Blog Posts: Water

By: Alison K. Grass

The multinational bottled water company Nestlé Waters is no stranger to legal battles. For years, communities around the U.S. have found themselves in court fighting the company for control over their community water resources. Nestlé has also been sued for using deceptive marketing practices. In 2003, several class action lawsuits were filed against Nestlé because consumers found claims that its Poland Spring brand water was “found deep in the woods of Maine” and “exceptionally well protected by nature” to be misleading. Once again, Nestlé’s pursuit of public water has landed the company in hot water.

For almost five years, Chicago Faucet Shoppes, a faucet and toilet repair parts store, bought 5-gallon jugs of Nestlé’s Ice Mountain brand water for their office. Like many consumers, the company was under the impression that it was purchasing spring water, but recently learned that the water actually came from municipal supplies. After discovering the truth, Chicago Faucet filed a lawsuit against Nestlé for misleading practices.

As explained in a Law360 article (subscription required), “Chicago Faucet is suing on behalf of all persons in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Missouri who purchased the 5-gallon Ice Mountain bottles, claiming unjust enrichment and deceptive trade practices under the Illinois Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and seeking actual and punitive damages, an injunction mandating disclosure and restitution.”

Within the past few years, many bottled water companies have shifted their advertising messages in ways that obscure the source of their water. For instance, Nestlé promotes its Pure Life brand, which is primarily sourced from municipal supplies, as a necessity for a healthy lifestyle. This also helps the company avoid controversy and potential lawsuits over the legitimacy of its water source.

For these reasons and more, it’s clear that consumers should ditch the bottle, take advantage of the free, healthy water flowing from the faucet and pledge to take back the tap. After all, water belongs to the public and should be preserved for all.

By Kate Fried

It’s a known fact that apathy is the enemy of social change. It’s the objective of any activist to not only take stock of the challenges confronting communities, but to galvanize their members to overcome the frustrations inherent to enacting true reform. Devin Schroeder has learned this lesson a little earlier than some. The 15 year-old Durham, New Hampshire resident recently won the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, awarded once a year to twenty-five young leaders between the ages of eight and 18 who have made a positive difference to people and the planet, for his work helping to reduce bottled water consumption in his community.

At age 13, Schroeder launched a Take Back the Tap campaign at Oyster River Middle School after watching the film Blue Gold and drawing inspiration from Ryan Hreljac, who raised $2,000,000 to build 319 wells in 11 countries through the Ryan’s Well Foundation.  Dismayed by the dismal figures regarding plastic bottled water recycling in the U.S.—about 75 percent of empty plastic bottles wind up in landfills, lakes, streams and oceans—Devin set out to educate his community about the problem, and its impact on oceans and the environment.

“They’re starting to drill [for bottled water] in Barrington, which is nearby,” said Shroeder in a recent interview. “And if we allow this to happen, the groundwater in my community will be affected at some point. Plastic bottles are contributing a lot to pollution in the oceans, which is affecting the climate. It’s not just affecting my community, but the world I live in.”

To kick off his campaign, Schroeder invited the community, including the town councilors and the school board, to a screening of the movie Tapped, followed by a question and answer session. He prepared for the event by touring the town’s water facility and learning the facts about tap water and bottled water. After the screenings, he donated to the town library a copy of the documentary, and to his school, he gifted a large water cooler to help faculty provide free tap water at events.

Devin continued to host screenings of Tapped, and although he is now a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, he still returns periodically to host more screenings and educate students about the negative environmental repercussions of bottled water.

His efforts are paying off. Oyster River Middle School has eliminated bottled water at all athletic events, and even amongst budget issues, it has since replaced all of its water fountains with hydration stations to encourage students to drink tap water, developments that Devin was instrumental in bringing about. Linda Rief, Devin’s former language arts teacher, noted recently that one of the stations alone has saved 10,000 plastic bottles from landfills.

“Devin is exceptional in his activism,” said Rief over email. “He believes that people can make a difference one person at a time, and in small ways that will make a big difference.”

