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Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation canoe down a stream that has been damaged by Nestlé’s bottling plant.

Terry Swier moved from Flint, Mich. to Mecosta County, an area full of cold water trout streams and pristine lakes –lakes that attract outdoor enthusiasts from across the Great Lakes Region.[1]  

Unfortunately for Swier, she soon encountered a not-so-friendly neighbor. In 2001, she learned that Nestlé, the largest bottled water corporation in the world, was planning to pump more than 500,000 gallons of water a day from a nearby aquifer. The water would then be shipped outside of the Great Lakes Basin, under the brand name Ice Mountain.[2]

When local officials failed to respond, Swier and her neighbors took Nestlé to court. In 2003, the court ruled against Nestlé, concluding that the company’s actions were likely to narrow streams, expose mud flats and reduce flow levels.[3] Pumping was ordered to a halt.   This didn’t stop Nestlé. The corporation successfully appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Michigan, ultimately arguing that citizen groups had no right to sue to protect local water resources.[4]

Unfortunately, Swier’s experience with Nestlé is not a unique one. From California to Michigan to Maine, Nestlé is interfering in local, democratic decision-making over water.[5]

Nestlé’s disputes with communities like Swier’s, recently catapulted the debate into the halls of Congress, where a House subcommittee is looking at how water bottling plants impact communities, the effect of extraction on watersheds and wetlands, and the adequacy of national and state laws in addressing these issues.[6]

Leaving communities high and dry
Nestle aggressively utilizes the courts and political process to preserve its dominance in the bottled water industry.

In California, Nestlé is working to control water from the springs of Mount Shasta. The corporation negotiated a backroom deal in which it would pay 1/64 of a cent per gallon for the next half a century, while selling it back to the public at thousands of times the price.[7] The Concerned McCloud Citizens successfully challenged Nestlé in court on the grounds that Nestlé failed to submit an environmental impact statement but Nestlé brought the case to an appeals court to overturn the verdict.[8]

Nestlé negotiated a backroom deal in which it would pay 1/64 of a cent per gallon of water for the next half century, while selling it back to the public at thousands of times the price.

In Maine, Nestlé operates at least six wells and two bottling plants under the Poland Spring label and is hoping to expand its operations.[9]  Local residents in some communities are concerned that Nestlé will get priority access to the same water that feeds their local water utility. Residents are also concerned that Nestlé’s extraction will adversely impact local ecosystems and wells.[10] In response to a community group’s attempt to tax Nestlé’s bottled water within the state, Nestlé gave over $218,000 to a political action committee (PAC) called Maine Citizens Against Taxing Water. The PAC opposed the initiative and waged an aggressive media and public relations campaign to discredit those supportive of the tax on plastic water bottles.[11] 

Corporate snapshot
Nestlé is a transnational packaged food company founded and headquartered in Switzerland. It is the largest bottled water corporation in the world, with over 70 brands sold in 130 countries.[12]

Nestlé is a heavyweight in several food sectors, including milk, chocolate, confectionery, bottled water, coffee, ice cream, food seasoning and pet foods.[13]  

And aside from its chocolate bar, Nestlé is perhaps best known for its marketing of infant formula in some of the world’s poorest countries – marketing that lead to a worldwide Nestlé boycott that began in 1977 and continues to this day. The World Health Assembly has called upon Nestlé to adhere to an International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, but the corporation has thus far refused. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, “marketing practices that undermine breastfeeding are potentially hazardous wherever they are pursued: in the developing world, WHO estimates that some 1.5 million children die each year because they are not adequately breastfed.”

The global food giant has been implicated in labor rights violations throughout the Global South, including the exploitation of children in the cocoa fields of the Ivory Coast.[14]

In Michigan, Nestlé is aggressively seeking control of water in the Great Lakes basin,[15] which contains almost a fifth of the world's available freshwater resources.[16] Nestlé currently operates several wells and one bottling plant in the state, extracting millions of gallons of water every year, and continues to search for more well sites, often in sensitive watershed areas.[17]

Take action
Join people around the world in challenging corporations like Nestlé that are undermining local control of water resources. Corporate Accountability International's Think Outside the Bottle campaign challenges the bottled water industry to halt its irresponsible and dangerous abuses. Visit www.StopCorporateAbuse.org to send a letter to Nestlé today.

To learn more about, and support, the ongoing boycott of Nestlé for its aggressive marketing of infant formula visit Baby Milk Action at www.BabyMilkAction.org or the International Baby Food Action Network at www.IBFAN.org

For more information on Nestlé’s labor rights violations, visit the International Labor Rights Forum at www.LaborRights.org.