Nestlé Waters North America has alleged the U.S. Forest Service’s proposed action for renewing the company’s permit to pipe water out of a remote canyon in the San Bernardino Mountains treads on the firm’s long-established water rights and violates state procedures.
The firm’s disapproval of the process to renew its Special Use Permit in Strawberry Canyon is detailed in a 79-page document recently submitted to the Forest Service.
In a statement, Nestlé said that while it “shares a number of goals with the Forest Service” it is “concerned that the action proposed by the Forest Service would disrupt established water rights and the long-standing legal process of regulating water use in the state of California.”
The proposals suggested by the Forest Service would override more than a century of California Law, Nestlé said.
“This would have potentially far-reaching consequences for businesses, agencies and individuals and other water rights holders throughout the state,” the statement said.
“It would be premature to respond,” said John C. Heil III, a spokesman for the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Regional Office in Vallejo.
Both the permit and Nestlé’s withdrawal of water from a canyon watershed, which environmental groups deem critical for several endangered species, has been a growing controversy for several years.
Outcry has intensified with continuation of the drought.
Late last year, the Center for Environmental Diversity, Story of Stuff Project and Courage Campaign Institute filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service for allowing Nestlé’s pipelines, pumps and other structures on federal land after the company’s permit expired 28 years ago.
Under Forest Service regulations, an expired permit remains in effect until it is renewed or denied.
A hearing is scheduled for May 16 before Judge Jesus G. Bernal in U.S. District Court in Riverside.
In April, the Courage Campaign, an online community group, handed San Bernardino National Forest personnel a petition with more than 200,000 signatures seeking to halt Nestlé’s operations while forest officials conduct a “rigorous and thorough environmental review.”
In March, the Forest Service unveiled a proposal to issue Nestlé Waters North America a five-year special-use permit for the use of the National Forest System to operate using existing improvements in the Strawberry Creek watershed.
As part of the plan, the San Bernardino National Forest is initiating its first ever National Environmental Policy Act analysis of Nestlé Waters North America’s special-use permit.
The plan calls for the permit to be granted unless environmental study suggests Strawberry Creek’s water flow is being compromised by those operations, a San Bernardino National Forest hydrologists have said.
Nestlé collected 36 million gallons from Strawberry Creek in 2015, up from 28 million gallons in 2014, company officials say, adding that precipitation was 20.2 percent greater in 2015 than the previous year.
“The precipitation in the area of our Arrowhead Springs for the 2015 rain year was 20.2 percent greater than in 2014, said Jane Lazgin, a Nestlé spokeswoman.
In exchange for allowing Nestlé to continue siphoning water from the Strawberry Canyon, the Forest Service receives $524 per year.
