After years, review of Nestle water permit to begin

The U.S. Forest Service plans to begin studying the renewal of a permit that has long allowed the bottled water maker Nestle to pipe water out of the San Bernardino National Forest while paying a $524 annual permit fee.

Critics have been calling for a thorough environmental review for months, 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 streams and wildlife in the national forest.

The Forest Service provided a rough timetable for starting its review this week, more than five months after an investigation by The Desert Sun revealed that Nestle has been drawing water from the national forest using a permit that lists an expiration date of 1988.

The Forest Service plans to begin the process under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) within a month or two, said Keith Riggs, a spokesperson for the agency.

“The Forest Service will accept public comments as part of the NEPA scoping process by the end of the year,” Riggs said in an email.

Nestle Waters North America, a subsidiary of Switzerland-based Nestle SA, insists its bottling operation isn't harming the environment and says it has longstanding rights to the water. Last year, Nestle reported bottling nearly 25 million gallons from Arrowhead Springs, an average of about 68,000 gallons a day.

The company said it’s in discussions with the Forest Service about the permit renewal process.

“Nestle is responding to information requests from the Forest Service as they are received,” said Jane Lazgin, the company’s director of media and corporate relations. “We have not been informed of any decisions on the specific environmental review process that will be applied in this matter.”

The company has agreed to provide funding to cover the cost of the environmental analysis, which is a standard procedure.

“It is premature to determine exactly what the analysis will involve,” Riggs said.

It’s also not clear how long the process could take. The Forest Service has said it plans to evaluate the potential environmental effects of Nestle’s pipes and other water infrastructure, and will accept comments once it has released a proposal for issuing a new permit.

“The proposed action will be vetted through the public scoping process,” Riggs said. “The results of the scoping process will inform the Forest Service’s decision on the type, scope and scale of environmental analysis.”

Water from Arrowhead Springs, in the mountains north of San Bernardino, 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 Arrowhead Puritas Waters, Inc., in 1978. It allows the company to maintain more than four miles of water pipelines, water collection tunnels, horizontal wells and other infrastructure in the national forest.

The water is drawn from about a dozen wells on the mountainside and flows through separate pipes before coming together in the single pipeline that runs along Strawberry Creek. Then the water is collected by tanker trucks, transported to a plant in Ontario, and bottled as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.

Steve Loe, a retired Forest Service biologist, said he’s concerned the drought has left very little water flowing in Strawberry Creek, which provides habitat for frogs, salamanders, and birds such as Bell's vireos and willow flycatchers.

Loe pointed out that a U.S. Geological Survey stream gauge downstream in Twin Creek, which receives water from Strawberry and Coldwater canyons, has been recording some of its lowest flows in nearly a century of record-keeping. On Friday afternoon, a USGS website listed the discharge at 0.18 cubic feet per second, slightly less than a previous low for the date set in 1925.

“You can’t take that much water in a terrible drought and not affect the stream,” Loe said. He said the Forest Service should urgently assess the health of the creek and take measures to protect the habitat.

Nestle has said it monitors the environment at the springs it uses in order to “ensure long-term sustainability.”

“The spring water from the Arrowhead Springs flows naturally into the pipeline, and the amount of flow dictates the amount of water that enters the collection system,” Lazgin said.

Since the 1950s, Nestle and its predecessors have been submitting information about the total amounts of water collected from Arrowhead Springs. The reports have been filed with the state under a “groundwater recordation” program that requires the information to be collected in four Southern California counties. The San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District helps administer the program and collects the data.

The records show the amounts of water passing through the company’s pipeline have varied widely over the years, and have declined since 2013 during the drought.

“Flow will vary based on local precipitation in the recharge area and is unrelated to the amount of water bottled,” Lazgin said. “In any decade, we experience periods of higher and lower flows.”

There haven’t been detailed scientific studies focusing on groundwater in the area, and it’s unclear how long it may take for rain and snow in the mountains to filter through spaces in the rocks and reach the springs.

