The Great Corporate and Government ('One Entity') Water Heist

2011-03-24T06:23:00.001-04:00

Wars Over Water - Your Access to Water Depends on Your Ability to Pay

The Hindu
March 20, 2011

Senior executives of 16 North American companies are descending on Bengaluru in a “Water Trade Mission” initiated by the U.S. government's commercial service arm. Their purpose is to “tap the $50 billion Indian Water Market.” To attract American companies, the mission projects “tremendous” figures in the Indian water sector, from water treatment to taking over water supply services and waste water management.

For the $3000 that these companies pay for the trip, the potential water business in India comes as a bounty. The U.S. government is leaving no stone unturned to ‘ initiate or expand' the companies' involvement in India's emerging global water market.

Secret mission

The mission is cloaked in secrecy. The U.S. Commercial Services office in Bangalore has told us that Indian citizens are not allowed to have any information pertaining to the mission. Those details are reserved by the U.S. government solely for U.S. citizens and U.S. companies. But it is India's water that is up for sale. Though the objectives of the visit were put on the U.S. commercial services website more than three months ago, the chief Engineer of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board learnt about them only when the Americans walked into his office last week.

If the privatisation of water is good for India, why is it being done so secretively? In Mysore, bureaucrats waited for seven months for the elected council to be dissolved before giving away the Mysore Water Board to a private company. Elected representatives have become subservient to senior bureaucrats and business contracts more sacrosanct than public opinion, deliberation, and democracy.

Control over water has always been a source of power and discrimination but the economic implications of this are only now becoming obvious. A recent Bloomberg Water Index showed annual returns over the last three years of 35 per cent, eclipsing the 29 per cent for oil and gas stocks and 27 per cent for the World Basic Materials Index. At a time when we are about to reach the stage of ‘peak oil' - a time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached after which the rate of production enters terminal decline - water is the next natural resource for private companies to rule the world. Water, because of its cultural, political and religious connotations, is still largely outside corporate control on a global scale, but it may not be for much longer.

The U.S. has targeted Karnataka particularly because the state is internationally recognised as a leader in dismantling public systems for water distribution. In 2002 the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC), a parastatal body unaccountable to elected representatives, worked closely with the World Bank to draft the State Urban Drinking Water and Sanitation Policy; this set the future path for urban water reform in the state. With a policy that commodified water, removed subsidies and institutionalised full cost recovery, the World Bank loan is paying for the transfer of public water to corporates.

The legal framework for water services would have prevented such arbitrary shifts, so the laws were changed almost overnight. In 2005 the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act was amended to allow for privatisation of water services. Aside from the people involved, very few know about this. There was no public consultation, and no documented debate in the legislature. What was the rationale for such an opaque process and what was the justification for such a fundamental shift in water governance?

Different experience

The standard arguments for privatising water services usually follow the assumptions that the private sector will bring in investment, competition, efficiency and equity. The experience in Karnataka tells quite a different story.

In four North Karnataka cities — Hubli, Dharwad, Belguam, and Gulbarga — about 30,000 households have had their water handed over to a French water corporation on World Bank orders; in Mysore, under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission the entire water supply has been contracted to JUSCO, a TATA company. These private firms have made no investment; the state is paying the companies many times more than it ever spent when it managed these services. That apart, the state is contractually obliged to provide brand new infrastructure, purified bulk water, fill up overhead tanks, and depute its staff to work under the private company and pay them too.

Questions of equity and universal access to water also disappear under the new regime; public taps that service the poor and vulnerable are removed because they do not generate a profit. Water tariffs are increased; irrespective of capacity to pay.

The American mission is also culturally significant. The deliberate use of terms like ‘water market' and ‘water trade' underlines the intention of transforming our traditional idea of water as a natural resource to that of a commodity to which your access depends on your ability to pay.

Record of failure

Private water companies have a long record of failure. In U.S. cities in the mid-19th century, they failed to maintain quality water services, and also neglected poorer citizens. These market failures have not changed since then, and are directly linked to the profiteering character of private enterprise. This was proven again the world over during the enforced neoliberal water privatisation experiments of the 1990s.

The visit of the Water Trade Mission changes the Indian situation completely. U.S. corporations clearly want to establish control over our water and to override those in India who want to uphold the character of water as a common good. Successful resistance to this will need the widest possible public knowledge so that water is prevented from being exploited for private profits at the cost of equity, ecological justice, and the rights of all peoples — present and future.

Kshithij Urs is the Regional Manager of Action Aid in Karnataka, a member of the peoples' campaign for right to water and the author of Resisting Reform: Water Profits and Democracy, published by Sage International.

