It's been four long years, but we're almost there: the not-so-short history of AB 685, the Human Right to Water Act

This past week, the California Assembly passed AB 685, the Human Right to Water Act. Now we're just a signature away from ensuring law and policy that will bring safe, affordable water to all Californians.

What's the story behind the Human Right to Water Act? Getting this far has meant building a strong grassroots coalition with much community and member support. We hope that the history of this legislation inspires other water democracy and environmental justice activists to get going on their own version of AB 685.

AB 1242, the first Human Right to Water policy bill, was part a “water bill package” introduced in early 2009. After AB 1242 made it through all Assembly and Senate Committee hearings with some amendments and was passed by the Assembly 53-24 and the Senate 23-14, then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. Schwarzenegger, however, did sign some of the other more “narrowly focused” bills in this 2009 package.

After this, the Safe Water Alliance, a coalition of faith-based, tribal, environmental, health, public-policy and community advocacy groups, including Alliance for Democracy, was formed and in February 2011 introduced AB 685, the Human Right to Water, as part of an ambitious six-bill package of to ensure clean drinking water for all Californians. In early spring, Catarina de Albuquerque, the United Nations Independent Expert on the human right to water made a fact-finding mission to the United States. In California she visited several Central Valley, CA communities in an area where for too many years residents have suffered the financial and health impacts of unsafe water at home and/or in schools.

In 2001, with Governor Brown in office, there was stronger opposition to AB 685 since it was anticipated he might sign this bill. The oppositions’ demands for amendments seemed meant to stop the bill and discourage the bill’s author Assembly Member Eng and Safe Water Alliance members. When it did not, and the bill made it through the Assembly in June, 2011 by 52-24, it was finally stopped by the last Senate Committee, Senate Appropriations that put the bill on the “suspense file” where bills are sent to die.

However, Governor Brown did sign several of the narrowly focused bills in the package, at the signing saying: "The bills I have signed today will help ensure that every Californian has access to clean and safe sources of water. Protecting the water we drink is an absolutely crucial duty of state government."

Meanwhile, with the key policy bill, AB 685, stuck in the Senate Appropriations Committee, members of the Safe Water Alliance met to formulate and implement a strong “inside the capitol” and “outside grassroots” strategy to get the bill to the Governor’s desk. This necessitated taking amendments to clarify this was a broad policy bill to direct State Agencies and Departments when making decisions about water policy to consider the impact on the human right to health and that doing so would not impose a fiscal liability on the state, a point the opposition kept raising.

Finally, at the last minute when the fate of all bills has to be decided, on August 16, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted 5-2 to send the bill to the Senate Floor. It was one of only 5 out of more than 200 bills that this Committee voted out and on August 23 it passed by 22-16. Because the bill was amended in the Senate, it has to go back to the Assembly for “concurrence.” On the morning of August 29, it passed by only 42 votes, 41 need for a majority…very close, but “every drop counts.” But by close of session that day, it had gained enough votes to pass 51-28.

Defending Water for Life organizers Nancy Price and Ruth Caplan thank all the Alliance's Californian members and supporters who responded to our action alerts over the years. Taking action is what turns our education into on-the-ground victory as we build the movement for the Human Right to Water and community rights in California. Watch for the launch of our new our website, focusing on California water issues, soon!

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Fracking Democracy

A look at some of the ways the corporate elite has escaped democratic, local, accountable oversight and control of their actions. The focus of the article is on hydrofracking, but there are many industries where regulatory decision-making takes place far from where the environmental, economic or public health consequences are felt.

by Greg Coleridge. Posted March 7 on OpEd News
Industrial horizontal drilling with massive slick water hydraulic fracturing (known as "fracking") poses tremendous risks to our communities.

The plan to force toxic chemical-laced water at incredibly high pressure through shafts to fracture bedrock hundreds of feet below the ground of our communities to release natural gas threatens human health as well as our water, land and air.

But the threats are more than physical and environmental. They're political.

Industrial drilling for natural gas is fracturing the very bedrock of what's left of our democracy at the local level based on current laws.

Out-of-state gas drilling corporations lobbied the Ohio legislature in 2004 for ripping control from local communities in regulating and prohibiting gas drilling. The result was passage of HB 278. Support for this measure to place regulation under the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) came ironically from many legislators who in general are skeptical of big "bureaucracies" and government control over communities and corporations in favor of "local control."

Not in this instance.

Sadly, such maneuvers are typical of corporations who fear communities exercising their democratic, self-governing muscles. Gas drilling corporations don't want to justify industrial drilling in a housing development or in a community before a local zoning board in the presence of angry community residents. Not many zoning boards pressured by an informed and active citizenry would decide to permit industrial drilling in an area zoned exclusively for housing

The alternative for gas drilling corporations was to run to the state, and push for a bill preempting local zoning laws -- promoted often in the name of "modernizing" or "harmonizing" antiquated local laws.  Voilà, no more worries about pesky and arcane local control issues.

Gas drilling corporations escaping democratic controls is not a new corporate phenomenon.

US-based corporations have spent 150 years in this country working to escape any and all forms of public definition and control.  They have sought to gain "liberty" and "freedom" from We the People in many ways.

During the early period of US history, many state laws and constitutions controlled corporations through awarding, conditioning and revoking charters. Corporate charters were privileges, not rights. They granted corporations the privilege to exist for specific purposes and limited time-periods. Profits were limited. Liabilities of stockholders, owners or managers were in some cases limited. Corporations were often prohibited from all types of direct or indirect political influence.

Following the Civil War, many corporations amassed great wealth (which corporations do following all wars). They sought to translate their new economic power into greater political power. They still do so today.

Three historic strategies corporations have used to escape democratic controls are:

1. From a "lower" level of government to a "higher" level -- usually from the state level to the federal level. It's more difficult for ordinary citizens to wield influence the further removed legislators are from local communities. There are also usually many fewer in number federal or state legislators to politically influence than the aggregate number at the state or local level.

2. From legislatures to "regulatory agencies." Agencies like the ODNR provide a convenient shield between, on the one hand, the public and accountable legislators and, on the other hand, corporations -- a political sinkhole where activist energy, time and resources often end up. Regulatory agencies can be stacked with corporate friendly appointees (the new head of ODNR, for example, is a drilling guy). Regulatory agencies, by definition, regulate activities, as opposed to prohibit them -- ensuring that the activity or process occurs in some form. And even if regulatory agencies decide against a corporate action, corporations can always escape this arena and run to the courts, which lead to the next form of escaping.

3. From legislatures to courts. It was much easier to stack a few courts with corporate-friendly judges or bribe a few judges (who at the federal level aren't even elected but appointed for life) than to try to influence an entire group of legislators.

Escaping public control of US corporations in the US was also codependent with another force. That force isn't the policeman's gun or baton. It's the law book.

Corporate attorneys with their colleagues on federal courts have perverted the law at every level. They've won legal decisions making corporations legal "persons" with due process, equal protection, free speech, search and seizure and other protections from the government and the public. This has enabled the corporate invasion of the body politic in Ohio and across our nation -- of our health care, workplace, environment, education, news, food, entertainment and politics -- to continue with constancy and rapidity.

There are currently two general political responses to corporate usurpation of local laws and corporate "personhood."

Locally, communities are asserting their right to decide -- claiming that corporate claims to frack, spew, dump, and subvert local environments and economies violates a local community's basic powers and rights to protect their health, safety and welfare. These basic rights to promote community self-preservation are often enshrined in local governing charters (constitutions). Pittsburgh, Buffalo and other communities on the issue of fracking have passed legally binding bans or prohibitions. Not legal regulations of this risky practice. Not general lacking any teeth resolutions against it. But outright bans. Several Ohio communities are considering such actions. Complementary campaigns are also underway to call for a moratorium on the fracking until complete health and environmental assessments can be completed.

