Environment

Things are looking better for the town of McCloud, California where Nestle was trying to build a million square foot water bottling facility and was given a 100 year contract to potentially suck the community dry.

Nestlé, which controls one-third of the U.S. market and sells 70 different brand names -- such as Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Perrier, Poland Spring and Ice Mountain -- which it draws from 75 springs located all over the country. Nestlé's most recent target has been McCloud, located in the shadow of Northern California's snow-capped Mt. Shasta.

Nestle is significantly scaling back plans to build what would have been the country's largest water bottling plant. The announcement by Nestle Waters North America comes after years of opposition by environmentalists and a group of residents in the rural town of McCloud. Apparently they are now looking to scale down to a 350,000 square feet facility and want 200 million gallons of water a year from three of McCloud's springs; still a huge amount of water for a town that may have greatly reduced water if snowpack continues to decline in the Shasta area in coming decades. It looks like locals are relieved to a degree but are not yet entirely at ease

 Read More