Tribe Leader Says Nestle Uses Water Responsibly

The Chairman of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians Said that the Nestle Bottled Water Factory in Cabazon is Using Water Sustainably, and that it Provides Important Economic Benefits for the Area

Tribal Chairman Robert Martin defended a policy of not releasing water usage data in the Cabazon area, saying that as in many parts of California, local water users - including the tribe and others - haven't been required to report such information.

"Most groundwater use in California isn't subject to any reporting, and I think we fall in that. We're not going to be held to a double standard where other authorities don't have to report and now you're asking us to report. We're not going to do that," Martin said in a meeting with The Desert Sun, held in response to a July 14 article that explored questions about how much water the Nestle plant is using.

Martin pointed out that the tribe has submitted reports on a portion of its water usage to the Beaumont-Cherry Valley Water District, where reporting is required because the groundwater supply has been adjudicated.

There are no such requirements in the Cabazon area, where the factory bottles Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water as well as purified water sold under the brand Nestle Pure Life. And some people in the area have questioned the potential impacts on the desert water supply, especially during the drought.

"We report our groundwater in neighboring managed basins, where it's fair and we're not at a disadvantage, and there's not a double standard," Martin said. "We're not opposed to reporting."

Martin attended the meeting with other representatives of the Morongo tribe and a manager from Nestle Waters North America Inc.

The bottling plant is operated by Nestle Waters, which leases the property from the tribe, and it has been drawing water from a spring in Millard Canyon for more than a decade. The factory is one of five used by Nestle Waters in California, three of which are in Southern California.

Larry Lawrence, natural resource manager for Nestle Waters, said the company consistently monitors flows of water and groundwater levels to ensure the operation is sustainable. He said that the company also conducts a biological survey once every five years, the last of which was in 2010, to check for effects on plants or animals. Those reports are submitted to the Morongo tribal government but are not publicly released.

"We've seen no changes really associated with our operations in any of our sources really in Southern California at all," Lawrence said of the biological surveys. He said the spring in Millard Canyon continues to flow.

"We maintain a good, strong flowing source of water. We're not doing any harm," Lawrence said.

He said the company also has a "drought mitigation plan," which has involved curtailing the amounts of water used from the Millard Canyon spring this year and offsetting that with water trucked in from other springs elsewhere in Southern California.

"We have five major springs in Southern California that we can pull from," Lawrence said, pointing out that the names of the other springs —ranging from Palomar Mountain Granite Springs to Coyote Springs in Inyo County — are listed on Arrowhead bottles along with the Southern Pacific Spring, which is the main source for the Cabazon plant.

In April, he said, the company proactively began using more water from other springs at the Cabazon factory in order to reduce the amounts drawn from the Millard Canyon spring.

"We recognized we weren't going to get any rain, so we started pulling back, knowing that, 'Hey, we're not going to get any rain,'" Lawrence said. "We've brought other springs online to lessen the impact from this source."

The company monitors groundwater levels and submits reports to the Morongo tribe.

"We haven't seen any significant impact at all on groundwater levels. Now of course they decline during droughts," Lawrence said. He added that those drought-related impacts have been much smaller than the severe declines seen elsewhere.

Martin said the Morongo tribe has a history of environmental stewardship that includes strictly monitoring all groundwater usage and replenishing the aquifer with surface water and up to 750,000 gallons daily from a water reclamation plant.

Until 2009, Nestle Waters submitted annual public reports to a group of local water districts showing how much water was being extracted from the spring in Millard Canyon. Reports compiled by the San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency show that the amounts 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 of water drawn from the spring during the previous year, or about 245 million gallons.

Source: Desert Sun

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