Issue Briefs

Sludge is the solid remnants of the wastewater treatment process. Wastewater treatment facilities, most of which are publicly owned treatment works (POTWs), are able to remove many of the bacteria, viruses and chemicals that end up in sludge. POTWs serve approximately 75 percent of the U.S. population. Yet these facilities do not have enough money to purchase the technology needed to remove all of the prescription drugs and chemicals that enter the wastewater stream every day from our household and personal care products.

Gas drillers use a water-intensive process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract natural gas from shale. The process injects millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, under high pressure to crack the rock formation to release natural gas. Private water players can make money on both ends by selling water to drillers and then treating the wastewater.

How problematic is it for the public when it loses control of its water to a private corporation? Get the facts on the poor track records of Illinois American Water and Aqua Illinois and how they demonstrate that privatization is an unacceptable and irresponsible alternative to traditional public provision of water and sewer service. Many of the companies’ customers, both households and businesses, have reported paying too much for inadequate service. These consumer experiences underscore the importance of keeping w

When an essential resource from nature becomes privatized, access to it becomes market-driven, and decisions about how that resource is used are made by private interests that may lie thousands of miles beyond a community’s borders. Furthermore, when water or food is treated as a market commodity, it can become concentrated in the hands of a few powerful private interests. They can assert pressure on policymakers to achieve favorable rules for their shareholders—often to the detriment of consumers, producers and communities. The importance of keeping the global commons under public control is an issue at the heart of democracy.

Today, the oil and gas industry is loudly promoting natural gas production as a means of increasing American energy independence and national energy security. Industry representatives have specifically used this argument to lobby against federal oversight of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the harmful technology that drillers hope to use to increase production by tapping into America’s shale rock formations.

The U.N. General Assembly declared in July 2010 that access to clean water and sanitation is an essential human right, calling on states and organizations to help provide access for the 884 million people currently without safe drinking water and the more than 2.6 billion people without basic sanitation. In the past, public-private partnerships — agreements between governments and water companies for the private operation of publicly owned water systems — were heralded as a solution to meeting this crucial need. However, evidence is mounting that private control of water services can actually stand in the way of the human right to water more than it can help to achieve it. Although private utility management in itself may not constitute a violation of the right to water, as Violeta Petrova noted in the Brooklyn Journal of International Law, “[T]he particular circumstances in which privatization is carried out might give rise to substantive and procedural violations of the right to water.” Unfortunately, these circumstances are met all too often.

As more food is produced and imported, environmental threats to our water resources grow, and state and local agencies struggle to modernize aging infrastructure for drinking water and sewage systems. It’s more important than ever to fund these agencies adequately. Here are some reasons why proposed cuts to the agencies and programs that oversee our food and water resources will harm consumers as well as local economies.

Written by Food & Water Watch Board of Director Maude Barlow, this paper is intended to serve as a background, a call to understanding and a call to action on an exciting new proposal to designate the Great Lakes and its tributary waters as a lived Com- mons, to be shared, protected, carefully managed and enjoyed by all who live around them.

In years past, children coming off the school playground would run inside to line up in front of a drinking fountain. Today, many students are flocking to vending machines instead, where they shell out money to buy water in plastic bottles. Meanwhile, school water fountains are now often broken or shut off. This trend in schools mirrors a broader trend: As municipal water systems in the United States, built many years ago, are aging and in need of renovation, the bottled water industry is using glitzy corporate marketing campaigns to convince American consumers that packaged water is superior to water that comes out of the tap. Today, as more people are buying water out of plastic bottles, tap water infrastructure is falling into disrepair, and public sources of drinking water are disappearing.

In 2009, bottled water sales in the United States declined for the second year in a row, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation. U.S. bottled water revenues went down 5.2 percent and the volume of water sold went down 2.5 percent. Pepsi’s Aquafina sales declined by 10 percent, Coca Cola’s Dasani went down by 7.9 percent, and Nestle Waters North America’s leading brand, Poland Spring, declined by 6.4 percent. This fall in sales may be bad news for the bottled water industry, but it is good news for the environment.