Press Releases: Water

Press Statement: “T. Boone Pickens’s recent divestment from Chesapeake Energy shows that natural gas is a house of cards, and that even one of its biggest cheerleaders has grown wise to this fact.”

Press Release: At a press conference today with one of the country’s largest urban oil fields in the background, national consumer organization Food & Water Watch joined with Josh Fox, the Oscar-nominated director of Gasland, Environment California, Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community, Grassroots Coalition, and residents of surrounding neighborhoods to call for a ban on the controversial oil and gas practice called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in California. Already, 50,000 Californians have signed Food & Water Watch and CREDO Action petitions supporting a ban.

Press release: While the UN officially recognized water as a human right in July 2010, lack of access to clean water and sanitation is not a far-flung problem, according to national consumer group Food & Water Watch, which today released the report Our Right to Water: A People’s Guide to Implementing the United Nations’ Recognition of the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation In the United States.

“We can’t take our access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation for granted—even here in the United States,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “Between a lack of federal spending to maintain our infrastructure to the rash of city sell-offs of water services to private water companies, to the risks that fracking poses to our drinking water supplies—more than ever, we need to make sure Washington is protecting our human right to water.”

Media Statement: Nassau County’s selection of United Water to run its sewer system is one that the county will ultimately regret. Just ask the community of Gary, Indiana, where United Water Services is currently facing felony charges for violating the Clean Water Act and conspiring to defraud the federal government by misrepresenting the way it complies with wastewater treatment standards.

“Today the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR) released its final report on the potential impacts of legalizing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the state. The final report concludes that the current ban should remain in place indefinitely.

Today Nestlé announced it has purchased Pfizer’s infant nutrition unit to expand into fast-growing emerging markets, particularly in Asia. This renewed focus on growing the market for its infant formula products is troubling given the corporation’s track record of using dubious practices to market infant formula in developing countries, where it is often prepared in unhygienic conditions with unsafe water. It appears this investment will pave the way for more dubious marketing practices, which as recently as last year have been criticized by public health groups in Laos.

Press Release: Today, national consumer organization Food & Water Watch announced a new program to scrutinize the largely unchallenged claims that market-based schemes like pollution trading, water markets, privatization and commodification of common resources will help reduce pollution and manage our water resources.

Press Release: At a press conference today, Bark and Food & Water Watch, members of the Keep Nestlé Out of the Gorge Coalition, announced that they are appealing the Oregon Water Resources Department’s (OWRD) approval of permit applications that move Nestlé one step closer to bottling Oregon’s water. The two permits must be approved by OWRD before a water exchange application can be considered that would lead to a giveaway of Oregon’s public water resources for Nestlé’s profit. The coalition, representing labor, religious, environmental, public health and consumer advocacy groups, maintains that this water exchange is not in the public interest.

Media Statement: “It is both sad and ironic that on World Water Day, an occasion in which we celebrate grassroots efforts to uphold and protect water as a human right, that we’d also see several powerful nations undermine this movement. At the Rio+20 negotiations currently taking place at the United Nations, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel have called for weakening or taking away the human right to water and sanitation.

Media Statement: “The 6th World Water Forum this week, despite lagging attendance and Sarkozy reneging on his promise to attend, has still been an opportunity for multinational water corporations to solidify their plans to further privatize nature at Rio+20. Thanks to Canada’s successful effort to weaken language in the forum’s ministerial document regarding the human right to water, and as demonstrated by the banking industry’s plans to integrate water trading into futures markets and to create derivative water-based financial instruments, the privatization of water has accelerated dramatically, creating a setback for right to water as resolved by the UN.