Here's a riddle: Take water from a source, pump it to the surface, put it through miles of pipelines, and truck it to a big city. What do you get?
If you're Nestle Waters, you get: pure mountain spring water.
Sounds like tap water to me! Read on...
Water-permit application by Nestle taps wellspring of conflict in community
SALIDA • The name Nestle conjures images of chocolate.
But many in Chaffee County say there is nothing sweet about a proposal by the world's largest food and beverage company to draw spring water from along the Arkansas River, build a pipeline and truck the water to a plant in Denver for its Arrowhead brand of bottled water.
Tempers have flared and barbs have been traded at three marathon public hearings as county officials wrestle over whether to issue a land-use permit to Nestle Waters North America. The company owns the land and water rights near Nathrop and says it is investing $15 million in its effort to withdraw 65 million gallons a year. It has an agreement with Aurora for that city to release 200 acre-feet a year from an upper reservoir to compensate for the water Nestle would remove from the Arkansas basin.
At the heart of the debate is whether a community benefits when a company takes water from its springs to sell on grocery store shelves.
Some communities have fought such efforts - with mixed results - and the conflict in Salida could presage fights elsewhere in Colorado. Nestle has plans to tap springs in three or four more locations in the state.
"I think they could buy and dry our valley," said Vicki Klein, a board member of Chaffee Citizens for Sustainability, a group formed to fight the project. "Two hundred acre-feet might not be a huge amount initially, but where they can go from there is frightening.
"This thing is going to impact the county and the state more than I think people even think right now," Klein said.
Bruce Lauerman, natural resources manager for Nestle, said the company has been looking for springs to tap in Colorado since 2006 to save on the costs of shipping from California the water it sells here.
The water must be of a certain quality and not be fed by surface water,for the company to call it spring water.
"It's such a small - what I'll call a surgical - extraction of spring water from this aquifer," Lauerman said of the project.
Nestle says it will draw 10 percent of the springs' flow, and the impact to the Arkansas River "will not be measurable, even in low-flow conditions."
The company touts the benefits to the county: temporary construction jobs for the pipeline and related facilities; increased tax revenue for the county; removal of a dilapidated trout hatchery along the Arkansas; and preservation of the area as open space.
Opponents point to other concerns: 25 trucks a day going up and down Trout Creek Pass on U.S. 285; Nestle Waters' previous legal battles with small towns and citizen groups where it has wells and plants; and the effect the water loss could have on supplies during a drought.
At a hearing Wednesday, Terry Scanga, manager of the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District, said it could be "very injurious" to the Arkansas basin. Aurora doesn't take all the water it owns from the mountains, and in a drought that city could draw more to make up for what it releases for Nestle, he said.
"I think it's kind of ironic that an out-of-basin entity would be leasing water to another entity who will be taking it out of the basin," Scanga said.
The debate was heated Wednesday, leading county commissioners to limit comments to five minutes and threaten to remove anyone who cheered or booed.
It was many newcomers - retirees and others - who want to see the mountain splendor preserved, versus old-timers who say the county needs economic development.
"We have no need of them. They just don't benefit the community at all," said E.J. Sherry, who has lived in the area for a year and a half and said his face reddens and his blood pressure rises when he sees Lauerman.
It was people who believe bottled water is a waste of resources versus those who like having one in their car for drives.
"Water has spirituality. When we take water that is God-given and we put it in a bottle and sell it for profit, it's lost its spirituality," said Sharon Miller.
Countered lifelong resident Joe Cogan, 74, who lives adjacent to the project area: "I carry water bottles in my car so when I go to town I don't have to drink that stinking chlorinated water."
The newcomers, he said, "come here and they've been here two or three years or 10 years, and they think they should run the whole county."
Nestle operates 27 plants and more than 50 springs around the country.
Some of its legal difficulties with host communities, usually small, rural towns, include: a four-year legal battle with Fryeburg, Maine, to build a pumping station; a lawsuit by citizens in McCloud, Calif., who oppose a plan by the company to tap springs and build a bottling plant; and a public outcry in Enumclaw, Wash, about proposed wells and a bottling plant that led Nestle to abandon the plan.
The Chaffee County site would be its first spring in Colorado.
Nestle's Lauerman said the opposition "has very little to do with the specifics of the project itself, the viability of the project."
"It's more people with a distrust for corporations, people who are anti-growth no matter what the project is. It's people who have a philosophical bent against bottled water," he said.
Jeanine Zeman, spokeswoman for the opposition group, admits she doesn't like bottled water. She also believes Nestle has a poor record of working with communities where it sinks wells.
With the arguments impassioned on both sides, county commissioners are in no rush to make a decision. The hearing resumes Tuesday.
DETAILS
Nestle Waters North America owns the land and water rights near Nathrop and says it is investing $15 million in its effort to withdraw 65 million gallons a year. It also has plans to tap springs in three or four more locations in the state.
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