The second response to is calling for the abolition of the bizarre legal notion that corporations possess Bill of Rights and other Constitutional protections that were intended solely for human beings. Move to Amend (http://www.movetoamend.org) is the national organization seeking this sweeping profound change to return corporations to being subordinate to We the People legally and constitutionally. The group is organizing a national campaign calling for a constitutional amendment abolishing all forms of corporate constitutional rights.

Hydraulic fracking needs to be opposed on its own environmental and human health merits. Actually, more like demerits. But the political reasons (its preemption of local control in Ohio and elsewhere by corporations claiming and abusing their political rights) for opposing fracking are just as crucial. The political reasons -- corporations shouldn't have more power than people and communities -- are the same reasons other activists are struggling on other issues in other places.

All of this calls us as socially concerned humans to work simultaneously in two differing but supplementary arenas:
1. To protect and/or promote whatever community, group of people, natural place, alternative structure or condition under assault by corporations and their supporters, and

2. To work at shifting the relationship between citizens and corporations to one where people are in charge, making the rules, deciding their own futures.
 
Greg is the Director of the Economic Justice & Empowerment Program of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker social action organization (AFSC.net); Steering Committee member of Move to Amend (MovetoAmend.org); and a member of the a member of the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD), a collective which instigates democratic conversations and actions that contest the authority of corporations to govern (POCLAD.org) 

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Corporate Control? Not in These Communities

Yes Magazine asks, "Can local laws have a real effect on the power of giant corporations?" Probably not yet, but such laws can inspire communities to pass similar ordinances, and, as this article shows, to support each other when higher-ups side with big business.

by Allen D. Kanner. Posted February 4 at Yes! Magazine

Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power through an unusual process—democracy.

The citizens of Mt. Shasta have developed an extraordinary ordinance, set to be voted on in the next special or general election, that would prohibit corporations such as Nestle and Coca-Cola from extracting water from the local aquifer. But this is only the beginning. The ordinance would also ban energy giant PG&E, and any other corporation, from regional cloud seeding, a process that disrupts weather patterns through the use of toxic chemicals such as silver iodide. More generally, it would refuse to recognize corporate personhood, explicitly place the rights of community and local government above the economic interests of multinational corporations, and recognize the rights of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve.

Mt. Shasta is not alone. Rather, it is part of a (so far) quiet municipal movement making its way across the United States in which communities are directly defying corporate rule and affirming the sovereignty of local government.

Since 1998, more than 125 municipalities have passed ordinances that explicitly put their citizens' rights ahead of corporate interests, despite the existence of state and federal laws to the contrary. These communities have banned corporations from dumping toxic sludge, building factory farms, mining, and extracting water for bottling. Many have explicitly refused to recognize corporate personhood. Over a dozen townships in Pennsylvania, Maine, and New Hampshire have recognized the right of nature to exist and flourish (as Ecuador just did in its new national constitution ). Four municipalities, including Halifax in Virginia, and Mahoney, Shrewsbury, and Packer in Pennsylvania, have passed laws imposing penalties on corporations for chemical trespass, the involuntary introduction of toxic chemicals into the human body.

When the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatened to sue Packer Township for banning sewage sludge within its boundaries, six other Pennsylvania towns adopted similar ordinances.

These communities are beginning to band together. When the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatened to sue Packer Township this year for banning sewage sludge within its boundaries, six other Pennsylvania towns adopted similar ordinances and twenty-three others passed resolutions in support of their neighboring community. Many people were outraged when the attorney general proclaimed, "there is no inalienable right to local self-government."

Bigger cities are joining the fray. In November, Pittsburgh's city council voted to ban corporations in the city from drilling for natural gas as a result of local concern about an environmentally devastating practice known as "fracking." As city councilman Doug Shields stated in a press release, "Many people think that this is only about gas drilling. It's not—it's about our authority as a municipal community to say 'no' to corporations that will cause damage to our community. It's about our right to community, [to] local self-government."

What has driven these communities to such radical action? The typical story involves a handful of local citizens deciding to oppose a corporate practice, such as toxic sludge dumping, which has taken a huge toll on the health, economy, and natural surroundings of their town. After years of fighting for regulatory change, these citizens discover a bitter truth: the U.S. environmental regulatory system consists of a set of interlocking state and federal laws designed by industry to serve corporate interests. With the deck utterly stacked against them, communities are powerless to prevent corporations from destroying the local environment for the sake of profit.

Enter the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit public interest law firm that champions a different approach. The firm helps communities draft local ordinances that place the rights of municipalities to govern themselves above corporate rights. Through its Democracy School, which offers seminars across the United States, it provides a detailed analysis of the history of corporate law and environmental regulation that shows a need for a complete overhaul of the system. Armed with this knowledge and with their well-crafted ordinances, citizens are able to return to their communities to begin organizing for the passage of laws such as Mt. Shasta's proposed ordinance.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is collaborating with Global Exchange, an international environmental and workers' rights organization, to help supporters of the Mt. Shasta ordinance organize. In an interview for this article, I asked Shannon Biggs, who directs Global Exchange's Community Rights Program, if she expected ordinances of this type to be upheld in court. Biggs was dubious about judges "seeing the error of their ways" and reversing a centuries-old trend in which courts grant corporations increased power. Rather, she sees these ordinances as powerful educational and organizing tools that can lead to the major changes necessary to reduce corporate power, put decision-making back in the hands of real people rather than corporate "persons," and open up whole new areas of rights, such as those of ecosystems and natural communities. Biggs connects the current municipal defiance of existing state and federal law to a long tradition of civil disobedience in the United States, harkening back to Susan B. Anthony illegally casting her ballot, the Underground Railroad flouting slave laws, and civil rights protesters purposely breaking segregation laws.

But the nascent municipal rights movement offers something new in the way of political action. These communities are adopting laws that, taken together, are forming an alternative structure to the global corporate economy. The principles behind these laws can be applied broadly to any area where corporate rights override local self-government or the well-being of the local ecology. The best place to start, I would suggest, is with banning corporations from making campaign contributions.

The municipal movement could provide one of the most effective routes to building nationwide support for an Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the movement is already expanding. In Pennsylvania, people are now organizing on the state level and similar stirrings have been reported in New Hampshire.

What about your community?

Allen D. Kanner, Ph.D., is a cofounder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, co-editor of Psychology and Consumer Culture and Ecopsychology, and a Berkeley, California child, family, and adult psychologist. This article originally appeared in Tikkun.

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Water: The New Oil?

Corporations tout the "invisible hand" of the market as the best way to meet global water needs, but at what price to those who can't pay for private water, or to the ecosystems from which fresh water is removed? And will the "winners" in a new global water market have the resolve to push for recognition of a human right to water, when there's money to be made?

by Jeneen Interlandi. Published by on Newsweek October 8.

Sitka, Alaska, is home to one of the world's most spectacular lakes. Nestled into a U-shaped valley of dense forests and majestic peaks, and fed by snowpack and glaciers, the reservoir -- named Blue Lake for its deep blue hues -- holds trillions of gallons of water so pure it requires no treatment.

The city's tiny population -- fewer than 10,000 people spread across 5,000 square miles -- makes this an embarrassment of riches. Every year, as countries around the world struggle to meet the water needs of their citizens, 6.2 billion gallons of Sitka's reserves go unused. But that could soon change.

In a few months, if all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally used for transporting oil -- and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East.

The project is the brainchild of two American companies: True Alaska Bottling, which has purchased the rights to transfer 3 billion gallons of water a year from Sitka's bountiful reserves, and S2C Global, which is building the water-processing facility in India.

If the companies succeed, they will have brought what Sitka hopes will be a $90 million industry to their city, not to mention a solution to one of the world's most pressing climate conundrums. And they will also have turned life's most essential molecule into a global commodity.

The transfer of water is nothing new. New York City is supplied by a web of tunnels and pipes that stretch 125 miles north into the Catskills Mountains; Southern California gets its water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Colorado River Basin, which are hundreds of miles to the north and west, respectively.

