Gov. Kate Brown dealt Nestle Waters a severe blow when she directed state officials to stop an exchange of water rights that was crucial to the opening of a bottling plant that would extract water from a spring near Cascade Locks.
Nestle has been trying to gain approval to bottle water from Oxbow Springs, situated on a hillside just outside Cascade Locks, for nearly a decade now. The company planned to build a bottling plant at Cascade Locks’ port that would bottle 378 million litres of the water annually under the Arrowhead brand.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife holds the water rights to Oxbow Springs, which it uses to supply a salmon hatchery. The state agreed to a deal to transfer those rights to Nestle Waters in exchange for the city of Cascade Locks’ well water rights in 2015, but this decision by the governor now leaves Cascade Locks with the option to use city water for the Nestle bottling plant.
The national group that opposed the plant, Food & Water Watch, claimed victory. the group’s executive director Wenonah Hauter said, “Gov. Brown’s decision to back out of this wrongheaded deal is a hard-won victory for the communities in Hood River County that have waged a nine-year battle to keep Nestlé from seizing their water.”
Brown acknowledges that the plant would have brought jobs and additional tax revenue to Cascade Locks, but says that she has directed staff to work with the city “to redouble efforts to address key economic development needs, more important than ever in the wake of the devastating Eagle Creek fire.”
In a statement, Nestle Waters said the company learned from Cascade Locks officials that the water rights exchange “will not be going forward. We are grateful to the residents, elected officials, neighbourhood business owners and leaders who welcomed us to Cascade Locks, and who have supported our interest in bringing good paying jobs to the community.”
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