Overflow Crowd in Pleasant Gap Says No to Nestle

Residents of Centre County, Pennsylvania were surprised to find out that the Spring Township Water Authority was negotiating a deal to let corporate giant Nestlé take millions of gallons of public water and bottle it for a steep profit. The company is dangling the promise of local jobs at a $50 million plant to garner local support. But that didn’t deter hundreds from coming out to a “No to Nestle” event to get educated about to this outrageous deal.

Organized by Sierra Club Moshannon Group, Food & Water Watch, local residents, and the Nittany Valley Environmental Coalition, the event was a chance to inform the community about the problems with a proposal to allow Nestlé to withdraw 150 million gallons of water per year from the Spring Valley Watershed. Food & Water Watch was on hand to share the lessons we’ve learned from other fights against Nestlé around the country.

Once the deal was announced in February, residents got to work organizing the opposition. They have raised a range of concerns, including the lack of public input, the anticipated increase in truck traffic on local roads, and the impact on a local trout fishery—not to mention the well-documented environmental and ecological damage that can result from allowing private water companies siphon off precious drinking water.

These residents of Pennsylvania know that they are battling a corporate giant that is accustomed to getting its way. But when citizens fight back to protect their water, Nestlé can be defeated.

Nestlé is clearly aware of what’s happening. Right before the “No to Nestlé” forum, the company set up its own information session to spin the story its way. But community opponents turned out in force at the PR session, putting the company on notice that they are ready for a battle.

These communities are right to be worried—and right to get organized right now. Nestlé has spent several decades pumping billions of gallons of groundwater each year across the country. Some communities have found that the company doesn’t adhere to its word. For decades, Nestlé has been over-extracting the amount allowed by their water permit in California’s Strawberry Creek, unlawfully extracting 3.7 billion gallons over the past 70 years. And during a  recent drought, the company’s extractions actually increased by 19 percent.  Communities across the state of Maine have batted Nestlé’s large-scale water extraction; while some of those fights have succeeded, the truth is that it’s hard to kick Nestle out once they get started.

There have been impressive community victories against Nestlé. An eight-year battle in Oregon culminated in a triumph at the ballot box, with voters turning back a Nestle scheme to withdraw water from the Columbia River Gorge. And Nestle has lost in Pennsylvania too; in 2016, determined local opposition derailed Nestle’s plan to build an extraction facility in Eldred Township.

Nestlé is motivated to keep growing their extraction business, because the bottled water business is booming. That’s bad news on several fronts—the plastic waste of single use bottles has created a global pollution crisis, and manufacturing all that plastic requires drilling for the fossil fuels to make the bottles in the first place. In a climate-stressed world where clean drinking water should be protected as a public good, corporations like Nestlé turn it into a commodity they can sell at a hefty markup.

These residents of Pennsylvania know that they are battling a corporate giant that is accustomed to getting its way. But when citizens fight back to protect their water, Nestlé can be defeated.