A town Torn apart by Nestlé

The Nestle Waters North Americas plans of building a bottled water plant in McCloud, California was faced by a number of conflicts both internally and externally. Despite Nestle’ company being in the fore front of creating jobs to the residents of McCloud region they were to pose several threats to the lives of people in the long run by depleting water resources.

The residences of McCloud are against the Nestle’ waters plant, they argue that the plant will have a negative impact on the local hydrology. This made the residence to seek back-ups from wealth groups and reception of politicians all in the move of bringing to a stop the operations of Nestle Waters. Nestle Waters had to ignore the residence opposition and continue with their activities so as to prevail in McCloud so that it may improve the sale of bottled water in the U.S.

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The environmentalists claimed that the plant have a say in global warming given that it takes oil in the process of manufacturing bottles to be used to pack water. In addition, transportation of water from the plants to supermarkets utilizes much oil thus contributing to global warming. They have therefore united with the environmentalist in ensuring that the environment is protected against depletion (Conlin , 2008,1).

Additionally, there was the organizational politics where some board members in McCloud were against the operation of the plant. This called for a voting to be done in order to find the winner. People had to compromise with the authenticity of Nestlé plant, given that in the past it promoted infant formula over breast milk. Furthermore, the large size of the company will make it to suck out of the mountain in large quantities thus threatening the hydrology of the area.

Competition has been the major conflict to the Nestle in their operation. Other competitors consider this company as a threat given that it has many resources which can make it fund larger activities. Even though the competitors also use water in there activities like the soda and beer industries. Apart from competition, the quality of water was another concern in view of the fact that it kept on declining due to toxic brew of pesticides, sewage and industrial run-off.

This led to campaign for tap water instead of bottle water on the ground that it is not safe. Moreover, the plant produced large quantities of water per minute leading to drop offs in the flow level and this result to drought. In collaboration with the court, Nestle continued with its operation despite it’s effect of depleting the wetlands on claims that it assured generation of resources to the economy and this is what counts.

There was also an organizational conflict where the members of board used to attack each other to the extent that the tires of one of the members were slashed (Conlin, 2008, 4).

Reasons for divisions

The conflict has divided the town into two due to the fact as some view the operation of Nestle’ having many shortcomings like the competitors. It has provided employment opportunities to the jobless who had nearly lost hope. In addition, half of the residences are against the plant operation claiming that it results to depletion of resources and that Nestle’ requires more water for its company.

For those who support the plant is because it has led to employment given that the region is more valuable and they were expectant of such a move. Some are against the plant on the basis that they were not consulted during negotiations and they opted to look for support from other sources especially politicians and wealthy men so that their view may be attended to.

The deal was done with few board members giving no room for opposition who claims that water is for life and not for profit and yet Nestle company was after profits given that they sold there water 1000 times the tap water. Furthermore, they regard the plant to be more costly in respect to the benefits derived from its operation.

The supporters believe that it help in generation of resources by creating more jobs that will boost the economy, the opposition feel that it is impossible to people to conserve water and later give room for a water plant. This led to lawsuits from those against the plant, thus the biggest challenge is of winning the support of the locals and Nestle’ Waters used to consider this in its plan.

Upset residents

The McCloud residents were upset during and after the September 29th Nestle meeting simply because they were not involved in coming up with the deal. They were eager to indulge in discussion and ask question so that a consensus may be reached after an interactive bargaining but that was not the case.

In addition, they were not told the proposal but instead they were dumbfounded as the deal was signed without them knowing what was in it. They consider the move will lead to more droughts in the region given that the country was facing dwindling supply of water (Conlin, 2008, 3).

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