Blog Posts: Water

By Alison Grass

Alabama isn’t called Alabama the Beautiful without reason. Anyone who has visited the state can attest to that. Then again, I may be partial to its splendor, seeing as how I am from Alabama and grew up across the street from endless fields of farmland, spending my childhood days climbing tall trees in the woods behind our house. Alabama has a rich and diverse geography. Open spaces are laden in valleys and rivers that roll through sloping hills. The Appalachian Valley characterizes several portions of the state, whereas the southern region consists of coastal plains, the Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico’s sunny beachside.

When I recently found out that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service plan to auction 43,000 acres of public land in the Talladega and Conecuh Nation Forests for potential oil and gas drilling, I grew concerned and wanted to know more. Read the full article…

By Kate Fried

It sounds like a story ripped from the pages of a dystopian novel, but the horrors that the residents of Toms River (formerly called Dover Township), New Jersey have experienced thanks to their private water providers are all too real.

In the 1990’s, health officials identified a terrible development among children in Toms River: a high rate of certain types of cancer. After a massive five-year study, state and federal investigators linked this horrific trend to contamination of the area’s drinking water system. Five days before the study was released, United Water Toms River (a local subsidiary of French multinational Suez Environnement) and two chemical companies agreed to make undisclosed multimillion-dollar payments to 69 families of children with cancer. Several months later, they reached another monetary settlement with dozens of other families. In total, United Water paid $12 million, after insurance reimbursements, to settle the $800 million claims for wrongful death and injury.

Over the years Toms River’s water woes persisted, particularly when United Water was fined $64,000 for failing to notify the state and the public when the water contained high levels of radioactive contaminants.

Fast-forward to the present day, and some residents of Toms River have a new problem: their drinking water has turned green. This time the responsible entity is a different private water company—New Jersey American Water. The company has identified the source of the problem—high iron levels—and claims the water is perfectly safe. But given the private water industry’s track record, it’s easy to see why some residents are still leery. 

Even if the green water really poses no hazards, this further illustrates how communities often receive very bad services from private water providers. Residents of Toms River have suffered through enough without having to rely on pricey bottled water for their basic hydration and sanitation needs. Nor we can we entirely trust bottled water to be any safer than Toms River’s current supply since it is often subjected to less stringent testing than municipal water.

It’s beyond time we eliminated the gap between the haves and the have-nots when it comes to accessing water. Since many communities lack the means to provide safe, clean, affordable tap water to their residents, we must look to federal leaders to step up and fill this void.

Establishing a consistent source of federal funding for community water systems is our best bet in achieving that goal. Otherwise, more communities could be stuck with the consequences and inconsistencies of privatized water, as Toms Rivers is.

By Rich Bindell

The City of Las Cruces is trying to recoup close to nearly $2 million in unpaid tickets for running red lights. But while times of economic turmoil call for desperate measures, their punishment doesn’t fit the crime. A loophole in a city ordinance would allow the City of Las Cruces to shut off utilities, including water and sewage services, for residents with unpaid red light tickets. Food & Water Watch organizers are currently working with local allies to convince Las Cruces City Council to put an end to this policy. We’re serving notice to the City Council that they’re violating the human right to water.

And Las Cruces isn’t the only city with this problem. With budget shortfalls threatening funding for public services in cities throughout the country, some leaders have incorporated desperate tactics to try to right their ships. Unfortunately, some of these tactics come not only in the form of household water shut-offs for traffic violations, but also threats of jail time for those who can’t afford sanitation systems, and even anti-immigration policies that deny access to water.

Since the United Nations officially recognized water as a human right in July 2010, it’s time for the United States to start working toward making that declaration a reality. Food & Water Watch’s new report, Our Right to Water (a collaboration with the Council of Canadians), demonstrates that we can’t take our relationship with water for granted. Learn more about the report here.

