Nestle continues to sell bottled water sourced from California despite record drought

Reuters / Denis Balibouse

While California residents cope with water usage restrictions and farmers watch their crops shrivel and die in the fields, Nestle continue to sell bottled water sourced from the area. As residents struggle and farmers allow fields to lie fallow, its business as usual for Nestle.

Nestle owns Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water which bottles water from a natural spring in Millard Canyon California. They also have a bottling plant which packages purified water under the name Pure Life. The plant is located on the Morongo Band of Mission Indian Reserve.

A drought state of emergency was declare seven months ago by Governor Jerry Brown as California entered its third year of severe drought. Water restrictions have increased for both private residents and businesses, but Nestle does not have to comply as the plant is on a Native American reserve.  the government considers the reservation a sovereign state and therefore compliance with state regulation is not obligatory.

The Desert Sun reports.

The reservation is located in a Mojave Desert oasis at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains, 85 miles east of Los Angeles. Drawing water from that location, where just three inches of rain falls each year, prevents water from seeping downhill to fill aquifers of nearby towns struggling for water during the drought.

The Morongo did file a report with California that said 598 acre-feet of groundwater was pumped in Millard Canyon in 2013, and three acre-feet were diverted. “Those amounts translate to about 200 million gallons a year — enough water for about 400 typical homes in the Coachella Valley,”

“The reason this particular plant is of special concern is precisely because water is so scarce in the basin,”Gleick said.”If you had the same bottling plant in a water-rich area, then the amount of water bottled and diverted would be a small fraction of the total water available. But this is a desert ecosystem. Surface water in the desert is exceedingly rare and has a much higher environmental value than the same amount of water somewhere else.”

If water weren’t being pumped and diverted from Millard Canyon for the bottling plant, that water would boost groundwater levels in the canyon and would gradually spread downhill into the Cabazon basin, Jeff Davis, general manager of the San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency, told the Sun.

From there, it should flow into the Coachella Valley aquifer. Because of that diversion, the water isn’t overflowing out of the Cabazon basin. In fact, the Cabazon Water District says the aquifer is in decline, with more water being pumped out than is flowing back in. The US Geological Survey database shows that some wells in the area have been sinking between one and four feet a year during the last decade.

Nestles actions show a total disregard not only for the residents of California but for the country as a whole. The fact that more than 75% of the fruit and vegetables eaten by Americans are produced in The Golden State  is well known.

One can only assume that by putting their sales before the food needs of United States citizens means Nestle executives can afford to pay for costly imported food when the home produced items vanish from supermarket shelves because the crops failed.

You can read a more in depth report here, and you can read more about Nestles massive mark up on water, as well as their connection with Monsanto in this article from Daisy Luther over at Organic Prepper.