No, we don’t mean a cloud of chlorine gas emitted from a Nestle Waters bottling facility descended upon a group of people enjoying a meal consisting of fried trout. We DO, however, mean that Nestle Waters accidentally killed off an entire pond’s worth of baby trout with chlorine… which did, most likely, take away somebody’s fried trout dinner in the future.

We took the following directly off of the Nestle Waters in the Northwest Pacific Web Site:

The City of Cascade Locks and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) are investigating a water exchange that would enable the hatchery to use city well water in addition to spring water for its operations at the Oxbow site. In return, the city would have spring water to sell to Nestlé Waters North America (NWNA) for bottling purposes.

As part of the due diligence, ODFW has asked NWNA to demonstrate that the city well water is suitable for raising fish. A year-long test was designed, and began yesterday, September 3. Water from a city well was piped into a test pond with rainbow trout fry purchased from a private hatchery. Unfortunately, an ineffective check valve from the city’s chlorination system accidentally allowed chlorinated water to be pumped into the test pond. As a result, all the fish perished. Chlorine, often used as a disinfectant in public water systems, is fatal to fish in very small quantities.

NWNA is working closely with ODFW and private consultants to conduct a complete assessment of the pumping equipment and system to ensure there are adequate protections to avoid this, or other potential problems, in the future.

Both NWNA and ODFW agree that additional testing will not be completed until both are confident it can be safely implemented. At this point, we don’t know when that will be. Please check back at this site for updates. ( )

So, as if bottle water opponents really needed more ammunition to use against the bottled water industry, Nestle Waters kills a pod full of baby trout. Not just fish, but trout — and BABY trout at that.

“Why did you post this article on the death of baby fish?”

Simple: While the USEPA has ruled that drinking water dispensed by public water systems may contain no more than 4.0 ppm free chlorine and no more than 4.0 ppm total chlorine (see free chlorine vs. total chlorine to learn the difference), it only takes trace elements of chlorine in discharge water to kill fish and plant life in the environment.

If we kill all the fish and aquatic plant life in our waterways we will not only have nothing to eat at fish fry events, but we will also lose a valuable part of the planet’s Oxygen Cycle. We need plants not just because some of them taste good, but also because they play a key role in keeping the proper balance of O2 (oxygen), CO (carbon monoxide), CO2 (carbon dioxide) in our atmosphere.

Ask any aquarium enthusiast how they feel about the removal of chlorine from water they use in their tanks and you will undoubtedly hear a horror story about the one time they didn’t get all the chlorine out of water they added to a tank — and how much money it cost them to replace the fish and plant life they killed.

Now picture that same situation on a global scale. Hmmmmm….. Scary.

“How can the average person test for chlorine?”

The three main ways to test for chlorine levels in water involve the use of: