“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ~Upton Sinclair
Last night, three Nestle representatives came out to the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology to pretend to provide the public with answers about their proposed $50 million plant. Led by their natural resources Yes Man, Eric Andreus, they were hoping to reinforce their positive talking points. Instead, they ended up defending a dismal track record of human rights abuses, plastic and economic waste, water theft, jobs for robots, and community strife.
One member of the audience asked about the company’s history of slavery and human rights abuses. In case you don’t know, Nestle’s been in the headlines for some time because their Asian, South American, and Africa supply chains are rife with slavery. Like other major corporations, they’ve dragged their feet to do anything about it. Profits or people? Profits. Their PR representative last night acknowledged the abuses, citing them as inevitable to some degree, but they were committed to doing something about it.
She was talking out of both sides of her mouth. One made this point a little less delicately, shouting, “That’s a lie.” Recently, Nestle has been fighting against dealing with slavery in their African supply chain. They thought they’d won a PR coup with a voluntary disclosure about some of their Asian practices. But at the same time, according to the Guardian newspaper, they are facing legal action in the US for failing to “get the US Supreme Court to throw out a lawsuit seeking to hold them liable for the alleged use of child slaves in cocoa farming in the Ivory Coast.”
They refused address plastic pollution in any way that actually deals with plastic pollution. Throughout the night, they talked about how they’re a “healthy hydration” company and “producing” choices to meet a growing demand for bottled water, a demand that they are meeting “sustainably.” These empty bromides belie the truth.
In case you didn’t know it, Nestle doesn’t produce water. The hydrological cycle does that. They build huge straws that parasitize community water and then sell it back to you for 500 to a 2500 times the original price you could pay for municipal water yourself. Meanwhile, the bottles themselves are made of plastic, over 80% of them end up in landfills or waterways, and are now driving a widespread and well-understood plastic pollution problem on our roadsides, streams, rivers, bays, and oceans. Just Google “ocean plastic” or “Chesapeake Bay plastic” and a whole world of horror will open before you. They were proudly elaborating on how they use lighter and more recycled materials too. Problem is, the lighter bottles are totally to their advantage. A lighter bottle means they can just more efficiently produce more bottles, not less of them. [Check out David Owens piece on the Jevons Paradox.] Nestle isn’t helping to solve those problems. They’re making them worse. This plant will escalate that problem—even more efficiently if it’s a LEED facility—by over a billion bottles a year based on a basic calculation.
The Nestle plant is going to be highly automated. Based on data and projections from McKinsey and the World Economic Forum, the “march of the robots” will put millions of people out of work and into retraining. What kind of jobs? Jobs on factory floors and in the back office. The new plant already has jobs slated for the chopping block. You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think Nestle hasn’t planned to make your job as obsolete as your mom’s rotary phone. This has a ripple effect on taxes.
Fewer human jobs mean lower income tax revenue. Whichever municipality hosts the plant won’t even see all those income taxes anyway. They’ll be spread across the region. And just so we are clear, the people driving the trips won’t be from here, but from the point of delivery, likely the Baltimore market. These aren’t the only taxes to consider.
In Osceola Township, Michigan, Nestle bought property adjacent to the wells once owned by the public water authority. This appears to be an effort to block any interference with their bottom line. Now they can turn around and drill their own wells on that land, bypassing the water authority altogether. Meanwhile, they’ve been in protracted legal battles with the Michiganders for years while they’ve reduced the property tax base. By capturing the water production facilities and beating the community up in court, they commit the public to pay for the burdens and turn once-public infrastructure into pipelines of money for a non-resident multinational.
Last night Andreus said that they’re leaving options on the table and might try to grab more water than they’re current plan is designed for. In case you missed it, Spring Township Water Authority has one more back-up well coming online and a third in the plans. Nestle says they will be permitted to withdraw 499,000 of the 500,000 gallons of the second well. Ratepayers, that’s not a back-up well. That’s a Nestle well. What’s that third well going to be for? And what’s going to happen with the properties around them? If Osceola Township is an indicator, best be ready for an ugly neighbor.
A couple of weeks ago, Spring Township Water Authority voted 4-1 to accept an allegedly non-binding agreement with Nestle. I’m not a lawyer, but it is not clear that there is anything in this agreement to prevent Nestle from doing everything they want with no recourse for ratepayers. If there were to be an agreement you’d want it to be as good as Captain America’s shield. This one looks like a frayed Live Strong wristband. While Nestle says that they’ve only been looking around here since 2017, why is the agreement dated 2017? Something doesn’t smell right.
In an email to the Spring Township manager obtained from a Right-to-Know request, a Bellefonte resident wrote, “This process has really been progressing outside of public input and it was clear from [Spring Township Water Authority] Chair Doug Weikel that public comment was not sought or welcome.” [For the entire email see Bailiwick News for timeline and documents.] Every Spring Township Water Authority ratepayer should be asking, “Who wrote this agreement? When?” Add on that the Water Authority customers just received an email bulletin about their rates going up to $4.75/1000 gallons and that they should conserve water. This comes right after the Authority had to figure out how to pay for drilling the well that Nestle “needs.” How convenient.
On whose dime? Will Nestle hook up to the next one? Every town they have gone to they eventually begin taking more water than initially agreed to; what happens then? When a drought comes, will they turn off the spigot? It’s no wonder Trout Unlimited, they Nittany Valley Environmental Coalition, Sierra Club Moshannon, and Clearwater Conservancy have all come out with strong questions and urged caution. This might strike some of you as odd, given that Andreus said they’d talked been talking with the local environmental organizations. Huh. Strange then why there’s a No to Nestle event this Wednesday at 6:30 at CPI.
Nestle’s Yes Men and Women want you to believe there’s a blue heaven where the people of the Spring Creek watershed can get rich. But it will come with the cost of selling this region’s soul—its water and integrity—to a low bidder. You aren’t paid for yet. Don’t buy the hype.
Peter Walks for Democracy 