The distance between Alaska and India is much farther, to be sure. But it's not the distance that worries critics. It's the transfer of so much water from public hands to private ones. "Water has been a public resource under public domain for more than 2,000 years," says James Olson, an attorney who specializes in water rights. "Ceding it to private entities feels both morally wrong and dangerous."

Everyone agrees that we are in the midst of a global freshwater crisis. Rivers, lakes, and aquifers around the world are dwindling faster than nature can possibly replenish them; industrial and household chemicals are rapidly polluting what's left. Meanwhile, global population is increasing. Goldman Sachs estimates that world water consumption is doubling every 20 years, and the United Nations expects demand to out-strip supply by more than 30 percent by 2040.

Proponents of privatization say that markets are the best way to solve that problem: only the so-called "invisible hand" can bring supply and demand into balance, and only market pricing will drive water use down enough to make a dent in water scarcity. But the benefits of the market come at a price: By definition, a commodity is sold to the highest bidder, not the customer with the most compelling need.

As the global water crisis worsens, companies such as True Alaska that own the rights to vast stores of water (and have the capacity to move it in bulk) won't necessarily weigh the needs of water-starved communities in Phoenix or Ghana against those of wealthy, water-guzzling companies like Coca-Cola or Nestlé -- privately owned water utilities will charge whatever the market will bear, and spend as little as possible on maintenance and environmental protection.

Other commodities are subject to the same market dynamics, of course. But with food or energy, customers have options: They can eat switch from beef to chicken, or from oil to natural gas. But there is no substitute for water, not even Coca-Cola. "Markets don't care about the environment," says Olson. "And they don't care about human rights. They care about profit."

In the industrialized world -- and America especially -- it's easy to take water for granted. Turn on any tap and it comes rushing out, clean and plentiful, even in the arid Southwest, where the Colorado River Basin is struggling through its 11th year of drought; in most U.S. cities, a month's supply of water still costs less than premium cable or a generous cell-phone plan.

Many of us have no idea where our water comes from, let alone who owns it. In fact, most of us would probably agree that water is too precious for anybody to own. But the right to divert water -- from a river or lake or underground aquifer -- are indeed sellable commodities; so too are the purification plants that process that water and and the pipes deliver it to our taps.

As demand for water increasingly outstrips supply, those commodities are set to appreciate precipitously. According to a 2009 report by the World Bank, private investment in the water industry is set to double in the next five years; the water-supply market alone will increase by 20 percent.

Unlike the villain in James Bond's 'Quantum of Solace', who hatched a secret plot to monopolize Bolivia's fresh-water supply, the real water barons cannot be reduced to a simple archetype. They include a diverse array of buyers and sellers -- from multi-national water giants Suez and Veolia, which together deliver water to some 260 million taps around the world, to oil convert T. Boone Pickens, who wants to sell the water under his Texas ranch to thirsty cities like Dallas.

"The water market has become much more sophisticated in the last two decades," says Clay Landry, director of WestWater Research, a consulting firm that specializes in water rights. "It's gone from parochial transactions --back-of-the-truck, handshake-type deals -- to a serious market with increasingly serious players."

Eventually, Olson worries, every last drop of water around the globe will be privately controlled. And when that happens, the world will find itself divided along a new set of boundaries: those with water on one side, and those without water on the other.

The winners -- such as Canada, Alaska, and Russia -- and losers (India, Syria, Jordan) will be different from those of the oil conflicts of the 20th century, but the bottom line will be much the same: Countries that have the means to exploit large reserves will prosper. The rest will be left to fight over ever-shrinking reserves. Some will go to war.

Until recently, water privatization was an almost exclusively a "developing world" issue. In the late 1990s the World Bank infamously required scores of impoverished countries -- most notably Bolivia -- to privatize their water supplies as a condition of desperately needed economic assistance. The hope was that markets would eliminate corruption, and big multinational corporations would invest the resources needed to bring more water to more people.

By 2000, Bechtel -- the U.S. multinational that had leased Bolivia's pipes and plants -- had more than doubled water rates, leaving the tens of thousands of Bolivians who couldn't pay without any water whatsoever. The company said the price hikes were needed to repair and expand the dilapidated infrastructure, but critics insisted they served only to maintain unrealistic profit margins.

Either way, Bolivian citizens took to the streets in a string of violent protests, and eventually sent the company packing. By 2001, the public utility had resumed control.

These days, global water barons have set their sights on a more appealing target: countries with dwindling water supplies and aging infrastructure, but better economies than Bolivia's. "These are the countries that can afford to pay," says Olson. "They've got huge infrastructure needs, shrinking water reserves, and money."

Nowhere is this truer than China. As the water table under Beijing plummets, wells dug around the city must reach ever-greater depths (nearly two thirds of a mile or more, according to a recent World Bank report) to hit fresh water. That has made water drilling more costly and water contracts more lucrative.

Since 2000, when the country opened its municipal services to foreign investment, the number of private water utilities has skyrocketed. But as private companies absorb water systems throughout the country, the cost of water has risen precipitously. "It's more than most families can afford to pay," says Ge Yun, an economist with the Xinjiang Conservation Fund. "So as more and more water goes private, fewer and fewer people have access to it."

In the U.S., federal funds for repairing water infrastructure -- most of which was built around the same time that Henry Ford built the first Model T -- are sorely lacking. The Obama administration has secured just $6 billion for repairs the EPA estimates will cost $300 billion. Meanwhile, more than half a million municipal water pipes burst every year, according to the American Water Works Association, and more than 6 billion gallons are lost to leaky pipes.

In response to the funding gap, hundreds of U.S. cities -- including Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Santa Fe, NM -- are now looking to privatize their municipal water systems. Elected officials hope to use the profits from selling them off to balance city budgets, while off-loading the cost of repairing and expanding aging infrastructure (and the politically unpopular rise in water rates to fund it) to companies that promise both jobs and economy-stimulating profits.

But reality usually intrudes. "Because water infrastructure is too expensive to allow competing providers, the only real competition occurs during the bidding process," says Wenonah Hauter, executive director of non-profit group Food and Water Watch. "After that, the private utility has a virtual monopoly. And because 70 to 80 percent of water and sewer assets are underground, municipalities can have a tough time monitoring a contractor's performance."

According to some reports, private operators often reduce the workforce, neglect water conservation, and shift the cost of environmental violations onto the city. For example, when two Veolia-operated plants spilled millions of gallons of sewage into San Francisco Bay, at least one city was forced to make multi-million-dollar upgrades to the offending sewage plant. (Veolia has defended its record.)
Even as many U.S. cities look to sell their water infrastructure to private interests, others are waging expensive legal battles to get out of such contracts. In 2009 Camden, N.J., sued United Water (an American subsidiary of the French giant Suez) for $29 million in unapproved payments, high unaccounted-for water losses, poor maintenance, and service disruptions.

In Milwaukee, a state audit found that the same company violated its contract by shutting down sewage pumps to save money; the move resulted in billions of gallons of raw sewage spilling into Lake Michigan. And in Gary, Ind., which canceled its contract with United Water after 12 years, critics say privatization more than doubled annual operating costs.

"It ends up being a roundabout way to tax people," Hauter says. "Only it's worse than a tax, because they don't spend the money maintaining the system."

Representatives of United Water point out that 95 percent of its contracts are in fact renewed, and say that a few bad examples don't tell the whole story. "We are dealing with facilities that were designed and built at the end of World War II," says United Water CEO Bertrand Camus. "We have plenty of horror stories on our side, too."

The Gary, Ind., facility, for example, was privatized only after the EPA forced the public utility to find a more experienced operator to solve a range of problems. "Individual municipalities don't have the expertise to employ all the new technology to meet the new standards," Camus says. "We do."

The fact that water is essential to life makes it no less expensive to obtain, purify, and deliver -- and does not change the fact that as supplies dwindle and demand grows, the cost will only increase. For those reasons, the World Bank has argued that higher water prices are actually a good thing.

