Mcdonalds

ch begs the question as to why the company built a bottling plant in a low-rain, drought prone, desert area in the first place. Nine of the last twenty six years have been drought years in Kala Dera and just a little bit of common sense would suggest that this would be the last place on earth to build a water guzzling Coca-Cola bottling plant.

Kala Dera is in the midst of a drought right now, perhaps the most intense in the last 40 years, and groundwater levels have dropped 5.83 meters (19 feet) in just one year between May 2007 and May 2008, an unprecedented drop anywhere. When blaming the rainfall argument failed to contain the growing community opposition, Coca-Cola decided it was going to use the same rains to solve the problem -- by harvesting rainwater.

That's a fine idea. First blame the lack of rains for the increased water shortages, and when that doesn't work, lets put the failed rains to use, by harvesting the rainwater. In a claim that should find mention in the Guinness Book of World Records but won't because it doesn't add up, the company has announced that the groundwater levels are rising in the area because of its rainwater harvesting initiatives and that the company already recharges six times the amount of water it takes from the ground in Kala Dera.

Coca-Cola's claims are so preposterous that we are not sure just who they think they are trying to fool. Coca-Cola's claims of rising groundwater levels fall flat in the face of government data which show that groundwater levels have dropped by more than 19 meters (62 feet) in the first eight years of Coca-Cola's operations in the area, and such precipitous drops had never been witnessed before. Coca-Cola's claims of recharging six times the amount of water it extracts in Kala Dera is also a candidate for a world record but it too doesn't pass muster.

When asked how they measure how much water is recharged in coming up with the six times recharge figure, Coca-Cola says they do not have...