Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water (AlterNet)

Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted April 25, 2007.



The Bush administration is helping multinationals buy U.S. municipal water systems, putting our most important resource in the hands of corporations with no public accountability.

All across the United States, municipal water systems are being bought up by multinational corporations, turning one of our last remaining public commons and our most vital resource into a commodity.

The road to privatization is being paved by our own government. The Bush administration is actively working to loosen the hold that cities and towns have over public water, enabling corporations to own the very thing we depend on for survival.

The effects of the federal government's actions are being felt all the way down to Conference of Mayors, which has become a "feeding frenzy" for corporations looking to make sure that nothing is left in the public's hands, including clean, affordable water.

Documentary filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman recently teamed up with author Michael Fox to write "Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water" (Wiley, 2007). The three followed water privatization battles across the United States -- from California to Massachusetts and from Georgia to Wisconsin, documenting the rise of public opposition to corporate control of water resources.

They found that the issue of privatization ran deep.

"We came to see that the conflicts over water are really about fundamental questions of democracy itself: Who will make the decisions that affect our future, and who will be excluded?" they wrote in the book's preface. "And if citizens no longer control their most basic resource, their water, do they really control anything at all?"

...(snip)...

There are also significant environmental considerations -- with private corporations, sustainability can be tossed out the window. "Climate change is a warning that uncontrolled abuse of the earth's natural resources is leading toward planetary catastrophe," the authors write in "Thirst." "Who is to set the necessary limits to the abuse of the environment? Private companies fighting for market share are incapable of doing so."

Privatization has been pushed aggressively at the federal level for decades, but especially so in the last six years. "There is a kind of fire sale of everything in the public sector right now," said Alan Snitow. "Water, we think, is the line in the sand -- when your water is actually a profit mechanism, people really react negatively to that."

"Thirst" beautifully documents the coalitions that are forming in communities that are fighting back. But the battles are not easy: They must confront massive political muscle and unlimited financial resources of multinational corporations, not to mention our society's religious belief in the power of the marketplace. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/50994/

kept the lights on.

L.A. does some things right. Actually it's my favorite place on the planet, but then I don't live there.

causing massive envriomental damage. They have fought tooth and nail ever since about repairing it.