Live in Las Cruces? Act now and sign this petition telling this City Council to stop water shut offs for unpaid traffic tickets: http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10375

If you don’t live in Las Cruces but are a New Mexico resident, take action here by telling the New Mexico Attorney General to instruct city officials to stop enforcing this dangerous policy: http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10408

By Wenonah Hauter 

The Take Back the Tap Curriculum is designed to teach kids about the importance of protecting our most essential public resource: water.

Joe Camel. Ronald McDonald. Tony the Tiger. Spuds McKenzie. Kid-friendly advertising tricks by corporations seeking to lure young consumers clutter the annals of marketing history.

While some of these efforts are more insidious than others, they share a common trait. In each case, advertisers were trying to hook new consumers early to cultivate a sense of brand loyalty to be exploited for years to come. With the advent of programs ostensibly designed to teach kids about water issues, bottled water companies are getting in on the action. Their tactics flow through an institution that few kids can escape — the classroom.

The best example of this is Project WET. This non-profit organization claims to educate children and parents about the importance of preserving global water resources. According to its website, “sustainable water management is crucial to secure social and economic stability, as well as a healthy environment.”

That’s certainly true. But Nestlé Waters North America, the organization’s main sponsor, is the last entity that should be empowered to educate the public about responsible water use. When you consider the bottled water behemoth ‘s track record of hogging global water supplies and profiting from them, Project WET’s supposed mission is a slap in the face to any community that has had its water muscled away by Nestlé. Read the full article…

By Walker Foley

The artwork for Last Call at the Oasis

Drought, famine, disease and war – are these the buzz words of our nightmares, distanced from public perception by vast oceans and foreign lands? Or are they the social products of the rapidly dwindling resource vital to life on Earth?

In many areas of the U.S., the concept of water shortages may seem as foreign as excavating icebergs for potable product. Turn on your tap after all, and the water gods will make it rain. But for those not so blessed, shrinking water supplies in the American Southwest and elsewhere on the globe serve a painful lesson: the tap is running dry.

Jessica Yu’s new film, Last Call at the Oasis, sounds the alarm on dwindling global water resources, and invites Americans to bridge the distance between them and their water.

Through the opening credits water waltzes seductively, teasing the audience with a glittering, circus-spectacle. The circus must end though, and the film must tell its dark tale.

When the Lights Go Out

“Water,” Erin Brockovich begins, “is everything. The single most necessary element for any of us to sustain, and live, and thrive is water.” Speaking of water’s importance, Brockovich draws from her father’s wisdom who warned her, “… in my lifetime that we would see water become more valuable than oil, he said, because there will be so little of it.”

There’s nothing fanciful about the predictions of Brockovich’s childhood memories – the evidence is everywhere. Last Call at the Oasis begins by examining the consequences for the Southwest as climate change, water mismanagement and population growth threaten the long-term viability of the entire region. Having over-tapped the Colorado River, farms are unable to get water for irrigation, while cities struggle to find an electrical alternative to the failing Hoover Dam. Despite the slowdown in agriculture and energy, development (and population) escalates. Read the full article…

By Wenonah Hauter

Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter

Through coordinated actions this weekend, activists will be Connecting the Dots between climate change and the severe weather, droughts and sea level rise that communities are already experiencing. A project of 350.org, led by climate activist Bill McKibben, the May 5 Day of Action will be happening mere weeks before the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20— where global leaders will meet to make commitments towards carbon reductions 20 years after the UN’s first Conference on Sustainable Development. They will also use the opportunity of the multilateral forum to map out the so-called “green economy”.

That’s where 6/5/12 comes in.

There is an urgent need for communities around the world to send a message to their elected officials participating in Rio+20: We want a truly green economy, not a greenwashed economy. We want an economy that supports communities, not multinational corporations. And we want an economy that upholds our common resources like water as a public trust, not a commodity, and recognizes the human right to water. Read the full article…

Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter

It used to be that unscrupulous salesmen would try to sell you the bridge; nowadays, they’ve climbed a rung lower – they’re trying to sell you the public trust water flowing under the bridge. A recent website, thebaybank.org, has planted a giant “For Sale” sign on the Chesapeake Bay and the stage is now set to create a marketplace out of this sacred common resource, with the Bay being sold off credit-by-credit.

