SALEM, Ore. — Thousands of Oregonians said Thursday that they're against a controversial water-rights trade that would allow the company that bottles Arrowhead drinking water to open a plant 40 miles east of Portland.
For more than six years, Switzerland-based Nestlé SA, the world's largest food company, has been trying to tap the water at Oxbow Springs in the Columbia River Gorge through its Nestlé Waters subsidiary. But the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife uses it for a nearby salmon hatchery.
So elected officials in the economically depressed town of Cascade Locks asked to trade their well water to the state for the spring water then sell the spring water to Nestlé, world's largest bottled water company and also the largest water bottler in the United States. Their town with a population of fewer than 1,200 residents would get about 50 jobs from the bottling plant.
That plan faced an extensive state review to determine whether it served the public interest.
