Forest Service Considers Nestle Mountain Water Withdrawals [View all]

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Forest Service Considers Nestle Mountain Water Withdrawals

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Mar 18, 2016, 9:23 PM ET

The U.S. Forest Service on Friday proposed giving Nestle a five-year permit to keep siphoning millions of gallons of water from the Southern California mountains to bottle and sell.

The Forest Service said it was starting an environmental analysis of the request for a special permit to continue drawing water from the Strawberry Creek watershed in the San Bernardino National Forest east of Los Angeles.

Nestle Waters North America — a subsidiary of the Swiss multinational food giant and the largest bottled water company in the nation — has been drawing 25 million gallons of water a year from mountains springs under a permit that expired some three decades ago. The company pays the government about $500 a year and markets the product as Arrowhead brand spring water.

The water flows from about a dozen wells down through a 4.5-mile pipeline and is trucked to bottling plants.

Critics contend that the extraction — particularly in the midst of California's drought — could harm the creek environment that supports California spotted owls and other sensitive species.

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