For 28 years, Nestlé has used an expired permit to take hundreds of millions of gallons of water out of California's drought-stricken national forests, almost free of charge.
Then, last year, environmental activists at the Courage Campaign and Story of Stuff sued to stop Nestlé's blatantly illegal water scam.
It looked like an open-and-shut case. You simply can't take water without a valid permit.
But now the U.S. Forest Service has announced its solution: They want to simply give Nestlé a new permit so it can KEEP taking water as it always has.
It's so outrageous, I couldn't make it up if I tried. But SumOfUs members are rallying to call out Nestlé and demand an end to this illegal water scam. Will you chip in today?
SumOfUs has been on the front lines fighting Nestlé's water grabs all over the world.
After a quarter of a million SumOfUs members urged Oregon Governor Kate Brown to scrap Nestlé's grab in her state, she put the Nestlé deal under public review.
In British Columbia, 225,000 SumOfUs members spoke out and successfully demanded a revision of the scandalously low water rates for bottlers like Nestlé.
In New Zealand, we're fighting a backroom deal that would allow Nestlé to take 10 billion gallons (that’s 40 billion liters to them) from the drought-prone Canterbury plains.
Flint, Michigan. Ontario. India. Sri Lanka. Australia. Wherever you look, it's the same story: Nestlé, the biggest water bottler in the world, is using their lobbying muscle to take the right to clean drinking water away from local residents and turn it into massive corporate profits.
SumOfUs is one of the only organizations in the world with the international membership needed to take on Nestlé in all these places -- and we've figured out the playbook for winning, including legal action, organizing shareholders, and viral online videos and images to spread the word and jump-start grassroots protests.
Together we can take on Nestlé and stop their water scam in California too.
More information
Los Angeles Times. 13 October 2015.
The Desert Sun. 15 April 2016.