Voters in This Oregon County Blocked Nestlé's Plan to Bottle Its Spring Water

Residents in an Oregon county overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday a ballot measure that could block Nestlé from opening a water-bottling plant in Cascade Locks, a small city on the Columbia River.

Opponents of the plant say it's the first referendum in the nation to take up the question of whether or not private corporations should be allowed to tap a public water source — especially in drought-stricken regions — and sell it for private profit.

Nearly 70 percent of Hood River County residents who voted in the election supported the amendment to the county charter prohibiting commercial, bottled-water production. The measure also bans the transportation of commercially produced bottled water that's collected from any source in the county.

But 58 percent Cascade Locks residents who voted in the election opposed the measure — showing, that despite countywide opposition to Nestlé's proposed plant, the promise of an economic boost touched a nerve among those who might have most directly benefited from the project.

"It looks like our voters still want the economic development a water bottling plant would bring," said city administrator Gordon Zimmerman.

Nestlé Waters North America said it was disappointed the measure passed, but was pleased that city voters opposed the measure.

"While we firmly believe this decision on a county primary ballot is not in the best interest of Cascade Locks, we respect the democratic primary process," the company said in a statement.

Bottled water is big business, and consumption has grown over the past two decades. Between 1992 and 2011, bottled water sales increased by 266 percent in the United States, according to Oregon State University. More than nine billion gallons of bottled water were consumed in the country that year. About 30 companies currently bottle water in Oregon.

Nestlé approached city officials in 2008 about opening a plant, which would use water from Oxbow Springs. But the city needs approval from the state to access that spring. Currently, an Oregon hatchery for Coho and Chinook salmon, which is located about a mile east of Cascade Locks, draws water from Oxbow. Under the proposed plan, the state would instead use water from a city well for its hatchery, and the city would sell the spring water to Nestlé.

Zimmerman said the city's attempts to secure the spring water are still underway, but the plant's opponents consider the effort moot after Tuesday's election.

The plant would bottle an estimated 118 million gallons of water a year if it operated at full capacity, according to a December report prepared by Zimmerman.

"That sounds like a lot, but looking at the Columbia River, that amount of water flows by Cascade Locks every 1.4 minutes," the report says. "That same amount is used to maintain a 9-hole golf course or 181 acres of pear orchards every year in the upper Hood River Valley."

Nestlé would pay the county 2 cents for every 1,000 gallons it syphoned from the spring. The report goes on to illustrate how much water Google uses to cool its computer servers and how much water Oregon breweries use to make beer. Oxbow Springs, it says, generates almost 1 billion gallons per year, and Nestlé would buy 10 percent of that flow.

The $50 million plant would generate 50 new jobs, according to another report. The unemployment rate in the county is nearly 19 percent. Zimmerman said the project would generate $2 million annually for Cascade Locks.

The Cascade Locks City Council approved the plan.

In response, the Local Water Alliance, a group of Hood River County residents that formed to oppose the plant, qualified Tuesday's referendum for the ballot. The organization pointed to a recent drought as proof that the county lacked sufficient water to share and argued that selling water to a company like Nestlé would set a dangerous standard of selling a valuable public resource to a private corporation.

The city council adopted a resolution last month opposing the ballot measure.

Aurora del Val, campaign director for the alliance, likened the fight against Nestlé to David and Goliath. And though a majority of Cascade Locks voters opposed the ballot measure, she said the margin was small enough to refute claims that a few rogue residents were trying to thwart a popular proposal.

"We had overwhelming bipartisan support," she said. "It was pretty incredible."

Food & Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group, has opposed a water swap and campaigned against the plant, which it said would suck up spring water needed to raise salmon at the neighboring hatchery and endanger groundwater supplies.

Julia DeGraw, a spokeswoman for Food & Water Watch, said the Hood River measure is the first of its kind and a model for other counties fighting against bottled water facilities.

"Communities in California, where Nestlé is pumping water from drought-stricken communities, can use this as tool to protect water," she said. "It's proven how possible it is for communities to take on corporate water bottler and win."

But the proposal in Cascade Locks may not be dead. Zimmerman suggested that the city could still pursue a bottling plant because, he said, county law doesn't trump city law.

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