McCloud Watershed Council Economic Report and Stakeholder Engagement

Whew, the Nestle/McCloud story really keeps me on my toes. I hope you’re ready for this. On Monday the 19th of November McCloud Watershed Council released the ECONorthwest economic report—and the next day in the Redding Record Searchlight, instead of a headline I may have expected, something like: “New Report shows McCloud Gets a Bad Deal”, the headline is “Reports Offer Opposing Outlooks for McCloud.” Pretty amazing how Nestle, hmm, I mean, Siskiyou County Economic Development Council just happened to have Chico Center for Economic Development revise a 2005 economic report for release on the same day.

Well, contrary to how both the Searchlight and Mount Shasta Herald framed the issue as “Opposing Reports”—the reports are quite complementary. Both reports acknowledge that the Nestle plant could bring jobs as well as adverse economic impacts. I recommend taking the time to read them both. Keep in mind that while both reports are independent, the Chico report is limited in that it relies solely on numbers provided by Nestle and only looks at benefits of the project. The reports are available on the Economic page of www.protectourwaters.org.

Even after reading all the information, we still have the significant challenge of making decisions in the light of uncertainty and important risks to assess. I say we, because it remains my greatest hope that the Nestle/McCloud situation will initiate difficult dialogue that has the potential to bring the community back together.

This includes community decision-making. Recently I met with four graduate students from Presidio School of Management. They were using the Nestle/McCloud issue to examine the issue of stakeholder engagement—what does it mean? What does it look like? Well certainly not how it happened in McCloud (because it didn’t happen at all). In their interview with Dave Palais Nestlé’s representative in McCloud, he responded that Nestle has always been available to the community. This is true. For quite some time Dave had office hours in McCloud. Nestle also maintains a website about the project. I hope the graduate students, future leaders in business and corporate responsibility, will critically consider the difference between being available, and actually listening to marginalized voices, and taking action regarding concerns.

What would a stakeholder engagement look like in McCloud? Well for starters, the entire community needs to be involved, because it is their future. December 3rd the McCloud Watershed Council held a public meeting sharing the finding of the economic report. Considering it was the first snowstorm of the year they had a great turnout. Hopefully the meeting was the beginning of an honest dialogue based on facts. The Council plans on facilitating a public meeting in late January/early February that brings authors of both economic reports to McCloud. I’ll report on that as the details get firmed up.

P.S. Another interesting note is that Siskiyou County staff denied the authors of the ECONorthwest economic report to present on the Board of Supervisors agenda. We’re talking about important future trends in economic development but because Nestle is in the title the County dropped it like a hot potato. Ouch.