Bottled water — Bottling plants facing opposition amid worries over shrinking aquifers in U.S.

McCLOUD, Calif. — The lumber mill closed five years ago, and so many families moved out that the town can no longer even field a high school football team.

But McCloud is hoping to turn things around by exploiting the other natural resource in abundance along the icy flanks of Mount Shasta — water.

The town of 1,300 people in far northern California struck a deal with Nestle in 2003 under which the Swiss company would build the nation's largest water-bottling plant to tap three of the many springs on the mountainside and bottle up to 521 million gallons of water a year.

The project is still awaiting an environmental review from the county and could be several years away from approval, having run into opposition from scientists, fishermen, conservationists and some members of the community 280 miles northeast of San Francisco.

But others in town are growing frustrated by the delays and want to see something, anything, to replace the lumber mill that was driven out of business by the logging restrictions that have hurt the timber industry across the Pacific Northwest.

"When they had the mill, this town was jumping," said homeowner Paula Kleinhans. "As soon as the mill closed down, people moved, they lost their jobs, and now there are no children here. It really needs industry here."

Similar disputes are playing out elsewhere around the country as water becomes an increasingly precious commodity — and a major source of legal and political controversy — because of drought, booming population and the popularity of bottled water.

From California to New Hampshire and Florida, corporate giants such as Nestle and Coca-Cola Crystal Geyser are looking for new sources of water and running into resistance.

Supporters of bottling plants see them as a vital source of jobs and revenue. Others fear that pumping large amounts of water from the ground will drain wells, creeks and streams.

"It's no longer this limitless resource," said Elaine Renich, a commissioner in Lake County, Fla., where California-based Niagara Bottling LLC wants to pump water from the region's shrinking aquifer, or spring. "It's beyond me how you can expect people to conserve water and you turn around and say a water-bottling plant is OK."

Salt Lake City-based Mount Olympus Waters doesn't face the same challenges.

"We haven't seen any byproducts of development problems that other companies have," said Larry Mullenax, vice president of manufacturing at Mount Olympus.