Nestlé is draining public water from streams and springs in California to bottle and sell for private profit.1
In late 2017 it was discovered that, despite drought and a complete lack of authorization, Nestlé and its predecessors were taking six times as much water in an average year as they had legitimate water rights to from Strawberry Creek in the San Bernardino National Forest. For more than 70 years.2
Now, 17 months after California regulators told Nestlé to stop taking more water than authorized, the company has continued to take millions of gallons of water that isn’t theirs — drying up streams and endangering our common resources.
To make matters worse — federal officials have been helping Nestlé continue to take this water. When the state told Nestlé to stop overdrawing, the company went to the forest service, which approved a management plan so Nestlé could keep extracting excessive amounts of water.
Nestlé drafted the language for the management plan — which is absurd. The federal government should not be rubber-stamping corporate-written policies.
We’ve fought Nestlé for years — in communities from Maine to Oregon — and together, we’ve beaten the company and protected public water. In 2016, after years of organizing and working with our allies, we stopped Nestlé from taking water from the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon.3