defending water
for life in oregon

For more than a decade, the leaders of Butte Falls, a tiny town in southern Oregon, 40 miles northeast of Medford at the foot of the Southern Cascades, have been working on a dream to replace some of their lost timber revenue with revenues from another natural resource: spring water.

The hamlet of Butte Falls has finished renovating its water pipes and holding tank with federal money and are ready to sign a contract with an undisclosed private water bottling company to siphon off more than half of the town's water supply to be sold for profit.

In addition, land-use zoning regulations were changed to permit locating a plastic bottle manufacturing site.

The townspeople are so certain these two projects will be built, that in anticipation of substantial revenues, voters overwhelmingly approved on May 20 two ballot measures on the bottling plant.

The first on the percentage of gross income to be paid to the town in lieu of lease payments and assessments starts at 5% for 1-5 years, rising to 25% after 16 years.

The second on allocation of the revenues to specific entities. For the first seven years revenue will be placed in the Capital Projects and Equipment Fund to recover the Town’s initial investment. Thereafter, revenues will be distributed equally among specified town entities such as the School District and Historical Society/Cemetery, as well as distribution to Households.

A number of years ago, the local lumber company donated land to a non-profit corporation formed by the town for the future site of the bottling plant about 500 yards from the springs. Since 1911, Butte Falls residents have been drinking water from Ginger Springs, a 560,000-gallon-a-day flow of some of the world's purest water out of a mountainside a quarter-mile west of town. The town began adding chlorine only after federal rules in 1978 required it of all water systems.

The water would be piped 500 yards downhill to the bottling plant. The water would be treated with carbon filters, ultraviolet sterilization and de-ionization, according to a master plan the town wrote last October, 2007. The bottling plant would take 300,000 gallons a day. The plan includes building a plastic injection manufacturing facility to make the bottles for the bottled water company.

The town's bottling plant enthusiasts envision something like Crystal Geyser’s automated plant in Weed, California, that draws from springs at the base of Mt. Shasta.

As a one solution to this town’s budget shortfalls, the desire for jobs, and need to plan for the future, this might be a reasonable course of action. But here are some questions to ask?

What are the Harms to the Environment?

Although Butte Falls was given the water right to Ginger Springs in 1911, it is one of the sources for replenishing the aquifer that serves Medford, Oregon. For this reason, taking the water might eventually impact a wider area and far more people than just the town's 500 residents.

It is generally acknowledged that it takes 3 gallons of water to produce one gallon of bottled water since bottles must be washed and rinsed before filling and water lines constantly de-contaminated and flushed.

Furthermore, the oil used to produce a bottle of water would fill that bottle ¼ full. U.S. plastic bottle production requires more than 17 million barrels of oil, enough to fuel one million cars.

Transporting the small plastic preformed bottle shapes across the ocean from Asia where they are made to the bottling plant for final shaping uses oil and contributes to global warming, as does the transport of the finished product to distribution centers and retail markets.

Water is needed in the watershed so the forest and river ecosystems can thrive to store carbon and reduce global warming.

Protecting Our Water Commons - TAPESTRY OF THE COMMONS

The “Tapestry of the Commons” is a way for people to come together to envision how aspects of the natural world and culture are interrelated and interdependent. It is a way of talking about how any one aspect of nature - trees, plants, animals, water - interacts with cultural elements - such as music, art, medicines from native plants, which have been created throughout history and shared among people.

Many different concepts of property characterize different social, political, and economic systems - from concepts of property that apply to personal and household items only, while all else is part of a shared commons to use, protect and pass on to later generations - to more complex and detailed legal systems of private property and inheritance based on monetary value.

At this stage of corporate globalization when corporations and individuals want to commodify, privatize and profit from almost every aspect of nature and cultural creation, there is a new focus on the concept of “the commons,” what to consider part of the “commons,” and what principles might apply to use of “the commons.”

How one community took action.

Here’s the story of one community in New Hampshire that decided to take action to protect their water commons.

“Water Rights and Local Self Government Ordinance”

As nearby communities of Nottingham and Barrington were fighting to block USA Springs from taking their water for bottling, the people of Barnstead, New Hampshire decided to take preemptive action. With plentiful river, lake and underground water sources, their town could be the next target of the bottled water industry. Townspeople saw that their neighbors had followed the regulatory process established by state law and local zoning, and then filed lawsuits to try and make the regulatory system work for them. Despite all their efforts, the USA Springs project was approved by the state Department of Environmental Services which recognized the corporation’s right to take the water based on state laws.

To prevent a similar outcome, the people of Barnstead took a different course. They learned that communities in Pennsylvania had passed laws to ban corporate farming in their town. Inspired, they too decided to assert their right to protect their community against corporate harm. In March 2006, after months of local discussion, they came together at their annual town meeting and passed the “Water Rights and Local Self Government Ordinance.” Asserting that water is a common resource essential for the functioning of the ecosystem and for the residents of Barnstead, the ordinance bans corporations from “engaging in water withdrawals” and denies them corporate personhood. Thus Barnstead became the first municipality in the nation to protect their water by asserting community rights over corporate rights.

"We, the People of the Town of Barnstead declare that water is essential for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – for people and for the ecological systems, which give life to all species. We the People of the Town of Barnstead declare that we have the duty to safeguard the water both on and beneath the Earth’s surface, and in the process, safeguard the rights of people within the community of Barnstead, and the rights of the ecosystems of which Barnstead is a part. We believe that the corporatization of water supplies in this community – placing the control of water in the hands of a corporate few, rather than the community – would constitute tyranny and usurpation; and that we are therefore duty bound, under the New Hampshire constitution, to oppose such tyranny and usurpation."

Rights of Nature

In their March 2008 town meeting, Barnstead voters amended their Water Rights Ordinance to include the Rights of Nature. That same day Nottingham stood up to the state and USA Springs by passing the “Nottingham Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance.”

These ordinances point to a definition of “the commons” that includes the rights of nature and the obligation of the community to protect these rights, in this case water for the ecosystem, into the future – the seventh generation; the community’s right to use water to promote the common welfare and the denial of rights to corporations to take water from the community to sell for profit and more broadly to be able to use Constitutional law themselves to deny the rights of people and nature.

More information: The Citizens of Barnstead, New Hampshire, Used Local Law to Keep Corporate Giants Out of Their Water in YES! magazine

Wider implications

There are even wider implications than just for southern Oregon. Because water is included in the list of commodities to which the North American Free Trade Agreement applies, water transported commercially across a national border in North America will be subject to NAFTA trade rules that make it very difficult to limit the quantity of any commercial export.

Butte Falls' bottled water will undoubtedly be shipped internationally. If Oregon, tried for any reason to limit the quantity exported commercially, the U.S. might not survive a corporate challenge allowed under NAFTA rules.

One small town's decisions can affect all of us. Water bottling companies should not be allowed to take our natural resources, transport it out of the region and sell it for a profit!

Other sources:
http://rogueimc.org/en/2007/03/8061.shtml
http://archive.mailtribune.com/archive/2007/0315/local/stories/enterprisezone.htm
http://www.oregoncities.us/buttefalls/index.htm