U.S. Forest Service sued over Nestle water permit

Ian James | The (Palm Springs, Calif.) Desert Sun

Show Caption Hide Caption San Bernadino Forest loses water to Nestle over expired permit Nestle Waters pipes water out of the San Bernardino National Forest using a permit that lists an expiration date of 1988.

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — Three advocacy groups are suing the U.S. Forest Service, accusing the agency of breaking federal laws by allowing Nestle — the largest bottled water company in the nation — to pipe water out of a national forest for 27 years without reviewing or renewing its permit.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Story of Stuff Project and the Courage Campaign Institute. They are calling for the Forest Service to halt Nestle’s use of a pipeline that carries water from 11 wells out of the San Bernardino National Forest for bottling.

The lawsuit comes more than seven months after an investigation by The Desert Sun revealed that Nestle has been drawing water from the San Bernardino National Forest using a permit that lists an expiration date of 1988.

The groups say in the lawsuit that the Forest Service should stop Nestle’s use of the water pipeline “unless and until it issues a valid special use permit.”

“It’s basically an unpermitted use, an unlawful use,” Lisa Belenky, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a telephone interview.

Forest Service Press Officer John Heil responded to an email about the lawsuit saying: “We cannot discuss ongoing or pending litigation.”

The Forest Service in August said it planned to begin studying the renewal of the company’s permit under the National Environmental Policy Act and would accept public comments during the process.

The defendants named in the lawsuit also include Regional Forester Randy Moore and San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Jody Noiron.

Nestle Waters North America, which uses the water for its Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water, is not named in the lawsuit. Jane Lazgin, the company’s director of media and corporate communications, said the company was unaware of the suit and not in a position to comment.

Nestle, based in Vevey, Switzerland, is the world's largest food and beverage company, and Nestle Waters North America runs five bottling plants in California. Some of the water it bottles is drawn from wells that tap into natural springs, including Arrowhead Springs in the mountains north of San Bernardino.

The company has said its 1978 permit continues to be in legally “in full force and effect” until the Forest Service acts on it.

Water from Arrowhead Springs has been tapped and sold for more than a century. Nestle’s permit — the latest in a series of permits dating back to the 1930s — was issued to its predecessor Arrowhead Puritas Waters, Inc., for the purpose of maintaining more than four miles of water pipelines, water collection tunnels and horizontal wells in the national forest.

The Forest Service, which does not collect fees for water use, has been charging Nestle an annual permit fee of $524.

Nestle draws the water from a series of wells high on the mountainside above Strawberry Creek. The water runs through a pipeline down the rocky canyon and fills a tank, where trucks fill up and haul the water to a bottling plant in Ontario.

The company has said it bottled nearly 25 million gallons from the springs in the national forest last year, on average about 68,000 gallons a day. That was down from about 27 million gallons during 2013.

Critics including former Forest Service employees have been calling for a thorough environmental review, arguing the company shouldn’t be allowed to keep taking unchecked amounts of water from public lands, particularly during California’s extreme drought. Some environmentalists have demanded the agency order an immediate halt to the extraction of water until it can assess the impacts on a stream and wildlife in the national forest north of San Bernardino.

In the lawsuit, the groups say that “removal of large amounts of water at the highest elevations of the watershed is having an environmental impact at the well, borehole, and tunnel sites as well as throughout the entire downstream watershed.” Threatened animals that depend on the water in the ecosystem range from mountain yellow-legged frogs to birds such as willow flycatchers and California spotted owls.

Nestle has insisted its bottling operation isn't causing any harm and has said it’s in discussions with the Forest Service about the permit renewal process.