These days, Devin continues to act on behalf of the planet. He is a member of the Environmental Action Committee at Exeter, where he is helping the school reduce waste by expanding its composting program. As for his future, he says that he will continue to engage in sustainability issues throughout college and beyond.

For one so young, Devin maintains a pragmatic, yet hopeful attitude towards the sometimes sluggish engine of social change. “People are apathetic about environmental issues because they see a huge problem and they don’t know how to tackle it…you can’t be overwhelmed by all the world’s problems,” he said. “You have to start small, and it will evolve into bigger things and more will happen. One person might succumb to apathy, but if you don’t, you can help someone else out,” he said.  

By Emily Wurth

I’m sure most residents of Allentown, Pennsylvania have never heard of Public Financial Management Inc. (PFM), but the company’s financial recommendations are a major factor behind the irresponsible water privatization scheme that could soon affect every city resident.

PFM, the top ranked financial advisory firm in the country, was hired by Mayor Ed Pawlowski to advise the city on how to address its serious fiscal shortfalls threatening to make Allentown unable to fund the pensions of police officers and firefighters.

After exploring options for how the city could shore up its finances and incorporating PFM recommendations, the mayor decided that the city should lease its water and sewer system for 50 years in exchange for a lump payment of between $150 million and $200 million. The plan has been met with widespread public criticism – at the September 27^th city council meeting, all 24 speakers voiced their opposition to this deal. Read the full article…

By Kate Fried and Elizabeth Schuster

 The United States has some of the cleanest, safest drinking water in the world, thanks in part to our government’s rigorous testing standards. In fact, consumer standards are actually more stringent for the quality and safety of tap water than that of bottled water. Everyone has a right to be informed about what is in their tap water, but as crazy as it sounds, the federal government may actually be about to make that a little more difficult. 

But before you throw up your hands and reached for the bottle, take heart. As always, Food & Water Watch has your back. 

Read the full article…

By Wenonah Hauter

Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Food & Water Watch

This week, Food & Water Watch and Friends of the Earth filed a joint lawsuit to force the Environmental Protection Agency to preserve the integrity of the Clean Water Act as it turns 40 years old this month. Represented by the Columbia Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic, we are suing for the removal of the water pollution trading provisions that are part of the 2010 plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

This cap-and-trade plan for water, known as the Bay total maximum daily load or TMDL, is being promoted by both the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, both of which view the program in the Bay region as a national model that would be replicated in watersheds across the nation. But if this scheme is allowed to move forward it will allow new and increased pollution discharges into the Chesapeake Bay watershed under a complex system of market-based offsets and pollution trading that we believe is illegal under the Clean Water Act.

Pollution trading violates the fundamental concept that the Clean Water Act is built upon, which is that pollution is illegal and industries don’t have a right to poison our shared waterways. Ironically, this evisceration of the Clean Water Act is taking place as the landmark piece of legislation that was passed during the Nixon Administration is about to have its 40th anniversary. It is built on the premise that we should strive to eliminate water pollution from our lakes, rivers and bays. Water pollution trading schemes are a disastrous substitute for proven means of regulating harmful chemical discharges into our waterways.

And we should be clear that the Clean Water Act (CWA) has been an enormously successful piece of legislation. In 1972, two-thirds of our nation’s waterways were unsafe for fishing. Chemicals and wastewater were indiscriminately dumped into our waterways. Today, according to EPA about one-third of our nation’s waterways are unhealthy. Obviously there is more work to do, but why would we allow such an effective piece of legislation to be replaced by a scheme that essentially legitimizes pollution?

The water pollution trading that is being promoted in the Chesapeake Bay is based on buying and selling unverifiable pollution credits. It turns what is now illegal under the CWA into the right to pollute. It’s essentially an “entitlement” program for the financial services industry and polluters.

The federal plan for the bay that includes trading is based on the total maximum daily load of pollutants that can be discharged and still allow a water body to meet water quality standards set by the states under CWA. These pollutants come from energy facilities, factories and wastewater treatment plants and those harder to control nonpoint sources like many of the Bay’s agricultural operations.

The TMDL is, in the simplest sense, a rationing plan. It seeks to allocate pollution loads to our waterways among the many sources of pollution in the Bay. The TMDL can be an effective tool to reduce pollution, but it must be developed and implemented consistently with the goal to eliminate the biggest threats to the Bay watershed – nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment.

As a practical matter, the trading of pollution credits is inherently fraught with problems.  In this case, EPA is allowing trading without setting clear and enforceable minimum limits on trading activity, including providing safeguards to prevent fictitious or overstated pollution reductions from being used as offsets.

The “pay-to-pollute” trading program allows financial middlemen to identify and purchase nitrogen and phosphorus “credits” from industrial agriculture operations in the watershed that attest to reducing their pollution levels in the future. These unverifiable credits are then aggregated and bundled together, and sold to power plants, wastewater treatment plants and other “point source” polluters who are either unable or simply unwilling to meet their CWA permit limits.

Many states have tried to implement nutrient trading schemes around the country, but there is no documented, successful nonpoint-to-point source trading program implemented in any watershed in the United States.

And, we must look at this trading scheme in context. Rather than regulating pollution, it is part of an on-going effort spurred by the financial services industry of using the market to allocate costs to the environment, rather than using the performance-based indicator of meeting a regulated standard.

But, in the wake of the largest financial crisis in 75 years, one both created and spread by the irresponsible behavior of the financial service sector, the argument that free market-based principles should replace traditional environmental regulation is wrong minded. It represents a financialization of nature and the transferring of the stewardship of our common resources to private business interests. It makes the responsibility of caring for our natural resources secondary to the economic interests of the few.

Leaving the health of the bay to this trading scheme is reckless and it is a recipe for disaster.

By Maude Barlow

From left to right: Barbara Gysi, Cedric Wermuth, Yvonne Feri, Jacques Neyrinck, Maude Barlow, Rosmarie, Balthasar Glättli and Franklin Frederick. Photo Courtesy of Council of Canadians.

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of Council of Canadians and Board Chair of Food & Water Watch. This post originally appeared on the Council of Canadians’ blog.

I have just returned from a week in Switzerland to promote the right to water and to challenge the giant Swiss bottled water giant Nestlé. My visit was arranged by Franklin Frederick, an activist and leader in the global fight against Nestlé Waters, who is originally from Brazil, but now lives and works in Switzerland. Franklin is an extraordinary man. He is fiercely committed to global water justice and has been a thorn in the side of the water privateers for years. I also reconnected with Rosmarie Bar, a former Green Member of the Swiss Parliament and former senior member of the Swiss development network, Alliance Sud. Rosmarie and I worked together to form an international group called Friends of the Right to Water and worked for many years to lay the groundwork for the recognition of this right at the UN.

I spoke at the universities of Bern and Lucerne and in a beautiful 500 year-old church located in the heart of Bern. In the magnificent wood paneled Swiss Parliament, I also met with a delegation of MPs from every party who are committed to protecting public water and the human right to water. In all these venues, I met wonderful, committed people working for economic and social justice.

However, it is very clear that Nestlé is a powerful presence in Switzerland and its influence in the halls of power goes deep. Everyone I talked to said so in one way or another. Switzerland has no law limiting political donations from corporations, or requiring transparency in campaign financing. Given that the marketing department of Nestlé has a larger annual budget than the World Health Organization, it is widely understood that the company has great political influence.

Read the full article…

By Wenonah Hauter

Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter

Sometimes the forces working to commoditize our vital natural resources exist in plain sight, flaunting their selfish motives. Other times, they hide behind euphemistic smokescreens, which is far and away more menacing.  Regardless of where you may find them, their actions share a common consequence—undermining our collective right to access safe, clean, affordable water.

