Water schmater, who needs it?
The Desert Sun who first reported on the Nestlé debacle:
In an investigation into the use of water from California's national forests, The Desert Sun obtained records for 1,108 water-related permits. Of those, 616 permits are listed as being past their expiration dates — 56 percent of the total.
[...]
While many permits are for pipelines, others were issued for wells, springs, dams, water tanks, and irrigation ditches, among other things. On average, the records show the permits have been expired for 12 years.
[bold my emphasis]
These permits range from small homeowners all the way up to responsible corporations like Nestlé. The issue is not simply the fact that we are having water pumped out of a state that is in dire need of water. Nor is it simply the fact that companies keep selling it with no real benefit to the state. The problem is also that the expired permits show a real negligence as to what effects these old pieces of infrastructure have on our national forests.
But it’s also the fact that Nestlé’s permit hasn’t been revisited since it expired in 1988. Since the pipes were first installed in the early 20th century, there have been substantial changes to the environmental review process and the state's water situation has deteriorated. Gary Earney, who used to oversee special uses permits in the San Bernadino National Forest, says the Forest Service now does a much stricter review of potential fallout from permitted uses.
“When a permit is issued nowadays, an environmental assessment of some type has to be done,” Earney says. “Permits that have expired have uses in place that, in all likelihood, haven't been assessed for impacts.”
How did this happen?
Earney, the former forest manager, says that backlog is thanks to decades of slashed budgets and staffing shortfalls.
“The Forest Service doesn't have this mess because it's negligent,” Earney says. “It has this mess because of budget cuts.”
A 2011 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Inspector General came to the same conclusion. The report’s authors laid the blame for deficient supervision on insufficient funding and staffing. The Forest Service “lacks the resources it needs to properly manage the Special Use Program,” the inspectors wrote. The report acknowledged that was in part due to legislative budget cuts, but it also took the Forest Service to task for failing to charge market rates for land use authorizations or even adjusting for inflation. Similar issues have arisen for grazing and oil and gas on federal lands.
A lot of this has to do with politicians
who slash Forest Service budgets. But some of it has to do with the same strange, untoward relationship between the companies being regulated and the people who are
supposed to regulate them.
Gene Zimmerman, who headed the San Bernardino National Forest as forest supervisor from 1991 to 2005, said the Nestle permit wasn't renewed during his tenure for various reasons, among them a lack of sufficient funding and staff.
Zimmerman, who is now retired, said he has done occasional paid consulting work for Nestle during the past four or five years. He isn't the only former government official who has taken on a role with Nestle. In fact, former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, who oversaw the Forest Service from 2001 to 2005, now sits on Nestle's board of directors.
Everything may very well be on the up and up; but between lack of funds and possible conflicts of interest, Nestlé and others are draining national resources with out even pretending to have bogus permits.