Blog Posts: Right to Water

By Ben King 

It’s no secret that big businesses try to influence the political environment and government through lobbying, PAC money and plying elected officials with campaign contributions. After reviewing contributions made by Nestlé Waters, it seems that the company is no stranger to this strategy. 

From Michigan to Florida, Nestlé has been very generous with contributions to members of Congress whose districts include springs and other water sources or bottling facilities. 

In 2007, Nestlé gave thousands in campaign contributions to Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels [R], who supported the Great Lakes Compact, a legal agreement among states in the Great Lakes region governing management of the local water supply. The Compact included a loophole that exempted the bottled water industry from following its water withdrawal regulations. Nestlé also received $850,000 in property tax credits from the state for a bottled water facility built in Greenwood, Indiana during his term.

In 2004 and 2008, Nestlé gave big contributions to New York State Senator Carl Marcellino [R], a vociferous opponent of a new bottle deposit bill which would have imposed fees for certain plastic bottles, including those for bottled water, to encourage recycling. Marcellino called the bill a “money grab” out of the pockets of beverage makers.

But it seems that there’s nowhere that Nestlé has spent more money than in the state of Maine. 

As Food & Water Watch blogged last month, Nestlé is trying to enter into a new 25-to 45-year contract with the Fryeburg Water Company, which has been supplying the company with water since 1997. Though Nestlé claims the agreement will benefit the public by generating substantial revenue, there is no certainty that this plan would actually keep water rates down. The State Public Utility Commission is currently reviewing the contract. 

In this contentious environment, Nestlé, its employees and lobbyists have spent nearly $650,000 on campaign contributions and support in the state of Maine. Notably, they spent $218,000 to defeat a state bottled water tax in 2004 and 2005, and another $106,000 to help repeal a state beverage tax in 2008. They’ve also given to dozens of candidates and PACs across the state, from Aroostook County to Portland. Among these legislators are more than a few representing districts where Nestlé’s springs and bottling operations are located, including those in Denmark, Fryeburg, Kingfeld and Poland.

But Nestlé’s influence on state government doesn’t end there. One member of the State Public Utility Commission – the very body deciding whether to allow Nestlé’s new contract – has already recused himself from that decision because of his ties to the company, and the two remaining commission members also have documented ties to the corporation. Maybe that’s not surprising though – two of the commissioners were appointed by Governor Paul LePage [R], the third by former Governor John Baldacci [D]; both candidates received campaign contributions from Nestlé.

Residents of Maine, and all states for that matter, deserves public servants who make decisions based on what’s best for their constituents, not their corporate donors. Communities need to stand up to protect one of their most precious resources–their water–from being subject to corporate takeover. 

Ben King is a Food & Water Watch spring water research and policy intern and a Master of Public Policy student at Georgetown University.  

By Marcela Olivera

This blog was originally posted at Thebrokeronline.eu.

In the Americas, we have been fighting water privatization since the early 1990s: from Detroit in the United States to Buenos Aires in Argentina. After the infamous 2000 water war in Cochabamba, Bolivia, that led to the expulsion of a multinational corporation, social movements throughout the Americas have organized themselves to protect water from greed.

In August 2003, in El Salvador, several organizations from the Americas assembled and decided to create the Red VIDA (Network for Inter-American Vigilance in Defense of and for the Right to Water).  Through this network, we would launch a coordinated hemispheric campaign to defend water as a common good. 

Since its beginning in 2003, we have worked very hard resisting water privatization and expelling corporations that were profiting from our water sources and water utilities. We have also insured that constitutional amendments were passed that prevent the commodification of water. In Uruguay, for example, the Red VIDA was active in the campaign that led to a constitutional amendment declaring access to water as a human right. 

Read the full article…

By Marcela Olivera and Susan Spronk

Click here to learn more about water privatization in Latin America.

We are sitting in a large Catholic hall nestled in the heart of Mexico City, the type of space where many Latin American social movements have historically sought refuge from dictatorships. Today, we are not fending off the military but big multinationals and our governments who want to sell our water, use it to grow soy or poison it with their mines. 

We have gathered for the general assembly of Red Vida, an inter-American network of social movements working in defense of water from Canada to Argentina. Forty of us are debating political strategy to build on our successes in reversing the tide of privatization of the 1990s (see Struggles for Water Justice in Latin America).

Mexico in hot water

We can’t rest on our laurels. Mexico is just one ‘hot spot’ where our brothers and sisters are fighting private water companies and governments that support them. They have seen how private providers in Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina have failed to deliver on their promises for cheaper and higher quality water services, and they can’t let their country make the same mistakes.

In Mexico, a national coalition of environmentalist organizations, COMDA, is currently embroiled in a campaign to reform the water law. COMDA wants the law to respect the right of communities to manage their own water resources and to defend the commons against ‘enclosure’, particularly from contamination by big mining companies.

Debating strategies

One of the productive tensions that has emerged in this meeting is whether we should be pushing our governments to include the ‘right to water’ in legislation or whether we should be focusing our energies on struggles to defend ‘the commons’.

