Who Governs Mt. Shasta’s Water—Residents

By Shannon Biggs and Kylie Nealis

The picturesque mountain hamlet of Mount Shasta is on the verge of making history in California and changing the debate about water in this draught-ridden state. At issue: who makes critical decisions about our water future—legislators, lobbyists, corporations or communities?

Ancient water flows under the iconic snow-capped volcano, and the region serves as one of the main water sources for the state’s needs and for corporate water bottlers. Additionally, hydropower corporations are seeking to manipulate, capture and own water before it hits the ground through the chemical ‘seeding’ of storm clouds. When residents discovered that constitutional protections allow corporate actors to override community concerns, the issue became a matter of rights, not just water.

Global Exchange and our partner, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, helped draft a cutting-edge ordinance that asserts the right of Mt. Shasta residents to determine whether large-scale water bottling is an appropriate local activity or if toxins should rain from the sky overhead.

With assistance from Global Exchange, local residents spawned the Mt. Shasta Community Rights Project (MSCRP) to educate neighbors about the power of asserting community rights and to gather petition signatures to pass this ordinance into law this year. We spoke with residents and members of MSCRP, Ami Marcus and Angelina Cook about choosing this innovative path:

GX: What makes water withdrawal harmful to your community?

ANGELINA: Two major multi-national corporations are already extracting undisclosed amounts of our water. Until we can determine a level of withdrawal that meets a sustainable threshold we need to prohibit water withdrawal and export form our basin. Water is a public resource, and when private interests manage it, the drive for profit overrides community interests or conservation.

GX: Why is corporate cloud seeding a problem?

AMI: Cloud seeding has not been proven to actually increase precipitation and yet the state allows it WITHOUT any regulation and WITHOUT environmental review.

ANGELINA: Nature is not a machine and you can’t treat it like an engine. We trust natural cycles for the amount of water we receive and where it falls. We’re not comfortable with toxins like silver iodide being released into the air, and cloud seeding can produce catastrophic weather events.

GX: Why not use existing “solutions” like regulatory law?

AMI: The regulatory system denies us the right to say “no.” At best it is designed to merely limit harms—and take a look at the results—every living system on the planet is in decline. If we expect different results we’re going to have to adopt a different strategy. We began to ask ourselves whether or not we actually have the right to ensure that these corporate harms do not happen in our community.

Who “owns” Mt. Shasta’s rain and groundwater?

GX: What makes this about rights and not just about water?
ANGELINA: Well, because of our bioregional significance here in Mt. Shasta we believe its time to stand up and reclaim a better place for our community in environmental stewardship. Because the regulatory approach has been so poor at truly engaging community concerns, we feel like if we can lift the conversation more to be about our natural rights, its more accessible and more encompassing that way. It speaks more to what we collectively want for our community.

AMI: This ordinance is about self-governing our community in partnership with our local officials. We are coming together as a community to assert our rights to make decisions about our quality of life and the stewardship of our local resources.

GX: Is this work anti-business?

ANGELINA: This work is business friendly. The short-term profit of Business as Usual cannot last; but the possibilities of clean development are everywhere. By implementing policies that secure our water future, we are attracting new cleaner business. It’s a shift in mindset to what really creates wealth in the long run.

GX: Part of the education of your community about rights came from Democracy School—can you tell us about that?

AMI: Parts of it were shocking in that they revealed the degrees to which our rights have been nullified and corporations have been bestowed with such immense power; it’s one thing to know it but it’s another thing to have it presented to you in such fine print. The Democracy School included a ton of information but it was extremely focused. Although some of it was hard to hear at times it was a very engaging and empowering process.

GX: In what ways do you see the ordinance being beneficial for Mt. Shasta’s future?
ANGELINA: I think that it will establish us as a region that cares about our environment. We need to make a strong stance as a community and we need to start working together. Ultimately this will be a major step to working with other people throughout the county to get what we want. Our common interests are more than what’s not common between us. We want the ordinance to be sort of a stepping-stone to working together in our community to meet everyone’s needs.

GX: Tell us about the challenges and rewards of the process.

AMI: Most challenging has been educating the community on just how few rights we actually have under the law, and how many corporations have. At the end of the day no matter where you live, we all want the same thing—to raise our families comfortably in a safe and healthy place. The ordinance brings diverse groups together to rally around deciding what’s best for our community.
2017 Mission Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94110

it’s another thing to have it presented to you in such fine print. The Democracy School included a ton of information but it was extremely focused. Although some of it was hard to hear at times it was a very engaging and empowering process.

GX: In what ways do you see the ordinance being beneficial for Mt. Shasta’s future?

ANGELINA: I think that it will establish us as a region that cares about our environment. We need to make a strong stance as a community and we need to start working together. Ultimately this will be a major step to working with other people throughout the county to get what we want. Our common interests are more than what’s not common between us. We want the ordinance to be sort of a stepping-stone to working together in our community to meet everyone’s needs.

GX: Tell us about the challenges and rewards of the process.

AMI: Most challenging has been educating the community on just how few rights we actually have under the law, and how many corporations have. At the end of the day no matter where you live, we all want the same thing—to raise our families comfortably in a safe and healthy place. The ordinance brings diverse groups together to rally around deciding what’s best for our community.
2017 Mission Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94110
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