Darian
07-10-2014, 08:25 PM
In keeping with the prior thread on diversion of water, it's interesting to note that nobody has mentioned the water bottling plant in south sacramento, operated by Nestle' Waters North America (Nestle is a Swiss owned company). The bottling plant was originally planned for the township of McCloud and would've tapped both surface and spring water from that area. Considering that location was in an area where headwaters of smaller rivers, streams would've been impacted, there was a lot of resistance from locals. Nestle' began looking around for another location and found that the City of Sacramento sold water at, "....ridiculously low prices." Thus the move. Now, Nestle's buys tap water from the City of Sacramento and spring water from private sources for bottling. The sale of bottled water demonstrates, for all practical matters, that water is a commodity that can be privatized and sold.
Since Nestle doesn't divert the vast majority of their water directly from the river, they were apparently not required to prepare an EIR. Yet, they caused diversion of approximately 30 million gallons of water from the Sacramento River for bottling in 2010. Clearly, the bottling of this volume of water is not going to dry up the Sacramento. However, when considered during extreme drought conditions and in conjunction with all of the other ongoing diversions from the Sacramento River, it's one more over commitment of available water.
As with any operation of this type, there're side effects that may be worse than diversion. For example, the massive number of plastic bottles produced and petroleum products used in their manufacture (not to mention the BPA issue), the number of transport trips used to distribute the product and clean-up/recycling of the empty plastic bottles laying around or floating on some waterway. You might think the impact of all that should've been investigated.
Oh well,.... I don't really object to the sale of bottled water and Nestle' does a good job of marketing their product if their sales figures are any indication, but this situation is illustrative of the current state of diversions of water in this state. Our ground/surface water supplies are being subjected to "....death by a thousand cuts." :(
Since Nestle doesn't divert the vast majority of their water directly from the river, they were apparently not required to prepare an EIR. Yet, they caused diversion of approximately 30 million gallons of water from the Sacramento River for bottling in 2010. Clearly, the bottling of this volume of water is not going to dry up the Sacramento. However, when considered during extreme drought conditions and in conjunction with all of the other ongoing diversions from the Sacramento River, it's one more over commitment of available water.
As with any operation of this type, there're side effects that may be worse than diversion. For example, the massive number of plastic bottles produced and petroleum products used in their manufacture (not to mention the BPA issue), the number of transport trips used to distribute the product and clean-up/recycling of the empty plastic bottles laying around or floating on some waterway. You might think the impact of all that should've been investigated.
Oh well,.... I don't really object to the sale of bottled water and Nestle' does a good job of marketing their product if their sales figures are any indication, but this situation is illustrative of the current state of diversions of water in this state. Our ground/surface water supplies are being subjected to "....death by a thousand cuts." :(