Oscar Olivera from Fundación Abril (Bolivia) spoke eloquently about the need to defend spaces of self-government such as community-run water systems in the peri-urban areas of the Andes. If people have constructed their own water systems with sweat and blood, do we really ‘need’ the state to provide these services? Many members of such autonomous communities, most self-identifying as indigenous, see the state as an alien institution imposed by colonial rule.

By contrast, Adriana Marquisio from Uruguay’s publicly owned and operated water utility OSEhighlighted that state provision in her country has allowed to achieve near universal coverage, and much higher quality services than many of the small community systems could ever provide.

From our conversations it is clear that it is not enough to frame our campaigns around the right to water and we must document concrete alternatives to privatization. Red Vida is better able to do that thanks to collaboration with researchers from the Municipal Services Project, who attended our assemblies as invited observers in Buga, Colombia in May 2009 and are here with us again in Mexico. 

If we can articulate what the alternatives are perhaps we can convince others that privatization is not the solution. We can also demonstrate the negative impact of the more insidious practices of sub-contracting and corporatization, which threaten the ‘public’ nature of our utilities. These trends are affecting every one of us, whether our governments claim to be left-of-center or not.

As our Declaration signed in Mexico by all member organizations of the Red Vida states, in the face of all these struggles, we will continue to fight “like water, in a manner that is transparent, joyful and always in motion…until the final victory.” 

Marcela Olivera is the Latin American coordinator for the Water for All Campaign of Food and Water Watch, and coordinates the Red Vida.

Susan Spronk teaches international development at the University of Ottawa. She is an active participant in several projects of the Red Vida and a research associate with the Municipal Services Project. 

This was originally posted on the blog of the Municipal Services Project.

By Roxanne Darrow

Mexico City, the second largest city in the Western Hemisphere with 19.3 million inhabitants, is having major water problems. Over the past month, Mexico City’s water authority, Conagua, has been delivering water to consumers that has a foul odor and taste and activists there are questioning Conagua’s transparency in the matter.

The source of the problem is in the Valle de Bravo dam, which feeds into the Lerma-Cutzamala system that provides 30 percent of the water to Mexico City inhabitants.  

The Valle de Bravo dam has been infested with algae for several weeks, which means there is a large quantity of organic matter that provides food for bacteria, viruses and parasites to multiply and contaminate the water. Not only have citizens suffered from an unusual increase of intestinal illnesses from drinking contaminated water, they may also be at risk for liver damage if they continue to drink contaminated water over the long term.  

Conagua needs to act quickly to provide safe water to citizens while they remove algae from the dam, but Conagua argues their treatment system produces clean and safe water and that no epidemics have broken out. Bad smelling and poor tasting water is due to dirty water tanks at the municipal and consumer level, explain Conagua authorities.

However, Mexico City water activists call Conagua’s water safety into question and doubt the accuracy of water quality and treatment information available to the public. Food & Water Watch’s Claudia Campero works with the Coalition of Mexican Organizations for the Right to Water (COMDA) and consulted with a gastroenterology specialist who found an atypical increase of gastrointestinal illnesses in the part of Mexico City where most of the Valle de Bravo dam water ends up. Worse yet, Conagua’s activated carbon and chlorine treatment methods for last month’s algae infestation are similar to treatment methods that have been shown to produce carcinogenic chemicals.

Conagua needs to be transparent about their water treatment methodology and disclose the result of all their water samplings. How are they treating the water for human feces contamination and how effective has this been?

Access to clean water is a human right. Conagua is responsible for providing safe and clean water to Mexico City citizens.

COMDA calls for Mexican authorities to:

1. Abide by their constitutional obligations.
2. Provide continuous and accessible information about water quality.
3. Provide free, safe water to vulnerable populations while fixing the polluted water distribution system.

Learn more about our global water justice work here.

Roxanne Darrow is a summer intern with the Food & Water Watch International Policy Program. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA in International Development Studies.

By Rich Bindell

Some good news to kick off your Independence Day! In Las Cruces, New Mexico, local citizens rallied to defeat an unfair city policy that would have blocked citizens with unpaid traffic tickets from having the right to water.

If you recall, Food & Water Watch issued an unofficial citation to the city council for violating the right to water. Just a few weeks later, the council backed off and declared that the city would seek alternatives to punishing violators.

This is a wonderful victory for the local citizens of Las Cruces! It’s nice to be able to report to volunteers, organizers and our supportive social media community that their voices were heard!

Food & Water Watch Volunteer Jason Burke, who lives in Las Cruces, said it best… Read the full article…

Watch a video explaining the financialization of nature.

By Darcey O’Callaghan and Gabriella Zanzanaini

The distance between the official UN Conference on Sustainable Development (or CSD, where heads of state, corporate stakeholders and NGOs convened this week) and the People’s Summit (an official venue for grassroots solutions) mandated between a one and two and a half-hour commute, which prohibited any meaningful dialogue between the two spaces. There were—literally and figuratively—several mountains between the two summits.

