Bottled water giant Crystal Geyser has been charged by a grand jury with 16 counts of violating environmental and hazardous waste laws, after the jury viewed evidence that the company improperly disposed of toxic waste.

On December 12, 2017 the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors certified the flawed and incomplete Environmental Impact Report (EIR) of the Crystal Geyser beverage bottling project in Mount Shasta, CA.  On January 11, 2018 We Advocate Thorough Environmental Review (W.A.T.E.R.) and the Winnemem Wintu Tribe jointly filed a Petition for a Writ of Mandate in Siskiyou County Superior Court to require Siskiyou County to “to set aside their approval of the Project and certification of the EIR.”

On December 12th, 2017 the Board of Supervisors certified a flawed and misguided EIR, despite the known issues of air quality, green house gas emissions, groundwater pollution and aquifer capacity.

On Friday, September 8, 2017, Siskiyou County released to the public its Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) on the Crystal Geyser bottling plant project.  Even a brief examination of the 64 pdf documents that comprise the FEIR shows that almost all of the concerns and objections of the over 150 comments submitted on the Draft EIR were inappropriately deemed to be wrong, without merit, or misconceived and given no serious response.

To gain further understanding of the real costs of a bottling plant in our community, W.A.T.E.R. commissioned Noah Enelow, Ph.D, senior economist, Ecotrust, Portland, Oregon to provide a an analysis of the economic effects of the Crystal Geyser plant.

On February 11, 2016 the Federal Economic Development Administration (EDA) terminated a three million dollar grant to the City of Mount Shasta awarded to assist in improvement of the City wastewater treatment system.