Last May, I traveled to Dubai for the Global Water: Oil & Gas Summit where I was surrounded by corporate executives discussing their “drill baby drill” philosophy with abandon and no mention of the environmental or societal costs. Then in August, I traveled to Los Angeles to speak at the premiere of a film about powerful corporate interests who conceal their intentions to privatize California’s water supply behind the guise of conservation and disaster preparedness. 

While half a world apart, these scenarios both represent the global force determined to privatize and commodify water for the sheer benefit of corporate profits. My colleague Scott Edwards says it best: “Water-related death, drought and degradation aren’t calamities; they’re profit opportunities.” This couldn’t be truer for California where political wars have been waged over water since the Gold Rush. Read the full article…

By Nisha Swinton

Over 1,000 people were arrested while protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline in front of the White House. Photo by Shadia Fayne Wood.

This past year saw the highly visible airing of concerns surrounding the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline project. A broad group of citizens opposed KXL, citing the climate change impacts of extracting and transporting Canadian tar sands oil and the (not unlikely) possibility of a toxic tar sands oil spill over the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region of Nebraska or above the Ogallala aquifer, a critical source of drinking water for the Great Plains.    

In at least a temporary victory for this broad group of concerned citizens, President Obama punted Keystone’s approval. Yet, tar sands oil remains a threat to communities and essential resources, not just along the proposed path of KXL, but in other parts of the country as well. There is reason to believe that New England is especially at risk.

Remember the 2010 Michigan oil spill? If that’s not ringing a bell, here’s a refresher: in July 2010, a pipeline operated by Enbridge Energy Partners — the U.S. branch of Enbridge Inc., Canada’s largest transporter of crude oil — ruptured near Talmadge Creek, a tributary of Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, spilling 1,148,413 gallons of tar sands oil. The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) attributed the spill to pipeline corrosion and “pervasive organizational failures.” Further, NTSB suggested that Enbridge was aware that the section of the pipeline that ultimately burst was vulnerable, and failed to act on the information.

State and local officials were unprepared for what happened when the tar sands oil entered the river. The usual spill response methods — applying skimmers and booms on the surface of the river — were of little use because the heavy, viscous oil sank and spread along the bottom of the river. The spill contaminated some 36 miles of the Kalamazoo River, about 80 miles upstream from where the river empties into Lake Michigan. Fluids used to dilute the tar sands oil had become separated after the spill, meaning that toxic vapors containing benzene and polycyclic hydrocarbons escaped into the air, and thus the heavy oil sank.

According to a sample of Michigan residents, over one third of those living in impacted communities relocated due to local air pollution in the wake of the spill. Many were exposed to toxic vapors and reported troubling neurological, respiratory and gastrointestinal problems.

Now, the same company may have designs on New England. In 2008, there was buzz that the company was pursuing a “Trailbreaker” project that would have run Canadian tar sands oil through the aging Portland-Montreal pipeline, which stretches 236 miles across northern New England from Montreal, Canada to Portland, Maine.

Enbridge now claims it is no longer pursuing “Trailbreaker,” but Enbridge is seeking permission to change the direction of flow ­— from westbound to eastbound ­— of a key section of its pipeline network, potentially to bring tar sands oil east. It seems that the company’s piecemeal approach to bringing this dirtiest of oils east is tailored to avoid public outcry of the scale that has stalled KXL.

New England must be vigilant, and not allow this to happen. A tar sands oil spill along the path of the Portland-Montreal pipeline would be disastrous.

The pipeline crosses many of northern New England’s major rivers including the Missisquoi, Black, Connecticut and Androscoggin. The aging pipeline also passes through the Crooked River watershed, the source of drinking water for one tenth of Maine’s population and a major tributary of Sebago Lake, the source of Portland, Maine’s drinking water. A threat of a spill of tar sands oil would also loom over New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge, renowned freshwater fisheries and countless other cherished places.

The risk is simply too great. Piping toxic tar sands through New England would be a bad deal for everyone but Enbridge.