The final text for heads of state to consider makes no commitments, as evidenced by word counts. “We will” was used five times whereas “we support” was used 99 times.

It was continuously stated by the U.S., Canada, and other powerful countries that this is “not a pledging conference,” thus setting the tone for negotiations throughout the week and lowering expectations for outcomes. Read the full article…

By Kate Fried

March 22 may not be a date that means something to everyone, but around here it’s one of our favorite days of the year. That’s because today is World Water Day, when we reflect on the importance of freshwater resources and advocate for their sustainable management. It’s really not a lot different than any other day of the year, but on World Water Day, we’re reminded more than ever of the momentum behind the global effort to protect our essential water resources.

This year on World Water Day, we’re fired up over fracking. In the United States this controversial form of energy extraction has wreaked havoc on rural communities, polluting drinking water, destroying property values and endangering public health. But apparently this isn’t enough for the oil and gas industry, which has its sites set on conquering lands abroad as well.

Now, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is getting in on the action as well, further fulfilling the Obama administration’s apparent desire to cozy up to the oil and gas industry by suggesting that Bulgaria join the natural gas rush. Too bad for her the Bulgarian Parliament recently voted 166 to six to suspend shale gas exploration.

To celebrate World Water Day and to protect water abroad, we’re reminding Secretary of State Clinton that people everywhere need access to safe, clean, affordable water and energy plans that offer clean, green, sustainable power, not ones that destroy water and cause a mess of public health problems.

Take a stand for fresh water and join us in reaching out to Secretary of State Clinton. Ask her to protect our allies overseas, not do the oil and gas industry’s dirty work.

A display in the "slum" tent at the World Water Forum's Village of Solutions.

By Wenonah Hauter

Yesterday I walked around the “solution tents” at the 6^th World Water Forum, which is more clearly than ever a trade show for the water industry to sell expensive services and products. Arranged as a “village,” the exhibit offered no vision for a future that addresses the source of pollution or the reason that millions of people lack access to water. From the tents labeled “factory” and “slum” to the “bank” and “library” exhibits, the failure to address the real problems was Kafkaesque. 

Take the factory exhibit. In no place there was the cause of pollution mentioned. There was no suggestion that we should prevent pollution to begin with, or that waterways should not be the dumping ground for human waste or factory waste. In fact, pollution was never mentioned at all. The organizers of this corporate forum see pollution as a profit center to be cleaned by a range of technologies. So, instead of addressing water pollution issues, the exhibit featured an expensive machine that packages water in little plastic bags that are sold to people during disasters. It displayed the Hippo Roller, a nifty technology that is essentially a barrel on wheels that makes it easy for women to transport water. It featured a stand with two buckets, one above the other, that was for hand washing.

The slum tent, designed to mirror any of the millions of impoverished neighborhoods that have become the norm in urban areas, shows the real agenda at the forum—making money for the water industry. Most outrageous in the tent was Veolia’s water fountain with a coin slot and a place to use a smart card to access water. According to the provided literature, if the prepaid credit made available to a “target population” by authorities is depleted before the end of the month, users can recharge their card in commercial and mobile agencies at special prices. If this is the best the World Water Forum can do for the world’s poor—prepaid cards for water at a fountain—they should pack up today and go home. Read the full article…

 By Darcey Rakestraw

We’ve said that the World Water Forum is a corporate trade show masquerading as a multilateral forum. Others have pointed out that the high fee for full access to the conference (up to 700 euros) is prohibiting participation by the grassroots. Still others have reported that security is high, and activists are being profiled and arrested.

Now, we’re wondering if the organizers have fully thought out the logistics of welcoming guests.

The forum has two very different entrances, depending on whether you are a VIP or not. The first entrance is a nice, welcoming one, and yesterday we surmised that it was the general entrance to the conference. But the man standing in front of the barricade shooed us away because we didn’t have the proper credentials. The photo of the second entrance, taken today by a colleague, is a shabby side door. This is where they gained access to the conference today.

If the World Water Forum wants to maintain even the veneer of inclusivity, they might want to ditch the separate-but-not-so-equal approach to conference attendees each day as they enter.

By Darcey Rakestraw

A water activist at the World Water Forum provided us with this summary in English of yesterday’s action where five people were arrested:  

What a nasty surprise this morning! Walking out the metro station we stopped at the gates of the World Water Forum, and saw that a multitude of riot police had taken the place. It is difficult to talk about numbers, but certainly those policeman were more than the people walking on the street or registered for the official forum.

Meanwhile, a group of activists from the international movement for water justice, along with the occupy movement, did a peaceful action to highlight the lack of access for citizens to this space. The music, colors and smiles where a clear danger to public security to be avoided.

Forced by this offence to public security, police needed to arrest 5 persons and detain people walking by without giving any justification. Those arrested have been kept 3 ½ hours in the headquarters without receiving any explanation. Read the full article…