MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Nestlé is still pumping water from a public spring in California while it uses legal delays to stop opposition. (Usman Ahmed)

A recent email from the Courage Campaign, a California citizens advocacy group, reveals that Nestlé is still pumping spring water out of public land, courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service:

For 38 years, Nestlé has used an expired permit to pump millions of gallons of water a year out of California's San Bernardino National Forest virtually free of charge....

We sued to stop this outrageous water grab, but even though the law is on our side, going up against Nestlé's army of lawyers is a huge fight.

The latest input from our attorneys is that this case could drag on for another two years or more.

The Courage Campaign warns that Nestlé is benefitting from the fact that deep corporate pockets are outlasting citizen advocacy legal funds in court:

In 2015, Courage Campaign joined with our allies at Story of Stuff and Center for Biological Diversity in a lawsuit to stop Nestlé's water grab in the San Bernardino National Forest. And ever since, Nestlé's army of lawyers has used an endless series of delay tactics and frivolous motions to drag the case out.

Their strategy is obvious: to drive up our legal bills in hopes that eventually we'll give up. But because of you, our members, their strategy hasn't worked yet and it never will.

In a commentary last year, I noted that Nestlé was paying just $524 annually to the federal government for 36 million gallons of water from the San Bernardino forest's Strawberry Canyon.

I cited a May 2016, article in the San Bernardino County Sun, which noted:

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.

However, the controversy now centers around a lawsuit that keeps dragging on.

Nestlé is also conducting a public relations campaign to justify their pumping of the spring water on an expired permit. In March of this year, Nelson Switzer, chief sustainability officer at Nestlé Waters North America, wrote an op-ed in the San Bernardino County Sun, filled with propaganda such as:

The water challenges California has faced in recent years have once again highlighted the need for all of us to work together to plan for an unpredictable future. That is why, at Nestlé Waters, we focus on maintaining an open dialogue and close, long-standing relationships with the communities in which we live and work. As chief sustainability officer for Nestlé Waters, I understand and take seriously the questions that have been raised about our Arrowhead Springs [the brand of water from the San Bernadino spring] operations and would like to address these questions head on....

Nestlé Waters is also a founding member of the California Water Action Collaborative — a coalition that brings NGOs like The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund together with corporations like Nestlé Waters to spearhead innovative projects to protect California’s water future.

California’s recent struggles with both drought and flood underscore the need for business, government and communities to plan and innovate. We are committed to doing our part to protect California’s water future.

That's a privatized water future, of course, that Switzer is referring to. There are all the signs of government collusion in the San Bernardino forest debacle, including the fact that the former regulator in charge of the permit has left the government to work as a consultant for Nestlé.

If you have any doubts about Nestlé's lack of scruples, consider that in Phoenix, as I wrote in 2016, the company is building a processing plant to bottle city tap water and resell it to a drought-stricken area. Extracting spring water or using city water is fine with Nestlé as long as it makes a profit from bottling.

It's not just organizations in California that are fighting back. As a Truthout article in 2016 detailed, a Pennsylvania community defeated Nestlé's attempt to privatize its water:

Eric Andreaus, a hydrogeologist and spokesperson for Nestlé Waters North America, stood up during a monthly Eldred Township meeting in Kunkletown, Pennsylvania, on June 8, 2016, and announced that Nestlé was abandoning its plans to extract 73 million gallons of water per year from the local aquifer for its bottled water business.

Sitting in the crowd with the other members of the public was Donna Diehl, a local school bus driver and one of the community organizers who had been helping lead the fight against Nestlé's proposal for over a year. She, like most everyone else who attended the meeting, was shocked....

After citing numerous problems with the project, including site logistics and fierce community opposition, Andreaus announced that Nestlé would no longer pursue a permit.

Victories can be had against the privatization of giant water corporations, as the Truthout article reported.

However, as the Courage Campaign and its partners in the lawsuit against Nestlé have learned, it requires a tenacious pushback to keep public water from being privatized.