Welcome to the world premiere Protect Our Waters blog. We are thrilled to launch our blog, website www.protectourwaters.org and introduce the elements of a great story: A beautiful pristine mountain setting with clear spring waters; The world’s most infamous corporate villain and an unsuspecting rural town recovering from the fall of the timber industry. Yes, we’re talking about the Nestle-McCloud controversy.
My name is Meadow Barr. I’ve been watching the story unfold from the beginning. Budding political ecologist as I am, I’ll be your narrator.
Nestlé’s story: Picture a giant Nestle Bunny dressed in a surprisingly casual get up—cowboy boots and jeans. This heroic character is “Father Nestle” come to replace “Mother McCloud” and rescue the dying mill town, build the world’s largest water bottling plant and take care of all McCloud’s people.
McCloud’s story: Some would paint the picture that the savvy outsider split the community clean in two—black and white—pro-Nestle, anti-Nestle. There are those holding strong to their posts on opposite sides of the spectrogram; on the one side outraged by the lack of political process—how a few made such a far-reaching, binding decision for everyone—adhering to a “No Nestle No Way” position. On the other side nostalgic for the time when the company town took care of everyone “the sound of the mill and trucks were music to my ears because people were employed and our schools were full” standing in full support of the Nestle proposal as the only alternative.
The Nestle Corporations’ proposal to build the world’s largest bottling plant in the tiny town of McCloud on Mount Shasta’s southeastern slopes ignited a roaring controversy. The heat of which galvanized a coalition intent on initiating needed dialogue about our most precious resource.
But stories aren’t black and white. Shades of gray add to their complexity, and the Nestle-McCloud story is rich with halftone. And fortunately so, because if everyone were clumped up on their side, we may as well pack up and go home—end of story: stalemate.
The climax of the story is still to come, and a happy ending is possible: there is hope for unity in McCloud and opportunity for a prosperous future. The hard work of bringing a divided community together to talk about what it really wants lies in the hands of those tired of heated arguments based on fear and uncertainty; those seeking an open dialogue with facts. We are at a critical juncture in the story, a release of a new economic report that shows the Nestle project could hurt McCloud’s developing economic base.
Can the town come together to have a real conversation and reconsider the contract with Nestle? Tune in after Thanksgiving for the next installment of this suspenseful blog.
