Amid a quiet rural community on the Cowlitz River near Randle, WA, Crystal Geyser Roxane, LLC, has closed the deal on an 83 acre parcel where they plan to build and operate a water bottling plant and destroy the rural character of the area.
We wish to urge the state Department of Ecology and Lewis County Community Planning and Development to carefully consider the plant's potential negative impacts on local wells and the area's natural environment and community home values rather than rubber stamping CGR's permits and diminishing the lives of people who live here.
Hopefully, the state's recently declared drought status and Gov. Inslee's inclusion of the Cowlitz River on the list of drought affected watersheds will inspire the Washington State Department of Ecology to carefully question CGR's request for a water right and appropriation to draw 300,000+ gallons of water daily from the aquifer.
Other reasons to object to CGR's plant include:
- The increased cost of road damage repair and maintenance with 30 trucks running round-trip deliveries daily, as well as their supply truck deliveries, will be significant.
- Traffic safety will be compromised by CGR's semis weaving past front lawns and driveways of neighborhood homes on both ends of Peters/Kiona Road, and sharing the narrow road with school buses, pedestrians, horseback riders, and campers.
- Consider the threat to endangered species, the elk herds, and wetland bird populations frequenting this property.
- What will become of the Cowlitz Falls Campground when attendance falls off once a bottling plant is operating noisily 24/7 next door?
- CGR was indicted by a federal grand jury for improper transportation and disposal of arsenic filter sand at their plant in Olancha, CA.
CGR's promise of 20 jobs, which the company says only that they hope to fill with local employees, and the increase to the county's tax revenue cannot begin to justify the increased expenses and property devaluations that will come as part of the bargain.
Please hold our state and county public officials to a high standard. Please sign the petition to denounce and help stop this environmental threat and privatization of a public water resource.
