Bark-out does some great advocacy work and they need our help right now. Seems Nestle wants to wet their toe$ in Oregon's Oxbow Spring, so as to ship our water elsewhere. Via the bottling plant they want to build in Cascade Locks.
Just as with the Palomar pipeline, the answer is not just a "no," but a "hayll no!"
Come join the Keep Nestle out of the Gorge Coalition and Bark-out's efforts below the fold. We have until the 30th to influence the first decision in the process: that of allowing Nestle to purchase water from the township.
A little more background, from a Bark-out email:
Nestle has applied to the Oregon Water Resources Department for a permit that would facilitate Nestlé's proposal. We have until June 30th to influence this application. It's not the last step, but it's one of the most important.
..."Water is a category that gave us so many years of joy," Nestlé Chief Executive Paul Bulcke. -Wall Street Journal, 2010.
Nestlé's "joy" has come at a cost to the residents of Madison County, Florida, who have only realized two-thirds of the jobs promised by Nestlé's new bottling plant. In Mecosta County, Michigan, the community poured money into ten years of legal wrangling to stop Nestle from overdrawing its wetlands, streams, and lakes. And just two years ago Nestlés back-door deal with the Services District of McCloud, California, tore the town apart.
From their website:
Nestle has proposed to build a new bottling plant in the town of Cascade Locks on the Columbia River, capturing the pristine water of Oxbow Springs. Nestle would like to tap up to 100 million gallons of water a year from the Oxbow Spring. The spring is part of the Herman Creek watershed, known for its outstanding trail system. Herman Creek is also a thermal refuge for threatened steelhead. Currently, the spring supplies water for a salmon and steelhead hatchery run by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).
...Also, if this project comes to fruition, large trucks will be barreling through downtown Cascade Locks every eight minutes, causing noise and pollution in this quiet and scenic town and the adjacent Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. We hope the Governor's office will join us in opposing Nestle's plan. We do not believe that Mt. Hood's water should be sold in polluting plastic bottles for huge profits by a multinational corporation with a long history as a bad actor.
So what can we do? We can call and write Governor Kitzhaber. We can sign petitions telling the Oregon Water Resources Department to deny an application that would allow Nestle to bottle clean spring water that belongs to all Oregonians:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/...
They are accepting public comments until the 30th.
We can also donate to Bark-out and otherwise get involved, because they rock.
Donation link
And don't think for a minute that this is just Oregon and so doesn't affect non-Oregonians. Nestle will simply move on to the next target and try the same shtick somewhere else, even if they succeed here. As we all know, nothing is ever enough for some entities.
So please, share this with every Oregonian you know and support Bark-out and the KNootG Coalition. Nestle will discover, as the forces behind Palomar did, that they are messing with the wrong fucking hippies.