2010-11-04T08:54:00.001-04:00

2010-11-04T08:52:00.001-04:00

Watch Out: The World Bank Is Quietly Funding a Massive Corporate Water Grab

By Scott Thill, AlterNet
November 2, 2010

Billions have been spent allowing corporations to profit from public water sources even though water privatization has been an epic failure in Latin America, Southeast Asia, North America, Africa and everywhere else it's been tried. But don't tell that to controversial loan-sharks at the World Bank. Last month, its private-sector funding arm International Finance Corporation (IFC) quietly dropped a cool 100 million euros ($139 million US) on Veolia Voda, the Eastern European subsidiary of Veolia, the world's largest private water corporation. Its latest target? Privatization of Eastern Europe's water resources.

"Veolia has made it clear that their business model is based on maximizing profits, not long-term investment," Joby Gelbspan, senior program coordinator for private-sector watchdog Corporate Accountability International, told AlterNet. "Both the World Bank and the transnational water companies like Veolia have clearly acknowledged they don't want to invest in the infrastructure necessary to improve water access in Eastern Europe. That's why this 100 million euro investment in Veolia Voda by the World Bank's private investment arm over the summer is so alarming. It's further evidence that the World Bank remains committed to water privatization, despite all evidence that this approach will not solve the world's water crisis."

All the evidence Veolia needs that water grabs are doomed exercises can be found in its birthplace of France, more popularly known as the heartland of water privatization. In June, the municipal administration of Paris reclaimed the City of Light's water services from both of its homegrown multinationals Veolia and Suez, after a torrent of controversy. That's just one of 40 re-municipilazations in France alone, which can be added to those in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and more in hopes of painting a not-so-pretty picture: Water privatization is ultimately both a horrific concept and a failed project.

"It's outrageous that the World Bank's IFC would continue to invest in corporate water privatizations when they are failing all over the world," Maude Barlow, chairwoman of Food and Water Watch and the author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Fight for the Right to Water, told AlterNet. "A similar IFC investment in the Philippines is an unmitigated disaster. Local communities and their governments around the world are canceling their contracts with companies like Veolia because of cost overruns, worker layoffs and substandard service."

The Philippines is an excellent example of water privatization's broken model. After passing the Water Crisis Act in 1995, the Philippines landed a $283 million privatization plan managed partially by multinational giants like Suez and Bechtel. After some success, everything fell apart after 2000, and it wasn't long before tariff prices repeatedly increased, water service and quality worsened, and public opposition skyrocketed. Today, some Filipinos still don't have water connections, tariffs have increased from 300 to 700 percent in some regions, and outbreaks of cholera and gastroenteritis have cost lives and sickened hundreds.

"The World Bank has learned nothing from these disasters and continues to be blinded by an outdated ideology that only the unregulated market will solve the world's problems," added Barlow.

But asking the World Bank to learn from disaster would be akin to annihilating its overall mission, which is to capitalize on disaster in the developing world in pursuit of profit. Its nasty history of economic and environmental shock therapy sessions have severely wounded more than one country, and has been sharply criticized by brainiacs like Joseph Stiglitz, who was once the Bank's chief economist, and Naomi Klein, whose indispensable history The Shock Doctrine is a horrorshow of privatization nightmares. From its cultural imperialism and insensitivity to regional differences to its domination by a handful of economic elites drunk on deregulation, whose utter failure needs no further example than our continuing global economic crisis, the World Bank's good intentions have been compromised by an unending string of terrible press and crappier deals.

"In the past, the World Bank pushed privatization as the way to increase investment in basic infrastructure for water systems," said Gelbspan. "But since then bank officials have admitted that the transnational corporations don't want to invest in infrastructure, and instead want only to pare down operations and skim profits. The World Bank has lowered the bar, satisfied with so-called 'operational efficiency,' that cuts utility workforce, tightens up bill collections and shuts off people who can't pay."

That's been a recipe for failure and protest, especially in the very region that IFC and Veolia hope to pump for all its water worth. In 1998, World Bank loans were secured to upgrade the crumbling post-Soviet water system in Yerevan, a city in the Eastern European nation of Armenia. With a caveat: It had to be managed by a private contractor. The Italian transnational ACEA landed the job, but quickly failed to extend water access, partially thanks to company corruption. It also failed to properly maintain water pressure, allowing sewage to seep into the city's drinking water and sicken hundreds. Despite the travesty, the World Bank issued another contract in 2006 to Veolia, which hired ACEA's top executive. Two years later, only one in three Yerevan residents were lucky enough to score 24-hour water service, while contamination problems continued. Veolia's contract with the city is up for renewal in 2015.