So what exactly do you get when you buy a credit on Baybank’s website? You don’t actually get a cup of Bay water. The water bottling companies have already figured out how to commoditize our water resources by pouring it into containers and selling it in the supermarkets. Baybank actually promotes a much more insidious way to market our waterways – they’re facilitating the sale of the right to pollute the Bay with more of the same contaminants that are already threatening the very future of this important watershed.

Here how water pollution trading—also known as water quality trading—is supposed to work: instead of recognizing that waterways are owned by everyone as a public trust and enforcing the prohibition on polluting our water, these market-based approaches allow some polluters to claim they’ve decreased their pollution and then sell that alleged decrease, in the form of pollution credits, to other polluters who want to increase their pollution. Read the full article…

By Sam Law

Take Back the Tap poster by Phoebe Konig

This is the second of two blogs  from Take Back the Tap Coordinators in honor of Earth Week. Food & Water Watch is working with 62 active Take Back the Tap campaigns on college campuses across the country. Emory University, Carleton College, American University, and Reed College have passed resolutions banning or significantly reducing bottled water usage on their campuses. Over the past two years, Food & Water Watch has trained over 100 student leaders on how to run successful Take Back the Tap campaigns.

College students, like many people, are incredibly involved in their own lives. This presents two unique challenges for organizing on campus around environmental justice issues. The first problem, so prevalent in our culture, is apathy. Whether a defense mechanism to protect individuals from the realization that people have very little power in this country when they organize against the moneyed interests of transnational corporations, or pure laziness is hard to tell. It’s likely a combination of the two. The second problem this egotism presents is that people, when they do get involved, so often want to focus on personal change such as turning out light switches, buying sustainable products or reducing waste.

Read the full article…

From left to right: Chloe Lyon, Triana Tello and Meagan Lyle are Taking Back the Tap at American University.

By Meagan Lyle

This is the first of two blogs from Take Back the Tap Coordinators in honor of Earth Week. Food & Water Watch is working with 62 active Take Back the Tap campaigns on college campuses across the country. Emory University, Carleton College, American University, and Reed College have passed resolutions banning or significantly reducing bottled water usage on their campuses. Over the past two years, Food & Water Watch has trained over 100 student leaders on how to run successful Take Back the Tap campaigns.

You know that campaigning is taking over your life, when you find it hard not to glare at strangers you see buying bottled water, when every paper you write is about water privatization or green and blue washing, and when you subconsciously start typing Take Back the Tap in the middle of an unrelated homework assignment. While it is exhausting to want positive change in the world because even the smallest shift requires much time and effort, every single ounce of energy we invest in organizing our campaigns becomes worth it at the sight of victory.

The small Take Back the Tap team at American University has worked relentlessly to see tangible change in the blind consumption of bottled water on campus. Similar to other campuses, we want people to see through the bluewash of advertising that claims bottle water is safer than tap water. We aspire to inform students and faculty that every building on campus provides free, safe, regulated tap water. Yet, even after the documentaries, tabling, panel discussions, taste tests, bottled water art displays people continued to succumb to the convenience of bottled water. Discouraged by the lack of change from our efforts, we hit a crossroads. Read the full article…

By Darcey Rakestraw

After I wrote a blog last week about banned pesticides and nuclear fallout in tea—looking at how the Fukushima disaster and use of banned pesticides in the growing of tea might affect consumers—I immediately wanted to work on a blog showing the other side of the coin: how environmental disasters harm the very farmers that seek to bring us our food sustainably.

That’s why we work on energy issues like fracking. The oil and gas industry injects millions of gallons of a mixture of water, sand and chemicals under high pressure to fracture rocks deep below ground and release oil or natural gas, posing a risk to not only surface waterways (from spills or inadequate treatment of waste) but also groundwater resources. Read the full article…