<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/16/1371402/-Water-coalition-to-hold-press-conference-regarding-shutdown-of-Nestle-Plant">http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/16/1371402/-Water-coalition-to-hold-press-conference-regarding-shutdown-of-Nestle-Plant</a></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><br></font></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia" size="6">Water coalition to hold press conference regarding 'shutdown' of Nestlé Plant</font></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">by Dan Bacher</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><br></font></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px; ">The city of Sacramento is in the fourth year of a record drought - yet the Nestlé Corporation continues to bottle city water to sell back to the public at a big profit, local activists charge.</span><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">The Nestlé Water Bottling Plant in Sacramento is the target of a major press conference on Tuesday, March 17, by a water coalition that claims the company is draining up to 80 million gallons of water a year from Sacramento aquifers during the drought.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">The coalition, the "crunchnestle alliance," says that City Hall has made this use of the water supply possible through a "corporate welfare giveaway," according to a press advisory.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">A coalition of environmentalists, Native Americans and other concerned people announced the press conference will take place at March 17 at 5 p.m. at new Sacramento City Hall, 915 I Street, Sacramento.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">The coalition will release details of a protest on Friday, March 20, at the South Sacramento Nestlé plant designed to "shut down" the facility. The coalition is calling on Nestlé to pay rates commensurate with their enormous profit, or voluntarily close down.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">"The coalition is protesting Nestlé's virtually unlimited use of water – up to 80 million gallons a year drawn from local aquifers – while Sacramentans (like other Californians) who use a mere 7 to 10 percent of total water used in the State of California, have had severe restrictions and limitations forced upon them," according to the coalition.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">"Nestlé pays only 65 cents for each 470 gallons it pumps out of the ground – the same rate as an average residential water user. But the company can turn the area's water around, and sell it back to Sacramento at mammoth profits," the coalition said.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">Activists say that Sacramento officials have refused attempts to obtain details of Nestlé's water used. Coalition members have addressed the Sacramento City Council and requested that Nestle’ either pay a commercial rate under a two tier level, or pay a tax on their profit.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">In October, the coalition released a "White Paper" highlighting predatory water profiteering actions taken by Nestle’ Water Bottling Company in various cities, counties, states and countries. Most of those great “deals” yielded mega profits for Nestle’ at the expense of citizens and taxpayers. Additionally, the environmental impact on many of those areas yielded disastrous results.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">Coalition spokesperson Andy Conn said, "This corporate welfare giveaway is an outrage and warrants a major investigation. For more than five months we have requested data on Nestlé water use. City Hall has not complied with our request, or given any indication that it will. Sacramentans deserve to know how their money is being spent and what they’re getting for it. In this case, they’re getting ripped off.”</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">The press conference and protest will take place just days after Jay Famiglietti, the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and a professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine, revealed in an op-ed in the LA Times on March 12 that California has only one year of water supply left in its reservoirs. (<a href="http://touch.latimes.com/#section/">http://touch.latimes.com/#section/</a>-1/article/p2p-83043355/) </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">"As difficult as it may be to face, the simple fact is that California is running out of water — and the problem started before our current drought. NASA data reveal that total water storage in California has been in steady decline since at least 2002, when satellite-based monitoring began, although groundwater depletion has been going on since the early 20th century.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"> </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain." </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">Meanwhile, Governor Jerry Brown continues to fast-track his Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels to ship Sacramento River water to corporate agribusiness, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies conducting fracking operations. The $67 billion plan won't create one single drop of new water, but it will take vast tracts of Delta farm land out of production under the guise of "habitat restoration" in order to irrigate drainage-impaired soil owned by corporate mega-growers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">The tunnel plan will also hasten the extinction of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Klamath and Trinity rivers. The peripheral tunnels will be good for agribusiness, water privateers, oil companies and the 1 percent, but will be bad for the fish, wildlife, people and environment of California and the public trust.</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">For more information about the crunchnestle alliance, contact Andy Conn (530) 906-8077 <a href="mailto:camphgr55@gmail.com">camphgr55@gmail.com</a> or Bob Saunders (916) 370-8251.</span></font></div></body></html>