During the 1980s — with the exception of 1989, when no information was listed — an average of 67 million gallons of water was collected per year. That increased to an average of 104 million gallons a year during the 1990s, and then declined to 49 million gallons a year during the 2000s.

An average of 60 million gallons has been collected annually from the wells during the past five years. Based on typical residential water usage in California, that would be roughly enough each year to supply more than 500 households.

According to Nestle, not all of that water ends up in bottles. A portion of it is delivered to the long-closed Arrowhead Springs hotel under a longstanding agreement with the owner, Campus Crusade for Christ, and some of the water is also regularly released back into the canyon.

The records also show a change during the 1980s, when there was an abrupt increase in the number of wells listed.

Until 1986, annual water production figures appear for between six and eight wells. Starting in 1987, information appeared for 11 or 12 wells each year. Lazgin said the company, which didn’t own Arrowhead at the time, doesn’t have any information as to why that changed.

The company’s 1978 permit included a list of boilerplate conditions, including that the permit holder should take precautions to prevent forest fires and “shall fully repair all damage, other than ordinary wear and tear, to national forest roads and trails.”

The terms of the permit didn’t include tracking the amounts of water used or monitoring the impacts on the environment.

As the Forest Service considers issuing a new permit, it’s unclear how water rights could factor into the discussion.

Nestle has said there are “validly recorded water rights” that have been in continuous use since the late 1800s.

“These ‘pre-1914’ water rights are, by law, valid rights that do not require further permitting and are vested rights that cannot be infringed by others,” Lazgin said in an email last month. She said the rights were also confirmed by court judgments in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The Forest Service has pointed out the state holds the primary legal responsibility for administering water rights. The State Water Resources Control Board, however, has noted that the federal agency can determine how land should be used in the national forest.

“The State Water Board does not have authority to affirm rights of access to property, so only the United States Forest Service can confirm if Arrowhead can continue accessing its government land to divert water,” John O’Hagan, assistant deputy director of the state board’s water rights division, said in an emailed response to questions.

“Arrowhead … reports its diversions to a groundwater local oversight agency. The State Water Board’s permitting authority does not apply to diversion of percolating groundwater,” O’Hagan said. “Therefore, unless these rights, or any other groundwater right, have been adjudicated by a court, they are considered to be claimed rights.”

Forest Service documents obtained by The Desert Sun show that in the 1990s and early 2000s, officials discussed plans for a review of the permit and environmental studies. But officials failed to follow through on those plans.

Gene Zimmerman, the forest supervisor who was in charge at the time, later retired. He went on to do paid consulting work for Nestle.

Nestle Waters North America Chairman, CEO and President Tim Brown has said recently that the company expects the permit process will lead to an agreed upon set of requirements.

“We’ll follow the rules, we’ll follow the science, and it’ll reach some sort of conclusion,” Brown said last month. “If another governing body, be it the state, be it the U.S. Forest Service, has a set of conditions that define use or flow, we’re going to follow those conditions as required.”

Forest Supervisor Jody Noiron said in an interview in April that since she became aware the permit was out of date, she has made it a priority to work on the project.

Noiron, who is expected to assign a team to the task, has previously mentioned the possibility of imposing some type of “interim conditions” while the permit is examined. But Riggs said the staff of the San Bernardino National Forest “has not yet determined a need to implement ‘interim conditions,’ which could include a restriction in activities allowed under the permit.”

Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said she hopes to see action by the Forest Service because the creek provides vital habitat for wildlife, which may be threatened.

“Time is of the essence,” she said. “They need to move that project and analysis forward as quickly as possible.”

Ian James can be reached by email at ian.james@desertsun.com and on Twitter: @TDSIanJames

By the numbers

Total amount of water that Nestle says it bottled from Arrowhead Springs last year:

About 25 million gallons

Average amount bottled per day last year:

68,000 gallons

Annual permit fee that Nestle pays to the Forest Service:

$524