Activists forced to deliver petition to US Forest Service staff on sidewalk when barred entry to headquarters office in DC
Press release from Ekō
Corporate accountability group Ekō installed a giant billboard and hand-delivered over 85,000 petition signatures at the US Forest Service headquarters in Washington DC today. Ekō staff also attempted to meet with US Forest Service Chief Randy Moore, but were denied entry to the building. The petition demands that the Forest Service deny bottled water giant BlueTriton’s permit to occupy public lands and order the company to remove all pipes, boreholes, and tunnels from the San Bernardino National Forest.
When Ekō Sr. Campaign Manager Lacey Kohlmoos attempted to enter the Forest Service headquarters office for the routine petition delivery, security officers stopped her and told her to leave the building immediately. She requested that they call the US Forest Sevice office to send someone down to accept the signatures, but her request was denied.
After calling and emailing the staff members whom Kohlmoos had previously contacted about the petition delivery, the Forest Service office finally sent down a member of the communications team to accept the petition on the sidewalk in front of the building.
The petition delivery was preceded by hundreds of calls and over 6,000 emails to Chief Moore’s office this past week urging him to force BlueTriton out of the San Bernardino National Forest.
“Chief Randy Moore has the power to stop BlueTriton from draining away over 50 million gallons of water a year from public lands. The question is whether he’ll be brave enough to stand up to BlueTriton,” said Ekō Sr Campaign Manager Lacey Kohlmoos. “And after my treatment at the Forest Service office today, I am even more determined to make sure the people’s voices are heard, and that the Forest Service does its job to protect their water from corporate greed.”
Last fall, BlueTriton – the bottled water company behind brands like Arrowhead, Poland Spring, and Deer Park – was ordered by the California Water Board to halt nearly all water extraction operations in the San Bernardino National Forest. The water officials determined that BlueTriton and its predecessors never had a right to the water they’ve been taking out of the national forest for nearly a century.
The company sued the water officials instead of complying with the cease-and-desist order, and in a blow to watershed restoration efforts, a California judge recently ruled in BlueTriton’s favor.
Now environmental groups are putting pressure on the US Forest Service to support the California Water Board and protect the vital watershed by denying BlueTriton a permit to occupy public land and ordering it to remove all water extraction infrastructure from the national forest immediately.
Ekō is a global movement of consumers, investors, and workers all around the world, united together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable and just path for our global economy.
