Street roots., November 13, 2015, Page 9, Image 9

Commentary
Page 10
Street Roots • Nov. 13-19, 2016
Keeping
State and tribal officials throw
a wrench in the corporation's
water-bottling plan
BY STEPHYN QUIRKE
C ON TR IB UTIN G C O LU M N IS T
ov. Kate Brown just made a game­
changing intervention in Nestlé’s
ongoing effort to bottle public water
in Oregon.
I Soon aftêî TêCliving three lettersof
opposition from the Confederated Tribes of
Warm Springs, Brown instructed the
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
(ODFW) on Nov. 6 to withdraw their recent
application to transfer water rights with the
city of Cascade Locks, urging them to
return to a process “which includes
consideration of the public interest... along
with the opportunity for public input and a
broader review of this proposal.”
On the same day, Brown also directed the
Oregon Water Resources Department
(OWRD) to consider taking a “broader look”
at how the state uses publicly owned water.
Nestlé’s proposal to bottle the cold
waters of Oxbow Springs has garnered
substantial public backlash, and generated
more than 100,000 letters of opposition,
with opponents citing issues such as plastic
pollution, disruption to local water cycles,
and harm to salmon.
Both the Confederated Tribes of Warm
Springs and the Confederated Tribes, of the
Umatilla have treaty-protected fishing rights
to Columbia River salmon.
The OWRD approved permits for a water
exchange between Nestlé and Cascade
Locks in February 2012, and was promptly
sued by the environmental groups Bark and
Food and Water Watch the following month
- litigation that may still take years to
resolve.
In September 2013, State Rep. Mark
Johnson (R-Hood River) labeled opponents
to Nestlé “outside environmental and
special interest groups,” adding “I believe
the ODFW Commission should be
responsible for maintaining and protecting
healthy fish and wildlife, not for making
economic decisions for our small towns.”
Complaining that the initial process was
S
PH O TO CO URTESY
OF BARK
taking too long, Nestlé changed tactics last
April, and its allies in the city of Cascade
Locks and the ODFW filed paperwork to
transfer water rights between the two public
entities, eliminating the required “public
interest review” in the original water
exchange application. Now thatstate and
tribal officials have spoken out against it, :
the new application is very unlikely to move
forward.
Nestlé’s reputation has been taking a
beating for several months, with news
spreading from California about illegal water
extraction, government foot-dragging, and
civil disobedience. Back in March, a group
calling itself the Crunch Nestlé Alliance shut
down a Nestlé bottling plant in Sacramento,
saying they were outraged that the company
was exporting 80 million gallons of water
every year despite the state’s record
drought.
In the Central Valley of California,
extending from Sacramento to San Joaquin,
groundwater extraction is so high that the
land is currently sinking at a rate of more
than a foot per year - faster than ever
recorded before. As a result of the sinking,
bridges, roads, canals, and other concrete
structures are literally breaking apart, with
repair costs alone likely reaching into the
billions.
The governor of California, Jerry Brown,
has encouraged residents to stop flushing
toilets and watering lawns to help cope with
the water crisis, while angering
environmental supporters who are still
demanding a statewide ban on fracking,
which consumes enormous amounts of
water. Meanwhile, Nestlé CEO Tim Brown
told the media in May that his company
would be happy to expand California
pumping despite the historic drought,
saying “It’s driven by consumer demand, it’s
driven by an on-the-go society that needs to
hydrate.”
After news of Oregon’s new water
application spread to local tribes this
summer, members of the Warm Springs,
Umatilla, Nez Perce and Yakama came
together to denounce the project, forming
the group Wanapum Fishing People Against
Nestlé, which organized letters of opposition
to the Governor’s office, staged a hunger
strike in Cascade Locks, and traveled to
Salem to demand that the Governor drop
the deal.
“It is unethical for one community to
force another community into poverty to
create just 12 jobs,” argues Klarice Westley *
of Wanapum Fishing People Against Nestlé.
“It’s gonna plunge hundreds of fishermen
into poverty, and there’s already 70 percent
unemployment at Warm Springs. A lot of
our people are relying on fishing for their
livelihoods.”
Part of the tribes’ authority on the Nestlé
project comes from their unique
relationship to the site Nestlé hopes to
bottle. Outside of a recent council hearing
about Portland’s fossil fuel export policy,
Carlos Smith, tribal council member of the
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs,
explained that what we now call the area of
Oxbow Springs was originally the home of
tribal members who were forcibly removed
to Warm Springs.
“The Dog River Wasco Tribe lived right
there at Oxbow Springs,” Smith explained.
And the reason Natives don’t live at
Oxbow Springs today has everything to do
with the hatchery.
From 1933 to 1974, 11 dams were
constructed on the Columbia River, with a
majority of them built by the federal
government. These drastically altered the
geography of the river, flooding dozens of
Native fishing sites and killing off huge
numbers of salmon - the staple food and
cultural keystone for the region’s indigenous
population. The effect was as traumatic for
natives of the Northwest as the extinction of
the buffalo was for the indigenous people of
the Great Plains.
Once Congress recognized the damage it
See NESTLE, page 11
A section o f the
Oxbow Springs,
where Nestlé wants
to buy water rights
a n d bottle it fo r
sale.