Right now, no public utility anywhere prices water based on how scarce it is or how much it costs to deliver, and privatization proponents argue that this is the root cause of such rampant overuse. If water cost more, they say, we would conserve it better.

The main problem with this argument is what economists call price inelasticity: no matter what water costs, we still need it to survive. So beyond trimming non-essential uses like lawn maintenance, car washing, and swimming pools, consumers really can't reduce water consumption in the same proportion as rate increases.

"Free-market theory works great for discretionary consumer purchases," says Hauter. "But water is not like other commodities -- it's not something people can substitute or choose to forgo." Dozens of studies have found that even with steep rate hikes, consumers tend to reduce water consumption by only a little, and that even in the worst cases, the crunch is disproportionately shouldered by the poor.

In the string of droughts that plagued California during the 1980s, for example, doubling the price of water drove household consumption down by a third, but households earning less than $20,000 cut their consumption by half, while households earning more than $100,000 reduced use by only 10 percent.

In fact, critics say, private water companies usually have very little incentive to encourage conservation; after all, when water use falls, revenue declines. In 2005, a second Bolivian riot erupted when another private water company raised rates beyond what average people could afford.

The company had dutifully expanded the city's water system to several poor neighborhoods outside the city. But the villagers there -- accustomed to life without taps -- were obsessive water conservers, and weren't using enough water to make the investment profitable.

The biggest winners of a sophisticated water market are likely to be the very few water-rich regions of the global north that can profitably move massive quantities across huge distances. Russian entrepreneurs want to sell Siberian water to China; Canadian and American ones are vying to sell Canadian water to the Southwestern U.S.

So far, such bulk transfers have been impeded by the high cost of tanker ships. Now, thanks to the global recession, the tankers' rates have dropped significantly. If the Sitka plan succeeds, other water-rich cities may soon follow. But in between the countries that will profit from the freshwater crisis, and those with the financial resources to buy their way out of it, are the countries that have neither water to sell nor money with which to buy it.

In fact, if there's one thing water has in common with oil, it's that people will go to war over it. Already, Pakistan has accused India of diverting too much water from rivers running off the Himalayas; India, in turn, is complaining that China's colossal diversion of rivers and aquifers near the countries' shared border will deprive it of its fair share; and Jordan and Syria are bickering over access to flows from a dam the two countries built together.

So what do we do? On the one hand, most of the world views water as a basic human right (the U.N. General Assembly voted unanimously to affirm it as such this July). On the other, it's becoming so expensive to obtain and supply that most governments cannot afford to shoulder the cost alone. But by themselves, markets will never be able to balance these competing realities.

That means state and federal governments will have to play a stronger role in managing freshwater resources. In the U.S., investing as much money in water infrastructure as the federal government has invested in other public-works projects would not only create jobs, but also alleviate some of the financial pressure that has sent so many municipal governments running to private industry.

That is not to say that industry doesn't also have a role to play. With the right incentives, it can develop and supply the technology needed to make water delivery more cost-effective and environmentally sound. Ultimately both public and private entities will have to work together. And soon. Unless we manage our water better now, we will run out. When that happens, no pricing or management scheme in the world will save us.

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Water as a human right threatens to split global north and south, rich and poor nations

The human right to water, based in morality if not yet in law, is not being met for more than a billion people, but passing a UN resolution defending that right is dividing the water wealth "haves" from the have nots in the developing world.

by Thalif Deen. Posted on CommonDreams.org July 16

UNITED NATIONS - A long outstanding proposal to recognize the right to water as a basic universal human right is threatening to split the world's rich and poor nations.

A long outstanding proposal to recognize the right to water as a basic universal human right is threatening to split the world's rich and poor nations.

Opposition to the proposal is coming mostly from Western nations, says Maude Barlow, a global water advocate and a founder of the Canada-based Blue Planet Project.

"Canada is the worst. But Australia, the United States and Great Britain are also holding up the process," she said.

"I am loath to see this as a North-South issue, but it is beginning to look like it," Barlow told Inter Press Service.

If the draft resolution is eventually adopted by the 192-member U.N. General Assembly, "it would be one of the most important things the United Nations has done since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," she said.

The two-page draft, described as "historic", recognizes "the human right to water and sanitation," and is being initiated by Bolivia.

A final text of the draft, currently under discussions, is expected to be presented to the president of the General Assembly, Ali Abdussalam Treki, by the end of July - if it clears the political hurdles.

Speaking off-the-record, a diplomatic source told IPS: "This is something very dear to developing countries."

It is true that there is actually no legal basis for declaring the right to water and sanitation as a basic universal human right, and issues like definitions and scope have to be worked out. He said the argument being made is there is already an ongoing process in Geneva that is meant to work on this, and that the General Assembly "is jumping the gun".

"Overall, water and sanitation are such critical issues that we must work towards consensus on this resolution. Anything less than consensus would undermine the very importance we attach to them," he warned.

Barlow pointed out that nearly two billion people live in water-stressed areas of the world and three billion have no running water within a kilometer of their homes.

In a letter sent to all 192 U.N. ambassadors, she said that when the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights was written, no one could foresee a day when water would be a contested area.

"But in 2010, it is not an exaggeration to say that the lack of access to clean water is the greatest human rights violation in the world," said Barlow, who once served as Senior Adviser on Water to the 63rd President of the U.N. General Assembly in 2008-2009.

She said Canada has blocked even the most modest steps toward international recognition of the right to water and has worked behind the scenes to derail advancement toward a binding instrument.

Government officials have not explained their position except to say that such a convention might force Canada to share its water with the United States.

However, this is a complete "red herring" and the Stephen Harper government knows it, she added.

The truth is that a right to water convention at the U.N. would act as a counterweight to those who want to sell Canada's water for profit and is a more likely explanation of Canada's continued opposition, Barlow said.

Ann-Mari Karlsson of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) told IPS her organization supports the human right to water and sanitation.

"But we concur with the views of the U.N. independent expert that the right to water and sanitation are components of the rights to an adequate standard of living and that these rights are protected under Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," Karlsson said.

She said it is important that a U.N. resolution on the right to water and sanitation should state this clearly, "which as far as we can see, the current draft does not".

What is more, the importance of sanitation in this context cannot be underestimated.

Karlsson said water and sanitation are closely linked, and the world is more off track to reach the Millennium Development Goals on access to sanitation than it is for access to water.

"There should be an adequate reflection of this in the resolution," she added.

Anil Naidoo, also of the Blue Planet Project, has already briefed China and the 130-member Group of 77 developing countries in promoting the draft resolution.

"International and local community groups fighting for water justice have long been calling for leadership from the U.N. in clearly recognizing that water and sanitation are human rights," said Naidoo.

"As this moves forward we are demanding that the language of the resolution remain strong and leave no doubt that water and sanitation are human rights," he added.

Andersson of SIWI told IPS: "We are not against privatization on principle. Our main concern is that the state should take its responsibility to regulate and monitor activities by private actors so that everyone has access to affordable drinking and household water and sanitation."

Whether the provision of water and sanitation is carried out by public or private actors is not relevant to the status of water and sanitation as a human right, she declared.

Meanwhile, a coalition of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the Council of Canadians, Food and Water Europe, Corporate Europe Observatory and the Blue Planet Project, has appealed to members of the European Parliament seeking their political support.

"In light of the European Union's recognition of water as a human right, it will be crucial that the EU play a key role in promoting this key resolution at the United Nations," says the letter.

Copyright © 2010 IPS-Inter Press Service

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Bottled water syndrome and the drinking water profiteers

A new book give the history of the commodification of water, focusing in particular on Nestle's operations in Maine.

by Joseph Nevins. Posted on Counterpunch February 5

In mid-January, I received a mass email asking me to donate $10 for bottled water and other supplies for participants in an important immigrant rights march in Phoenix. Given the ever-repressive and cruel political climate in Arizona for immigrants (especially unauthorized ones), I was unequivocally in support of the mobilization. Nonetheless I was taken aback by a request to contribute even nominally to an effort to buy bottles of water for what turned out to be, according to some estimates, more than 20,000 people.

