of a case where free market types AND those that believe in strong public protection of resources can agree that it stinks. There can be no libertarian defense of this behavior. It is a corrupted government process keeping a company from paying the true market price for the resources it is using. All actors in this case are warping the process for the enrichment of the company and lining the pockets of a few key players. Also, pulling water out of a desert watershed, trucking it up to Canada, to ship it back down to the US to sell in little plastic bottles is the height of corporate capitalist insanity.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    That's why I align myself with neither side strongly. There are balances of power and checks required. On the market, on business and monied interests, on government (and various branches, agencies, etc.). Almost like an engineering problem where you want to ensure no one process overwhelms all others.

beedogs 11y ago

Heh. Once the TPP comes into effect, Nestle will be able to sue the USFS for "loss of future projected revenue" if they ever actually enforce the contract end date.

panzagl 11y ago

A couple of things all the 'experts' in how the government works here seem to have overlooked- 1) 'Quid pro quo' is a lot harder than it seems- it requires Zimmerman to commit a crime, then trust that Nestle will take care of him after. This is pretty rare. 2) Zimmerman does have value to Nestle, though, in the form of knowledge of USFS processes, like the renewal process. If he weren't hired by Nestle I'm sure he would be hired by another company for this knowledge. 3) If any corruption did occur, it was probably in the form of one of Nestle's senators tapping the shoulder of the director of the USFS, leading to direct or indirect pressure to not review the permits. This could be very subtle (i.e. budget is cut, word comes down from on high that something else is highest priority, and if it ain't broke don't fix it).