Fee payment holds up Salida decision on water

SALIDA • Chaffee County commissioners on Tuesday delayed a vote on a controversial proposal to tap natural springs along the Arkansas River because the world's largest food and beverage company had not paid its bills.

Nestle Waters North America wants to withdraw 65 million gallons of spring water a year for its Arrowhead brand of bottled water. The company operates 27 bottling plants and taps 50 springs around the country, but this would be its first in Colorado.

The proposal has divided the community. Some see it as vital economic development in a rural area with little industry, while others view it as a water grab with no benefit to residents.

The commissioners, after holding several lengthy public meetings, said Tuesday the county has spent $140,000 to pay consultants for reviewing the 1041 land-use permit application. But officials said Nestle has not compensated the county beyond a $33,000 deposit submitted at the beginning of the permitting process.

The board declined to deliberate or vote until Nestle pays.

"No one's more disappointed than us. We were hoping to keep moving and get this resolved one way or another. This is just another delay, but I quite frankly see no way around it," said Commissioner Frank Holman.

Nestle natural resources manager Bruce Lauerman said the county has not provided enough detail in its invoices for the multinational corporation's accounting offices to approve the expenses. He said the company only learned Monday the issue could delay a decision.

He pledged to pay the full cost of the review, and after the meeting met with county officials to go over the county's permitting costs. The commissioners set July 1 for deliberations on the project.

The company is eyeing several more locations in Colorado to tap springs. Water must be of a certain quality, and not be fed by surface water, for companies to call it spring water.

Nestle has an agreement with Aurora for that city to release 200 acre-feet a year from a reservoir to compensate for the water Nestle would remove from the Arkansas basin.

The water would be trucked to a Nestle bottling plant in Denver.