Certainly there are other ways—ecologically sustainable and less expensive ones—to provide water for such a multitude. How, why, and to what effects bottled water became the preferred way to do so for myriad people and places far beyond a single event in Phoenix is the focus of Elizabeth Royte’s powerful and compelling book, Bottlemania: Big Business, Local Springs and the Battle Over America's Drinking Water.

I’ve never been a fan of bottled water, considering it ecologically damaging—in the United States alone 30-40 million single-serve bottles per day end up as litter or in landfills—and economically foolhardy, another capitalistic trick to con us into purchasing something from profiteers that we don’t shouldn’t have to. But as Royte powerfully illustrates, the increasing commodification of drinking water is far more complex, and dangerous, than at least I appreciated.

Until recently, the sale of single-serve bottles of water was rare. While the United States had regional bottled water companies as early as the nineteenth century, such entities mainly supplied homes and offices with large containers of the life-sustaining liquid (for water coolers, for instance). This situation began to change in the 1980s with the entry of Perrier into the U.S. market and its successful television advertising which stressed that a little luxury—a bottle of the French water—was available to everyone.

Other companies, like Evian and Vittel, followed, employing the likes of Madonna and fashion models, to help equate bottled water with personal health, fitness, and glamour. That, combined with the invention of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic—which made water easily portable—helped the U.S. bottled-water industry boom: between 1990 and 1997 its annual sales increased from $115 million to $4 billion. (By 2006, the figure was $10.8 billion; globally bottled water’s income was $60 billion.)

This dramatic increase is the outgrowth of “one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,” asserts Royte. What makes it all the more extraordinary is that in the vast majority of cases “tap water meets or exceeds federal health and safety standards, regularly wins in blind taste tests against name-brand waters, and costs 240 to 10,000 times less than bottled water.” Part of the reason it has succeeded, contends Royte, is “that bottled water plays into our ever-growing laziness and impatience.”

This corporate-driven success contributes to the demise of water as a public good. Take the increasingly rare public drinking fountain, for instance: Royte tells of visiting a Midwestern college where there is no drinking-water fountain in its gym.

Bottled water’s rise has changed behaviors even among those whom you might expect would have an alternative consciousness. While I was reading Royte’s book, I accompanied a group of students from my institution on a visit to a geography department at a university elsewhere in New York State, a department with a strong focus on issues of environmental sustainability. At the luncheon, the department offered bottled water as one of the beverage options.

The profound change in how so many of us consume water has consequences far beyond what we imbibe. Among other things, it increases our consumption of oil—and all its attendant detrimental impacts: Royte reports that it takes 17 million barrels of oil each year to make water bottles for the U.S. market alone—enough to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year. Meanwhile, according to one estimate, a quarter of a water bottle’s worth of oil is required to produce each bottle, transport and depose of it.

Royte focuses much of her energy on Poland Springs—the Nestlé-owned company that is the largest U.S. producer of bottled spring water—and the struggles and controversies surrounding its activities in and around Fryeburg, Maine, where it is based. However, her important and compelling book is much more than an examination of the bottled water industry. It is first and foremost about the health and viability of drinking water and thus human society as a whole. As Royte points out, “We can live without oil, but we can’t live without water.”

Already for all-too-many across the planet, access to safe drinking water is far from assured. As Royte informs the reader, “only 3 percent [of the earth’s water supply] is fresh, and of that fraction only a third is available for human use,” with the rest stored in glaciers and the like.

Not surprisingly that fraction is not equitably distributed based on needs. As such, more than a billion people do not have sufficient access to potable water. And according to U.N. projections, increased demand and water pollution, combined with climate-change-induced drought and reduced recharge of groundwater supplies will lead to two of every three of the planet’s denizens lacking sufficient access by 2025. “Those two out of three won’t just be thirsty;” writes Royte. “[A]lready some 5.1 million people a year die from waterborne diseases, many of which stem from lack of sanitation and its resulting water pollution. That number is going to spike.”

Among the major culprits of water pollution is industrial agriculture with its heavy reliance on synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and insecticides, the runoff from which ends up in the water supply. Atrazine, for example, an herbicide that has been shown to cause birth defects, reproductive disorders, and cancer in lab animals, has contaminated, according to Royte, drinking water sources “in nearly every major Midwestern city, and well water and groundwater in states where the compound isn’t even used.”

The pernicious irony of the degradation of the water commons is that it helps to undermine trust in public water supplies and facilitate their neglect, thus driving more people—especially the relatively wheel-heeled who can afford it—to embrace the bottled water option. In 2001, La’o Hamutuk, a non-governmental organization in East Timor, for example, calculated that the United Nations mission in charge of governing the territory was spending more than $10,000 per day (almost $4 million annually) on bottled water. (And this was the figure just for the international peacekeeping troops present in the country—to say nothing of the water purchased for the non-military U.N. personnel.) According to various estimates, it would have cost $2-10 million at the time to rehabilitate the entire water purification and delivery system of Dili, the now-independent country’s capital, and provide potable water to nearly all of the city’s more than 100,000 residents.

Royte would see such behavior as part of an “insidious trend,” one in which it has become “normal to pay high prices for things that used to cost little, or nothing”—or to go the route of the private rather than the public. But ultimately, preserving or improving public water supplies is the option we must collectively pursue as “too many people can afford to drink nothing but.” Otherwise, Royte warns, we run the risk of a world in which there is “a two-tiered system—bottled for the rich, bilge for the poor.”

Given the ubiquity of bottled water, it might seem like it doesn’t matter if the organizers of one mass demonstration, a single geography department, or a particular U.N. mission choose bottled water, rather than embracing public water options that were the unquestioned norm in the very recent past. But these individual decisions add up and, as such, have a profound impact on people’s livelihoods and the environment. Given the necessity of water for life, do we really have a choice as to what we should do?

Joseph Nevins teaches geography at Vassar College. His most recent book is Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid (City Lights Books, 2008). He can be reached at jonevins@vassar.edu

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Millions in U.S. Drink Dirty Water, Records Show

Millions of people become ill annually due to dangerous concentrations of bacteria and chemicals in public drinking water systems. We believe the answer is not bottled water, but to fund infrastructure improvements and make access to water a human right. Look for info on chemical trespass ordinances in the article "Our Bodies, Our Environment," published in AfD's Justice Rising.

by Charles Duhigg. Published by the New York Times December 7
More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.

Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.

Studies indicate that drinking water contaminants are linked to millions of instances of illness within the United States each year.

In some instances, drinking water violations were one-time events, and probably posed little risk. But for hundreds of other systems, illegal contamination persisted for years, records show.

On Tuesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee will question a high-ranking E.P.A. official about the agency’s enforcement of drinking-water safety laws. The E.P.A. is expected to announce a new policy for how it polices the nation’s 54,700 water systems.

“This administration has made it clear that clean water is a top priority,” said an E.P.A. spokeswoman, Adora Andy, in response to questions regarding the agency’s drinking water enforcement. The E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, this year announced a wide-ranging overhaul of enforcement of the Clean Water Act, which regulates pollution into waterways.

“The previous eight years provide a perfect example of what happens when political leadership fails to act to protect our health and the environment,” Ms. Andy added.

Water pollution has become a growing concern for some lawmakers as government oversight of polluters has waned. Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, in 2007 asked the E.P.A. for data on Americans’ exposure to some contaminants in drinking water.

The New York Times has compiled and analyzed millions of records from water systems and regulators around the nation, as part of a series of articles about worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators’ response.

An analysis of E.P.A. data shows that Safe Drinking Water Act violations have occurred in parts of every state. In the prosperous town of Ramsey, N.J., for instance, drinking water tests since 2004 have detected illegal concentrations of arsenic, a carcinogen, and the dry cleaning solvent tetrachloroethylene, which has also been linked to cancer.

