BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
WEED WAGES
WATER WAR
A small northern California town
takes on Roseburg Forest Products
BRUCE SHOEMAKER
WAS SUED BY
ROSEBURG FOREST
PRODUCTS
PHOTO: TODD COOPER
he pure waters of Beaughan Spring have poured
through the taps of the small town of Weed, Cali-
fornia, for more than 100 years. But according
to Springfield-based Roseburg Forest Products
(RFP), the lumber company owns Weed’s water
and has the right to sell it to Crystal Geyser to bottle it and
sell it to places like Japan, far from the town on the slopes
of Mount Shasta.
“Weed was a company town,” Bruce Shoemaker ex-
plains. The Weed resident dropped by Eugene Weekly’s of-
fices on a trip north in December to talk about the water
conflict and the SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public
Participation) suit against him and other Weed residents
that was recently shot down in court.
When Shoemaker says Weed was a company town, he
means it was, in fact, owned by a timber company. Accord-
ing to the town’s website, Abner Weed bought the Siskiyou
Lumber and Mercantile Mill and the 280 acres of land,
which is now the city of Weed, for $400.
When Weed became its own city in 1961, International
Paper, the owner before RFP, sold land, houses and the
water and sewage infrastructure to Weed. While normally
water rights go with a land sale, the city instead signed
a 50-year lease with the company for the water in which
Weed paid $1 a year for 2 cfs (cubic feet of water per sec-
ond) until 2016, when the lease expired.
And when the lease expired, RFP informed the city of
Weed it would no longer lease the gravity-fed mountain
spring water to the city.
Shoemaker and fellow Weed water advocate Monica
Zinda say there is proof the water rightfully belongs to the
city. Shoemaker points to a 1982 document, found among
a pile of papers in a garage, from a California watermaster
to International Paper that he says proves that the rights
were turned over to the city of Weed. It allocates a specific
part of the water rights to Weed and the rest for industrial
purposes for the company, he says.
Why would a timber company in Oregon want to own
the water that flows to a small town of about 3,000 people
in California? Because RFP sells the water that springs up
from the slopes of Mount Shasta to bottled water company
Crystal Geyser.
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December 28, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
The New York Times reported on the story after Pierre
Papillaud, the founder of the company that owns Crystal
Geyser, showed up in Weed and reportedly demanded the
city give up its water so his company could have more and
— the Times reports — threatened to blow up the bottling
plant.
Worried the town would lose its water, the Weed City
Council voted to lease the water it once got for a dollar
from RFP for more than $97,000 a year.
Shoemaker, Zinda and other citizens, as well as a group
called Water for Citizens of Weed, California, sent a let-
‘I hope all the other small
towns fighting this battle
take heart; it’s not an
unwinnable fight.’
— MONICA ZINDA, WEED WATER ADVOCATE
ter to the district water office asking to clarify the owner-
ship of the municipal water. They persuaded the Weed City
Council to back their request. The council voted 5-0 to do
so.
The next day, RFP sued the citizens and the City Coun-
cil.
In written statement, RFP’s Senior Vice President and
General Counsel Stuart Gray says, “Roseburg filed a suit,
which seeks no monetary compensation and focuses sole-
ly on clarifying ownership, in response to a lawsuit from
select individuals against us. Our goal is to maintain our
ownership of Beaughan Spring and minimize frivolous ac-
tions from individuals intent on diverting attention from
this fact.”
Zinda says, “We are just all working people. We don’t
have the resources to fight a corporation of this size, backed
up by Crystal Geyser.”
Shoemaker adds, “It was intimidating and scary to be
faced with this.”
Attorneys from California-based First Amendment
Project stepped in, and on Dec. 8, Superior Court Judge
Karen Dixon found that the lawsuit against the citizens was
a SLAPP suit, which is barred by state law, and ruled that
the citizens and the group could not be sued for exercis-
ing their constitutional rights by asking local government
agencies for help. The case continues against the city, ac-
cording to a press release from WCWC, but RFP will be
required to pay court costs of the private citizens the com-
pany sued.
“Roseburg [Forest Products] acted like a bully in suing
these citizens, and they hired some thugs with law licenses
to scare them off. It didn’t work and now it’s backfired be-
cause the case against Roseburg is stronger than ever, both
in the street and in the court. We’re calling it the ‘Roseburg
effect,’” attorney James Wheaton says in the release.
RFP says in its statement that “all property records
show Roseburg Forest Products as the rightful owner since
1983, when we purchased the water rights from Interna-
tional Paper as part of the Weed plant.”
Shoemaker says he hopes other small municipalities
fighting efforts by bottling companies to take their water
take heart from Weed’s recent success, and that he and
other citizens of Weed keep an eye on other water-seeking
efforts such as Nestlé in the Columbia Gorge.
Gray of RFP says the company is “disappointed in the
court’s recent decision” but “generally pleased” with other
rulings, “which excluded irrelevant material that is central
to the City and other defendants’ positions.” Gray writes
that RFP is “assessing next steps, including the possibility
of appeal” and remains confident the timber company will
in the end own the springs.
Zinda, however, says she is energized by the ruling and
“I hope all the other small towns fighting this battle take
heart; it’s not an unwinnable fight.”