15 May 2008 - Nestle Waters North America has announced it will reduce both the physical size and the amount of water to be used at its proposed McCloud bottling facility in California by more than 60%.
In a statement sent to FLEXNEWS, Nestle Waters North America said it would trim down the size of its proposed McCloud facility from 1,000,000 square feet to 350,000 square feet. The smaller-sized bottling plant could accommodate up to 4 production lines and employ approximately 100 people at full build out, the company said.
However, due to the reduced size being proposed, Nestle Waters is requesting that the McCloud Community Services District Board decrease the annual 1,600 acre-foot cap on the total amount of water usage originally proposed by the Board to 600 acre-feet.
Meanwhile, Nestle Waters also announced its plans for an “enhanced community engagement” to answer questions raised through the environmental and community review process to date.
The firm will consult stakeholders as well as the McCloud community to determine the details of its proposed facility prior to issuing its revised draft environmental impact report.
Commenting on the decision, project manager Dave Palais, said: “Our need for the bottling capacity in this location has changed since the inception of this project 5 years ago. In that time, we have built another plant in Denver and expanded both water supplies and capacity at other western sites. These supply increases, coupled with the rising cost of transportation and fuel mean that a plant of the size we first proposed in McCloud no longer makes economic sense for the company”.
“It is our goal to constantly improve the way we do business to benefit our employees, the communities we serve and our customers. Over the past five years, we have learned much from all the stakeholders involved in this process both about the McCloud community and our siting process”, said Palais.