A Town Torn Apart by Nestle

Conlin, Michelle. “A TOWN TORN APART BY NESTLE” BusinessWeek 4074 (2008)
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.mnsu.edu. (Accessed March 1st, 2011).

This article describes the animosity that has plagued McCloud, California since 2006, brought about by Nestle’s million square foot plant that was raised after a contract between the City officials and Nestle Waters North America. The plant’s aim was to suck “1,250 gallons a minute of water from McCloud's glacier-fed springs” (Conlin 1). An uproar emerged when the town’s city council unveiled their plan, raising intense opposition from locals who felt that the $350,000 annually and 240 new local jobs promised were simply too little compensation for a plant that could potentially incur detrimental and environmental effects on the town. According to this article, Nestle employees 11 “water hunters” who “search for new sources, typically in remote, pristine places like McCloud. A big part of their job is building relationships with locals, few of whom have dealt with a multinational” (Conlin 2). The water hunters build relationships with the locals and try to gain their trust in order to move in and gain access to their water, for little in exchange. This seems wrong to me! One of the board members who was persuaded by Nestle recalls visiting one of their plants in Palm Springs during the negotiation process: “Dragseth recalls a gorgeous, first-class operation. She couldn't believe how quiet and well-run the plants were.
‘I came back extremely impressed with this company,’ says Dragseth. ‘They had beautiful break rooms for their employees with microwaves and anything else they wanted. It was a beautiful plant’” (Conlin 2). Nestle had promised jobs for 240 residents of the poverty stricken town that was struggling and in debt. Allowing Nestle to take over the spring water was one way out of this dire economic situation, but a majority of the local citizens did not agree with this viewpoint. What seems particularly unfair is that Nestle offered the ghastly low price of $350,000 annually to draw 1,250 gallons a minute of water and then “pack 300 semi-trailers a day full of Arrowhead brand water, truck it as far away as Los Angeles and Reno, and sell it at prices that are as much as 1,000 times more than the cost of tap water” (Conlin 1). Most enraging for residents was that there was no public participation in the process, the city board discussed and decided to allow Nestle access to the water on their own. This will be a useful article for me, and I am hoping to find more like it detailing the predatory nature of bottled water companies. What is especially disheartening is that despite owning an American branch, Nestle is a foreign corporation, who is being allowed to come into local towns and cities, take the water, and sell it back to Americans!