RELEASE: Wacissa residents protect their water from bottlers

For Immediate Release:
September 16, 2011

Contact:
Christine Chester, 617-695-2525

Wacissa, Fla.– Residents of Wacissa, Fla., have ensured that the Wacissa River will be protected from water bottlers for generations to come. After successfully compelling Nestlé to abandon plans to pump water from the Wacissa River, residents today passed an ordinance that will protect the Wacissa River from water bottling in the future. 

This ordinance will protect the river by ensuring that attempts to take water from the county for bottling will have to be approved by four out of the five county commissioners. This high level of scrutiny is critical, say residents, because of the underhanded tactics that corporations like Nestlé use to seize rights to community water like the Wacissa River. 

“They knew what they were after, and they knew what they had to do to go get it,” said Jeff Granger, Wacissa resident.

In June of 2010, Nestlé set up four test wells to assess the Wacissa River as a potential site to pump water and truck it to a Nestlé bottling plant outside of Jefferson County, where Wacissa is located. This site would have pumped up to 1.5 million gallons of water a day from this undeveloped spring location, while taking a significant toll on the environment. Ounce for ounce, it takes nearly 2,000 times the energy to product and distribute bottled water than it does for tap water.  

Nestlé has a long track record of interfering in local control of water—bottling over community objections and sometimes at a significant environmental cost. It has repeatedly struck backroom deals with public officials, engaged in lengthy and costly legal battles with concerned residents, and launched expensive PR campaigns to mislead communities.

Despite clear objection from residents in Wacissa, Nestlé attempted to undermine community control of water resources.  Corporate actions included sending letters to members of the Board of Commissioners urging commissioners to ignore the requests of residents and work with the corporation to allow it to bottle the community’s water.

"Over the last 15 years, Nestlé’s water grab in rural America has been ugly. Nestlé has struck backroom deals with public officials over community protests. Nestlé has engaged in lengthy legal battles with communities over water rights. And the corporation has run expensive ‘good neighbor’ PR campaigns to win over communities, even as it failed to do basic environmental impact assessments,” said Kristin Urquiza, Think Outside the Bottle campaign director. 

Friends of the Wacissa successfully pressured Nestlé to abandon its plans. Corporate Accountability and a range of organizations worked alongside local residents to generate national attention and support. Alost 1500 people called on Nestlé’s CEO Kim Jeffery to stop undermining local control of water in Wacissa. 15 community and local groups signed on to a full page ad published in a local paper exposing the underhanded tactics that Nestlé uses to pacify its critics and seize local control of water in communities across the continent.

“Nestlé’s pull-out is a clear indication that the corporation is feeling the pressure from the grassroots and that we are having an enormous impact in reasserting the right of communities to govern their water over profit driven transnational corporations,” said Friends of the Wacissa Board Member Georgia Ackerman. “These victories are harbingers of more to come.”

Corporate Accountability International (formerly Infact) is a membership organization that has, for the last 33 years, successfully advanced campaigns protecting health, the environment and human rights. Think Outside the Bottle is Corporate Accountability International’s national campaign to promote, protect and ensure public funding for the nation’s public water systems. 

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Click here to read a firsthand account of the events in Wacissa.