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Nestle, A Swiss Multinational Corporation, Markets Bottled Water

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Nestlé, a Swiss multinational corporation, markets bottled water under various brand names. It runs 29 bottling plants across the United States and had revenue of $4.1 billion in 2014. (CHANGE STAT TO 2015 and CITE – waiting to hear back from library with current stats.) Since 2008, Nestlé has been trying to obtain the right to bottle and sell water from Oxbow Spring, located in Cascade Locks, Oregon. Nestlé’s plans are to build a $50 million, 250,000 square foot bottling facility in Cascade Locks. This would involve an exchange of water between Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Cascade Locks. Oregonian reporter Kelly House explains “Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife agreed to trade a portion of its water right at Oxbow Springs to Cascade Locks in exchange for an equal portion of the city 's municipal supply. Cascade Locks would then sell the spring water to Nestle as a municipal water customer at a discounted rate than what Cascade Locks residents pay” (Oregonian, Ballot). The exchange would allow the city to access up to 225 gallons per minute from Oxbow Springs to sell to Nestle. That’s about 5 percent of the state’s water right to the springs (OPB). There were many opponents of Nestle building a giant plant in Cascade Locks and bottling our resource. Opponents¬ of the Nestlé bottling plant developed a county ballot measure to be added to the May election , "Hood River Water Protection Measure," prohibiting commercial bottled water production in Hood

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