Nestlé Faces Protests in Oregon over Water Rights

FEATURING JULIA DEGRAW – A battle over water rights and the Nestlé corporation is heating up in Salem, Oregon. Indigenous activists have launched a five-day hunger strike to protest a giveaway of hundreds of millions of gallons of water from the Columbia River Gorge to Nestlé, which in turn would bottle it and sell the public water back to the public. Oregon and Washington state based tribes are claiming that in addition to the bottling operation damaging salmon in the river, it also violates treaty rights.

Meanwhile in Southern California, Nestlé was victorious in a legal battle over its on-going operations in the San Bernardino National Forest. For years activists have protested Nestlé’s water extraction that it carried out on an expired permit, especially while California undergoes a historic drought. But a federal court this week decided that Nestlé can carry on.

Find more information about this issue at www.foodandwaterwatch.org.

Julia DeGraw, Senior Northwest Organizer with Food & Water Watch.