In New York state, 205 water systems have broken the law by delivering tap water that contained illegal amounts of bacteria since 2004.

However, almost none of those systems were ever punished. Ramsey was not fined for its water violations, for example, though a Ramsey official said that filtration systems have been installed since then. In New York, only three water systems were penalized for bacteria violations, according to federal data.

The problem, say current and former government officials, is that enforcing the Safe Drinking Water Act has not been a federal priority.

“There is significant reluctance within the E.P.A. and Justice Department to bring actions against municipalities, because there’s a view that they are often cash-strapped, and fines would ultimately be paid by local taxpayers,” said David Uhlmann, who headed the environmental crimes division at the Justice Department until 2007.

“But some systems won’t come into compliance unless they are forced to,” added Mr. Uhlmann, who now teaches at the University of Michigan law school. “And sometimes a court order is the only way to get local governments to spend what is needed.”

A half-dozen current and former E.P.A. officials said in interviews that they tried to prod the agency to enforce the drinking-water law, but found little support.

“I proposed drinking water cases, but they got shut down so fast that I’ve pretty much stopped even looking at the violations,” said one longtime E.P.A. enforcement official who, like others, requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. “The top people want big headlines and million-dollar settlements. That’s not drinking-water cases.”

The majority of drinking water violations since 2004 have occurred at water systems serving fewer than 20,000 residents, where resources and managerial expertise are often in short supply.

It is unclear precisely how many American illnesses are linked to contaminated drinking water. Many of the most dangerous contaminants regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act have been tied to diseases like cancer that can take years to develop.
But scientific research indicates that as many as 19 million Americans may become ill each year due to just the parasites, viruses and bacteria in drinking water. Certain types of cancer — such as breast and prostate cancer — have risen over the past 30 years, and research indicates they are likely tied to pollutants like those found in drinking water.

The violations counted by the Times analysis include only situations where residents were exposed to dangerous contaminants, and exclude violations that involved paperwork or other minor problems.

In response to inquiries submitted by Senator Boxer, the E.P.A. has reported that more than three million Americans have been exposed since 2005 to drinking water with illegal concentrations of arsenic and radioactive elements, both of which have been linked to cancer at small doses.

In some areas, the amount of radium detected in drinking water was 2,000 percent higher than the legal limit, according to E.P.A. data.

But federal regulators fined or punished fewer than 8 percent of water systems that violated the arsenic and radioactive standards. The E.P.A., in a statement, said that in a majority of situations, state regulators used informal methods — like providing technical assistance — to help systems that had violated the rules.

But many systems remained out of compliance, even after aid was offered, according to E.P.A. data. And for over a quarter of systems that violated the arsenic or radioactivity standards, there is no record that they were ever contacted by a regulator, even after they sent in paperwork revealing their violations.

Those figures are particularly worrisome, say researchers, because the Safe Drinking Water Act’s limits on arsenic are so weak to begin with. A system could deliver tap water that puts residents at a 1-in-600 risk of developing bladder cancer from arsenic, and still comply with the law.

Despite the expected announcement of reforms, some mid-level E.P.A. regulators say they are skeptical that any change will occur.

“The same people who told us to ignore Safe Drinking Water Act violations are still running the divisions,” said one mid-level E.P.A. official. “There’s no accountability, and so nothing’s going to change.”

Griffin Palmer contributed reporting.

Read more...

Millions in U.S. Drink Dirty Water, Records Show

Potentially carcinogenic quantities of dry-cleaning solvents and radioactive material are only two of the toxins found in an alarmingly high number of America's public drinking water systems. The solution is not bottled water--the solution is to fight chemical trespass, fund public infrastructure, and clean up this mess.

by Charles Duhigg. Published December 7 by The New York Times

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.

Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.

Studies indicate that drinking water contaminants are linked to millions of instances of illness within the United States each year.

In some instances, drinking water violations were one-time events, and probably posed little risk. But for hundreds of other systems, illegal contamination persisted for years, records show.

On Tuesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee will question a high-ranking E.P.A. official about the agency’s enforcement of drinking-water safety laws. The E.P.A. is expected to announce a new policy for how it polices the nation’s 54,700 water systems.

“This administration has made it clear that clean water is a top priority,” said an E.P.A. spokeswoman, Adora Andy, in response to questions regarding the agency’s drinking water enforcement. The E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, this year announced a wide-ranging overhaul of enforcement of the Clean Water Act, which regulates pollution into waterways.

“The previous eight years provide a perfect example of what happens when political leadership fails to act to protect our health and the environment,” Ms. Andy added.

Water pollution has become a growing concern for some lawmakers as government oversight of polluters has waned. Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, in 2007 asked the E.P.A. for data on Americans’ exposure to some contaminants in drinking water.

The New York Times has compiled and analyzed millions of records from water systems and regulators around the nation, as part of a series of articles about worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators’ response.

An analysis of E.P.A. data shows that Safe Drinking Water Act violations have occurred in parts of every state. In the prosperous town of Ramsey, N.J., for instance, drinking water tests since 2004 have detected illegal concentrations of arsenic, a carcinogen, and the dry cleaning solvent tetrachloroethylene, which has also been linked to cancer.

In New York state, 205 water systems have broken the law by delivering tap water that contained illegal amounts of bacteria since 2004.

However, almost none of those systems were ever punished. Ramsey was not fined for its water violations, for example, though a Ramsey official said that filtration systems have been installed since then. In New York, only three water systems were penalized for bacteria violations, according to federal data.

The problem, say current and former government officials, is that enforcing the Safe Drinking Water Act has not been a federal priority.

“There is significant reluctance within the E.P.A. and Justice Department to bring actions against municipalities, because there’s a view that they are often cash-strapped, and fines would ultimately be paid by local taxpayers,” said David Uhlmann, who headed the environmental crimes division at the Justice Department until 2007.

“But some systems won’t come into compliance unless they are forced to,” added Mr. Uhlmann, who now teaches at the University of Michigan law school. “And sometimes a court order is the only way to get local governments to spend what is needed.”

A half-dozen current and former E.P.A. officials said in interviews that they tried to prod the agency to enforce the drinking-water law, but found little support.

“I proposed drinking water cases, but they got shut down so fast that I’ve pretty much stopped even looking at the violations,” said one longtime E.P.A. enforcement official who, like others, requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. “The top people want big headlines and million-dollar settlements. That’s not drinking-water cases.”

The majority of drinking water violations since 2004 have occurred at water systems serving fewer than 20,000 residents, where resources and managerial expertise are often in short supply.

It is unclear precisely how many American illnesses are linked to contaminated drinking water. Many of the most dangerous contaminants regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act have been tied to diseases like cancer that can take years to develop.
But scientific research indicates that as many as 19 million Americans may become ill each year due to just the parasites, viruses and bacteria in drinking water. Certain types of cancer — such as breast and prostate cancer — have risen over the past 30 years, and research indicates they are likely tied to pollutants like those found in drinking water.

The violations counted by the Times analysis include only situations where residents were exposed to dangerous contaminants, and exclude violations that involved paperwork or other minor problems.

In response to inquiries submitted by Senator Boxer, the E.P.A. has reported that more than three million Americans have been exposed since 2005 to drinking water with illegal concentrations of arsenic and radioactive elements, both of which have been linked to cancer at small doses.

In some areas, the amount of radium detected in drinking water was 2,000 percent higher than the legal limit, according to E.P.A. data.

But federal regulators fined or punished fewer than 8 percent of water systems that violated the arsenic and radioactive standards. The E.P.A., in a statement, said that in a majority of situations, state regulators used informal methods — like providing technical assistance — to help systems that had violated the rules.

But many systems remained out of compliance, even after aid was offered, according to E.P.A. data. And for over a quarter of systems that violated the arsenic or radioactivity standards, there is no record that they were ever contacted by a regulator, even after they sent in paperwork revealing their violations.

