Nestle Continues To Bottle Water In California
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Social
Little Oversight as Nestle Taps Morongo Reservation Water
Among the windmills and creosote bushes of San Gorgonio Pass, a nondescript beige building stands flanked by water tanks. A sign at the entrance displays the logo of Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water, with water flowing from a snowy mountain. Semi-trucks rumble in and out through the gates, carrying load after load of bottled water.
The plant, located on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians' reservation, has been drawing water from wells alongside a spring in Millard Canyon for more than a decade. But as California's drought deepens, some people in the area question how much water the plant is bottling and whether it's right to sell water for profit in a desert region where springs are rare and underground aquifers have been declining.
"Why is it possible to take water from a drought area, bottle it and sell it?" asked Linda Ivey, a Palm Desert real estate appraiser who said she wonders about the plant's use of water every time she drives past it on Interstate 10.
"It's hard to know how much is being taken," Ivey said. "We've got to protect what little water supply we have."
Over the years, the Morongo tribe has clashed with one local water district over the bottling operation, and has tried to fend off a long-running attempt by state officials to revoke a license for a portion of the water rights. Those disputes, however, don't seem to have put a dent in an operation that brings the Morongo undisclosed amounts of income through an agreement with the largest bottled water company in the United States.
The plant is operated by Nestle Waters North America Inc., which leases the property from the tribe and uses it to package Arrowhead spring water as well as purified water sold under the brand Nestle Pure Life.
The Desert Sun has repeatedly asked the company for a tour of the bottling plant since last year, but those requests have not been granted. The company and the Morongo tribe also did not respond to requests for information about the amounts of water bottled each year.
Until 2009, Nestle Waters submitted annual reports to a group of local water districts showing how much groundwater was being extracted from the spring in Millard Canyon. Reports compiled by the San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency show that the amounts drawn from two wells in the canyon varied from a high of 1,366 acre-feet in 2002 to a low of 595 acre-feet in 2005. In 2009, Nestle Waters reported 757 acre-feet pumped from the wells during the previous year.
For years The Desert Sun, the Palm Springs, California-based newspaper that firstreportedthis story, has asked Nestle for a tour of the bottling plant on the reservation. The Morongo tribe has also reportedly dodged media requests for tours of the plant, so the situation at the water basin isn't entirely clear, and there are no answers to questions such as how much water is being pumped out of the ground annually and how much the water supply has decreased in recent years.
While access to the plant has been closed to the masses and media, water researcher Peter Gleick, who is also the president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, was granted a tour of Millard Canyon several years ago. Gleicksaidhe noticed during his tour that vegetation near the basin had largely died — likely because the water stream's flow had dwindled — which is why Gleick recommended an assessment of the ecosystem be carried out.
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