Letter: Crystal Geyser bad for Orland

I can tell you one of the reasons that so many of us are opposed to allowing a bottling plant to build in Orland: We are concerned about our water and the potential loss of it. We live only a couple hundred feet from their proposed project and are concerned about our own well, which has served us very well, but is only about 70 feet deep.

One day in the fall, a neighbor phoned us to ask if we would be willing to go together with some neighbors to drill a large well to sell water to Crystal Geyser. This call raised some questions that we hadn't anticipated, so we went to Crystal Geyser's application and saw that request was to limit their pumping, not their use of 160-acre feet. So when Crystal Geyser held its open house, which was touted as an opportunity for questions, I went. I approached the booth with Richard Weklych, the vice president. I asked if Crystal Geyser might be willing to buy water from neighbors. Richard answered with a question, "Why would we want to do that, we said we would have no tank trucks." I said, "What about pipes?" He said, "What do you mean?" "Pipes, pipes" I said, thinking he didn't hear my question. I answered, "Well they're about this big around, can be very long and farmers use them all the time to get water from one place to another." I walked away knowing that conversation with him was pointless. After a couple of minutes, he pursued me asking if I knew someone who would want to sell water. I dismissed him by saying, "It was just a question."

There will be no way to prevent Crystal Geyser to do what it has done in other parts of the country - go next door and drill another well and pipe it into its massive plant. Its method of operation - start small, then expand - is well documented all over the nation. Orland is just one of the company's intended victims. The only way to limit them is to not let them start.

Darlene Shippelhoute

Orland