Those figures are particularly worrisome, say researchers, because the Safe Drinking Water Act’s limits on arsenic are so weak to begin with. A system could deliver tap water that puts residents at a 1-in-600 risk of developing bladder cancer from arsenic, and still comply with the law.

Despite the expected announcement of reforms, some mid-level E.P.A. regulators say they are skeptical that any change will occur.

“The same people who told us to ignore Safe Drinking Water Act violations are still running the divisions,” said one mid-level E.P.A. official. “There’s no accountability, and so nothing’s going to change.”

Griffin Palmer contributed reporting.

Read more...

Boston Globe: Bottled-water scam finally feels squeeze

Bottled water sales are down; bottlers say it's in response to the recession. If you look at the survey on the Boston Globe's website, though, almost as many respondents cited environmental reasons for opting for the tap, rather than buying the bottle. You can read the GAO report that Jackson mentions in this article here.

by Derek Z. Jackson. Posted August 25 at The Boston Globe

We don't miss the water when the cash runs dry. Bottled water, that is. That refreshing news came recently as Nestle reported nearly a 5 percent drop in bottled water sales in North America and Western Europe. That company bottles water under the familiar names of Poland Spring, Perrier, S. Pellegrino, and Deer Park.

Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coke’s Dasani reported declining or weakening bottled-water sales as well. The president of Pepsi’s North American bottling group, Rob King, said in a July conference call, “In just a tough economic environment, one of the first things that a shopper can do is consume tap water as opposed to purchasing bottled water.’’

The sad part is that ending the bottled-water fad took a recession, when common sense should have kicked in long ago.

While some bottled water does come from the natural springs and mountain lakes depicted on the labels, most is just municipal tap water - water that is packaged and sold at enormous cost. Two years ago, the Earth Policy Institute estimated that each gallon of bottled water costs $10 a gallon to go from the groundwater to your lips. Each bottle of water kicks the environment twice, first with unnecessary plastic containers and then with the fuel that is burned to transport this heavy liquid load to your door, supermarket, or vending machine. The cost is currently four times the cost of a gallon of regular gasoline.

This sham is so ridiculous that the Government Accountability Office, which studied the issue for a House committee, reported this summer that the energy costs of delivering bottled water to a consumer in Los Angeles were 1,100 to 2,000 times more than the energy cost of tap water, depending on how far away the filled bottles traveled.

GAO researchers also noted that Americans say they drink filtered or bottled water for health reasons. Nearly half of state officials around the nation report that their consumers believe bottled water is safer than tap water. This obviously cannot be true when the bottled water is tap water.

Yet, annual bottled-water consumption more than doubled between 1997 and 2007, from 13.4 gallons a person to 29.3 gallons. Massachusetts requires the source of bottled water to be put on the label, the GAO noted, but more detailed information is hard to come by anywhere. The GAO found that in a review of 83 bottled-water labels, only one label contained limited water-quality or health information.

Such information was seemingly available on the Web or by telephone for 34 companies, but the GAO found that 13 of these water-quality reports - more than a third - were incomplete or unclear. The GAO concluded that the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules for tap water are generally stronger than the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of bottled water.

So much for the illusion that bottled water is healthier than tap water.

Meanwhile, the bottles themselves remain a symbol of our wasteful times. Three-quarters of water bottles end up in landfills.

In House testimony last month, GAO’s director on natural resources and the environment, John Stephenson, said consumers would likely benefit from more information than they can find on the unhelpful labels on bottled water. Then again, if shoppers knew more about the product, they might not buy bottled water at all.

In one of the more outrageous examples of bottled-water scamming, the Merced (Calif.) Sun-Star reported in June how the Safeway supermarket chain turns Merced city water into an enormous profit. “In Safeway’s case,’’ the newspaper reported, “they pay more than $1,000 a month for more than a million gallons of water. The retail cost for that much-purified bottled water at Safeway is just under $3 million. Safeway would not say how much it costs them to produce their water.’’ Yet Safeway spokeswoman Teena Massingill told the Sun-Star, “We are providing a product that did not exist previously.’’

Last I heard, water existed before bottles, and before Safeway. Thankfully, consumers are beginning to remember that, too.

Read more...

When it Comes to Water, Can Corporations and Community Really Coexist?

Corporate control of the commons is the issue that unites anti-bottled water groups with farmers and environmentalists concerned with irreparable damage to aquifers. But communities need rights to protect the water they depend on.

by Peter Asmus. Posted on AlterNet, August 19

When drought brought a critical shortage of water to Kerala, India, anti-globalization activists placed part of the blame on Coca-Cola, which operated a plant there.

Critics contended that Coca-Cola failed to involve the local community in its plans, and the activists began building a substantial global movement against water privatization, employing the tactic of "brand-jacking" of the world's No. 1 brand--Coke--to make their point.

Coke's Kerala plant has since ceased operations, making it a casualty of the global pressure placed on the company. But the campaign against privatization of water resources by activist groups has only grown stronger on the campaign front.

Today, the focus is on bottled water, which critics point to as a wasteful, expensive example of water privatization -- companies taking public water, repackaging it and selling it back to us for a profit.

But the water wars have just begun. Bottled water may be today's popular target, but that battle has peaked. Now, activists are beginning to look beyond bottled water, setting their sights on much bigger objectives.

At stake, they believe, is whether water is recognized as a basic human right, or becomes simply another commodity controlled by giant corporations.

While the bottled-water controversy may have helped propel fresh water issues into the limelight internationally, the current hottest buzz phrase among water-policy-reform advocates, and a topic galvanizing the debate over privatization of water, is the wonky phrase "free prior informed consent" (FPIC).

Jonathan Kaledin, director of The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) global freshwater certification program, said: "Water has been so abundant. There has been an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude about it. As the risks of water shortages become more public, corporations that use a lot of water need to become more aware of the concept of FPIC."

In a nutshell, FPIC recognizes that communities have the right to self-determination. They have a right to give or withhold their consent for new production facilities that may impact local water supplies or prices.

From a legal point-of-view, FPIC is an evolving concept that is gaining wider acceptance by nongovernmental organizations, as well as a few private corporations. FPIC is now incorporated in some forms of international treaty law, especially when it comes to indigenous peoples and extractive industries such as oil and mining. What's new is that FPIC is now being applied to water.

In fall 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the principle of FPIC for development projects, and momentum is building globally toward establishing FPIC as a principle of customary international law. The two key challenges for FPIC is an apparent conflict with the sovereign rights of nations to exploit their own natural resources (as they deem fit), and a lack of clarity about how to implement FPIC.

Among the key issues yet to be resolved are:

• How is "the community" defined? Is there a strict geographical limitation to "community," and are elected officials given greater or equal status to local citizens?
• If there is a lack of consensus within the "community," what process validates any decision-making (i.e. majority vote of local governing body; a referendum?)
• Absent a political process, what exactly represents an adequate level of consent?

David Shilling, a water expert with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (IRRC) argued that FPIC is quite important in order for government and companies to make deals, because it is at the community level where water impacts will be felt. He went on to say:

The community involved has to be part of that conversation. The underserved deserve a place at the table, too. And human rights -- not technical issues -- should be the focus. Otherwise, the corporation will not have a social license to operate. Unfortunately, companies and government have a hard time with this sort of thing. Need to put these issues about water into a larger context, a tangible framework to get a buy-in and to help elevate discussions to the level of community consent.

Bridge Over Troubled Water?
Nestlé Waters has had its fair share of controversies over siting production plants. In Michigan, for example, private wells were allegedly impacted by withdrawals. In early July, a settlement between Nestlé Waters and Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation was reached, reducing the company's per-day pumping limits, with additional restrictions during spring and summer months.

Alex McIntosh, Nestlé Water's director of corporate citizenship, doesn't hold back when assessing how critics view his company's products. "Bottled water has become symbolic about the issue of who actually owns water. Is it fair for water to be priced and sold, and then shipped to us in plastic?" is the way he paraphrased how critics see his company's products. Bottled water is "literally a drop in the bucket," he said, pointing to stats that show bottled water represents a fraction of 1 percent of total water consumption.