By Wenonah Hauter

This ad will appear in the news section of tomorrow’s print edition of the Charlotte Observer. For the full-sized ad, click on the image above.

Dear Governor Cuomo,

True leaders help us forge solutions to difficult problems. And nowhere are new solutions needed more than in our energy sector, because we are currently using dirty fossil fuels at an unsustainable pace. Oil and gas extraction uses and abuses our precious freshwater resources, which are becoming scarcer and more polluted, thanks in large part to our reliance on fossil fuels. It’s a vicious cycle, and we need true solutions.  

But instead, Governor Cuomo, you seem poised to issue regulations that would pave the way for even more dirty energy development—the development of shale gas reserves in New York State through hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). Opening up New York to fracking won’t happen without a fight—one that might cost you the White House in 2016.

When you arrive in Charlotte tomorrow for the Democratic National Convention, you’ll see we took out a full-page ad in the Charlotte Observer to remind you that your decision on fracking will have repercussions way beyond New York, way beyond tomorrow. And we aren’t the only ones that think so. Over 100 grassroots, environmental and community groups nationwide endorsed our ad, all of them telling you that there is no safe fracking, and that the road to the White House is not lined with drilling rigs.

Governor Cuomo, Democrats in your own state have said that drilling could harm your presidential ambitions. Now, at the convention, you’re hearing from progressives around the country that this is an election issue. What will it take for you to listen to your base instead of the oil and gas industry?

People are angry that your administration shared the draft regulations with the oil and gas industry weeks before they were made public. This will remind voters of the time Dick Cheney met with energy officials in 2005, where they developed the so-called Halliburton Loophole, which exempts the oil and gas industry from key federal environmental legislation like the Safe Drinking Water Act and provisions of the Clean Air Act. Backroom deals with the oil and gas industry will not serve you in your pursuit of higher office.

Now, billionaire Michael Bloomberg has given his tacit endorsement of your rumored plan to sacrifice the Southern Tier of New York to the oil and gas industry, so long as New York City isn’t affected. His foundation also gave the Environmental Defense Fund $6 million dollars to pave the way for the development of so-called “safe” fracking, even though we know there is no such thing.

Why is Bloomberg supporting fracking? He says we need to move away from coal, and that wind and solar aren’t viable. This is a classic industry talking point, and it’s a cop-out. As Bill Maher recently said on his show, stating that wind and solar aren’t viable is like saying 100 years ago that cars aren’t going to replace horses.

It might be tempting to take cover behind prominent individuals and groups who have given in to the oil and gas industry’s tired refrain that shale gas development is inevitable. But true leaders look past the naysayers and those who have long since compromised their ideals to work within the game as defined by entrenched political interests. True leaders find real solutions.

So, Governor Cuomo, should you go forward with fracking, Wall Street billionaires and industry-funded non-profits will not provide you the political cover you’ll need to withstand the ire of committed grassroots groups who are fighting the oil and gas industry profiteers. We need leaders who can make the tough decisions that would forge the cleaner energy alternatives we need. Groups across the country are looking at New York to see whether you will provide that leadership or whether you will open New York to fracking. .

Fracking is an issue that is not only widely felt; it is deeply felt. Governor Cuomo, if you frack New York, we will remember in 2016.

Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter

By Wenonah Hauter

Updated 9/2/12*

I have news for the Environmental Defense Fund: the fracking activist community is shocked that you received $6 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies to advocate for fracking regulations. And we aren’t going to stand for it.

EDF says that they’ll be working for “responsible” regulation in 14 states. Of course, this is just double speak that means swooping into states where there is a strong grassroots movement against fracking and shilling for the oil and gas industry. They will claim to represent environmentalists while they promote regulation that is so weak even the gas industry can live with it.

Of course, everyone in the environmental movement knows that this is EDF’s modus operandi. In fact, for years, public interest advocates have rolled their eyes and complained to one another in private about how EDF undercuts their work time and time again. But, everyone is afraid to speak out because they might upset funders, who are turned off by disagreements among environmentalists.

Read the full article…