The following guest opinion was submitted to Chaffee County Commissioners and the public record on May 27, 2021
Dear County Commissioners,
As a physician charged with protecting the health of the public, and with extensive education and experience in the health effects of climate change, I urge you, as strongly as possible, to deny the extension of Nestlés permit for the new, recently purchased, BlueTriton Brands company based on the following grounds:
Climate change is already happening here, in the Arkansas Valley, in Chaffee County. Climate change is expected to cause more erratic weather, including at times more harsh winter weather and more heavy downpours during the summer. Overall, however, the evidence supports climate change has already had a hand in causing more drying and droughts, and the effects will continue to worsen.
Removing water from the watershed hampers our ability to adapt to climate change. Removing water from the watershed so that a multinational corporation can make more money while using more climate-changing fossil fuels to cause a plastic pollution disaster is foolhardy and irresponsible.
The decisions you make on this permit will impact Chaffee County, as well as the Western Slope watershed (because the water that Nestlé removed and BlueTriton Brands will remove from the Arkansas River watershed is being replaced at least in part by water from the Western Slope/Colorado River watershed via Twin Lakes) for years to come.
Decisions such as this will determine the future of economic and actual, physical, survivability in the face of the changing climate for residents and businesses in the Arkansas River valley. Without adequate water supplies, there is no health, and there is no life.
The sale of Nestlé Waters of North America (NWNA) to two private equity firms that have rebranded their new water bottling operation as BlueTriton Brands—not just a name change, but an actual sale—is sufficient cause for denial of the extension to the current 1041 permit under the terms of the permit.
Other legal and ethical reasons for denying the permit extension also exist. For example, prior to the sale of Nestlé Waters North America, Nestlé violated several tenets of the original 1041 permit. One of the easiest to document was that the conservation easement that was mandated in the initial permit was never completed, and in fact, was undermined by the “trade” of the most ecosystem-valuable land for a housing development.
It was a travesty that the permit was granted in 2009. Do not repeat the mistakes of your predecessors, especially in light of the mountains of recent research telling us what to expect from climate change globally and in the Arkansas River Valley, already occurring and projected to worsen in the coming years.
If you have any questions about the science of climate change, the projected effects of climate change in the Arkansas River Valley, and how the continued removal and bottling of water by BlueTriton Brands will cause further harm to our ability to reduce those effects, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I can’t do my job of protecting people’s health unless you do your job of protecting our water and the rich and varied ecosystems, and current and future residents of Chaffee County, that rely on it.
Best regards,
Cindy L. Parker M.D., MPH
Currently:
Advanced Academic Programs
Johns Hopkins University
Recently retired from:
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Department of Environmental Health and Engineering
Member of the Central Colorado Climate Coalition, working locally to educate the public about the health effects of climate change and the actions we can take now to reduce and adapt to those effects.
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