Nevertheless, Nestlé Waters is moving forward on developing and implementing a "Siting and Community Commitment Framework." A key element to be examined is the notion of FPIC.

This move by Nestlé was prompted by a public outcry from the community on the McCloud River in Northern California when the County Community Service District invited Nestlé to explore a water operation, and some residents were concerned that the deal allegedly gave the firm a 50-year contract and priority rights to water that feeds one of California's premier rainbow trout and steelhead streams.

To its credit, Nestlé Waters has withdrawn the deal and is working with the community to come up with something better.

Community concerns typically revolve around fears that "the company will use all of our water, destroy the aquifer and change our way of life," McIntosh said. "The power differential is also an issue, as communities want balanced deals. Many have almost spiritual views of local water supplies and are just opposed to someone bottling local water and selling it."

Mark Hays, senior researcher for Corporate Accountability International (CAI), a 20-year-old organization well experienced with boycotts and a fierce critic of bottled water, is not very sympathetic to beverage companies such as Nestlé Waters or Coke.

"We see FPIC as being about democratic control of water," Hays said. "The impacts of bottlers on any local community are a tricky thing to deal with." But he put forth a few principles that could shape a FPIC protocol for water: 1) A full accounting of a project's impacts; 2) No undue influence on the general public's access to water; 3) No secret economic or political agreements with public agencies.

"We have a ways to go before asking for FPIC," Hays said. "Most of the times, the question of whether a facility will have impacts should be simple and clear. Absent good data, some 'stickiness' can occur." Hays's bottom line question on FPIC was this: "Will Nestlé Waters or other corporations accept 'no' for an answer?"

A Good Step Forward, But No Panacea
Without the kind of substantive participation that FPIC mandates, the tenured security of rural communities is always at the mercy of decisions made by others with more perceived power. It is well documented that such insecurity perpetuates poverty.

In contrast, with the bargaining power that FPIC provisions bring them, communities can demand direct compensation for damages or a continuing share of the profits of resource extraction. They can even require the backers of development to invest part of the profits from these ventures to meet community needs. In this respect, FPIC is a tool for greater equity and a natural pathway to a co-management role for local communities in large development projects

But FPIC is not a panacea. Consider these comments from Anil Naidoo of the Council of Canadians:

I do think that it is good to bring the community in on the first level of discussions about water. And the notion of water as a human right cannot be disassociated from these discussions. But even if employing democratic means, any consent or decisions should not give away the human right to water or the health of the environment for future generations. How do we respect intergenerational rights?

This whole process is still operating from an anthropomorphic view ... It is very important to have more transparency and to develop a set of guidelines of what is appropriate. But if you still give away all of the water to Nestle Waters, what good is that? I still have reservations about how FPIC will be used and for what.

Other NGOs, such as Amazon Watch, are much more open to making the business case for FPIC. "To give people and communities the fundamental right to have a say about what happens on their lands under FPIC is a good thing," Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch pointed out. "To date, many companies are adhering to ILO 169, so companies are consulting with local communities. But sitting at the table and consulting is not enough, when the choice is 'yes or yes.' The community needs to have the right to say 'no,' they need to be able to have veto power."

Koenig says FPIC just makes good business sense. "If oil companies or other extractive industries do not have a social license to operate, they will experience project delays, bad PR, both of which aren't good for business. So far, no company has been able to say 'no.' "

But FPIC is at the heart of current U.N. declarations on the human right to water, and the new barometer of how companies will be judged in terms of CSR and the human right to water.

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Australian town bans bottled water

A small town in Australia didn't want a bottled water company to pump a nearby aquifer. They took their object to its logical conclusion: a vote to voluntarily ban bottled water sales.

by Meraiah Foley. Published July 16 in the New York Times

BUNDANOON, Australia — When the residents here voted this month to stop selling bottled water in town, they never expected to be thrust into the global spotlight.

With a nearly unanimous show of hands at a community meeting, the people in this small tourist town touched off a worldwide debate about the social and environmental effects of bottled water that has put the beverage industry on the defensive.

State and local officials across the United States have been phasing out the use of bottled water at government workplaces in recent years, citing a variety of concerns, including the energy used to make and transport the bottles and an erosion of public trust in municipal water supplies. But as far as campaigners are aware, Bundanoon is the first town in the world to stop all sales of bottled water.

Set in the cool highlands southwest of Sydney, Bundanoon is a sleepy town of tidy gardens and quaint cottages surrounded by the weekend estates of wealthy urbanites. It is the sort of place where strangers strike up conversations on park benches along the picturesque main street and townsfolk leave fresh flowers on the local war memorial.

According to Huw Kingston, the owner of Ye Olde Bicycle Shoppe and a leader of the "Bundy on Tap" campaign, the ban did not begin as an environmental crusade. It started when a bottling company sought permission to extract millions of liters of water from the local aquifer.

At first, residents were upset at the prospect of tanker trucks rumbling through their quiet streets. But as opposition grew, Mr. Kingston said many residents began to question the idea of trucking water about 100 miles north to a bottling plant in Sydney, only to transport it somewhere else — possibly even back to Bundanoon — for sale.

"We became aware, as a community, of what the bottled-water industry was all about," Mr. Kingston said. "So the idea was floated that if we don’t want an extraction plant in our town, maybe we shouldn’t be selling the end product at all."

A dozen or so activists got together and called a community meeting. Of the 356 residents who turned out to vote on the ban by a show of hands, only one objected.

The ban is entirely voluntary. But with the support of the public, the town’s six food retailers have agreed to pull bottled water from their shelves starting in September. They plan to recoup their losses by selling inexpensive, reusable bottles that can be filled at drinking fountains and filtered water dispensers to be placed around town.

Some of the town’s 2,500 residents say they support the plan because they worry about the effects of chemicals in plastic bottles; some view it as a positive demonstration against the water plant.

Others, however, are skeptical that the local council could afford to maintain the new drinking fountains, while still others worry about the health implications of leaving only sweetened alternatives on refrigerator shelves.

"I don’t see why water should be picked on," said Trevor Fenton, a retired Bundanoon resident. "What I’d like is to see them get rid of all the soft drinks, but they’d never do that."

Environmentalists have been gaining traction in the fight against bottled water. In addition to the new restrictions by state and local governments in the United States, many high-profile restaurateurs have also begun replacing fancy imported water with tap water. Recently, a United States Congressional committee debated whether to step up regulation on the bottled-water industry after reviewing two new studies that questioned whether bottled water was any safer than that from a tap.

The attention has irked the industry, which is worth around $60 billion a year worldwide and about $400 million a year in Australia. Industry groups say it is unfair to single out bottled water when many other consumer goods — like disposable diapers and imported produce, cheese and wine — have an equal or greater impact on the environment.

In Australia, most bottled water is produced domestically, in recyclable bottles that make up a very small proportion of landfill waste, according to Geoff Parker, the chief executive of the Australasian Bottled Water Institute.

"We need to keep the product in perspective," Mr. Parker said. "There are tens of thousands of products in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, and we would suggest that there are a vast number that would have a larger carbon footprint than bottled water."

The issue has touched a nerve. The day of the Bundanoon vote, the state government in New South Wales announced that it would stop buying bottled water, prompting the federal environment minister to urge other states to follow suit. The moves set off a flurry of newspaper editorials over the weekend and set the lines ablaze on talk radio shows across Australia.

The shopkeepers of Bundanoon say they have been amused by all the attention the ban has brought their way, and have even been offered a supply of specially branded reusable water bottles from a major European supplier.

Outside his newspaper and magazine store, Peter Stewart said the extra focus on Bundanoon was worth the $1,200 a year he expected to lose on bottled-water sales.

"That a group of people can get together over a few months and make headlines all over the world, it’s just amazing," he said. "There’s a lot of pride in town."

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