The same goes for the Turkish city of Alacati, which landed a $13 million loan in the late '90s, as well as Veolia's incompetence. The city's water bills skyrocketed to 12 times the price of service in other parts of the country. Multiply that times most every nation or city that has privatized its water service, and you've got a good idea of why the World Bank's IFC is under fire for rapacious resource-snatching. And why the developing world is right to be wary of its good graces, although the World Bank can do good when it so chooses.

"The World Bank does not at all speak with one voice on their pro-privatization stance," Darcey O'Callaghan, Food and Water Watch's international policy director, explained to AlterNet. "One staff member referred to it as a bad experiment that has been proven wrong, while higher staffers try to take a more nuanced position, claiming that the Bank is neither for or against privatization but simply promotes the most appropriate model for specific communities. Unfortunately, our own statistics have shown that regardless of their statements, 52 percent of their projects between 2004 and 2008 promoted some form of privatization."

But rather than repair privatization's failed project at its source, the World Bank is simply spinning off its compromised philosophy to the IFC. So while the World Bank may be torn in its endorsement of water privatization, the IFC has no such reservations, in hopes of dodging the slings and arrows of public outcry, and perhaps legal liability.

"What's really scary," O'Callaghan added, "is that we are increasingly seeing the International Finance Corporation pick up where the Bank has left off in water privatization. The IFC is a Bank-sponsored institution whose goal is to promote the private sector, and because their financing also comes from the private sector, they can be more difficult to hold accountable. Worse yet, according to our 2000-2008 stats, 80 percent of IFC loans had gone to the four largest multinational water companies, further concentrating the global water industry."

It's not just water that's at the center of Earth's mounting resource wars. In late October, Britain's government announced it was looking to sell off its state-owned forests to counteract a yawning deficit. Today, natural gas companies are preparing to drill in America's national parks. Indeed, America and Britain's bungled occupation of Iraq is a protracted resource war for control of the embattled nation's oil reserves. Water is just one more natural resource, albeit the most important one, worth a killing to those seeking to callously leverage limited funds for innocent lives.

"Droughts and deserts are spreading in over 100 countries," Barlow said. "It is now clear that our world is running out of clean water, as the demand gallops ahead of supply. These water corporations, backed still by the World Bank, seek to take advantage of this crisis by taking more control over dwindling water supplies."

Which is another way of saying that, regardless of the refreshing trend toward re-municipalization, no one should expect the World Bank or its IFC untouchables to give up the privatization and deregulation ghost anytime soon. That means that every city, and citizen, is due for a day of reckoning of some sort, and should fight back against the bankrupt privatization paradigm with everything in its arsenal.

"Get involved at the local level," O'Callaghan said. "Know where your water comes from. Fight against privatization schemes. Promote conservation. Don't drink bottled water."

And Barlow adds,

"The only path to a water-secure future is water conservation, source water protection, watershed restoration and the just and equitable sharing of the water resources of the planet. Water is a commons, a public trust and a human right and no one has the right to appropriate for profit when others are dying from lack of access."

2010-08-08T04:51:00.003-04:00

The CLEAR Act: They Are Stealing It All -- Land, Water, Minerals and the Air We Breathe

By The PPJ Gazette
August 5, 2010

Another assault on the American public is under way; this one will enlarge and increase the power of the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management to such a degree that none of us will be safe from these corrupted and unlawful corporate federal agencies operating under the public deception; “a public service agency.” These are in fact, duly authorized and chartered private corporations which have long since ceased to function as public services, if in fact they ever did.

Those who ramble through the halls of the District of Criminals -- who claim they have no time to write the bills, no time to read the bills -- somehow found the time to vote to pass this federal, land, asset and natural resource grab, including water rights, through the House. The bill now rests in the Senate, where there is little chance that the property rights of individuals or states will survive.

HR.3534, Consolidated Land, Energy and Aquatic Resources Act of 2010, will effectively render a greater amount of land as owned or controlled for profit by the federal government, along with minerals and water rights, to now be controlled by the federal government and enforced through the BLM.

The Clear Act claims control of the oceans, Great Lakes and, by extension, many other waterways and freshwater resources, mineral mining, solar, geo-thermal, and gas and oil, conducted on land or in the oceans, in, on or near the continental United States. This bill passed the House on August 4, 2010. All of this as a result of the BP Oil gusher; like we didn’t already have thousands of unused laws on the books to deal with this.

Along with expanded control of land and water, all mineral leasing in any state would now be controlled by the BLM, depriving the states of much needed revenue and the right to conduct their own business. And guess what!? We get the creation of more corporate federal agencies empowered to write their own laws and to conduct enforcement in the name of the new agencies, and against the individuals and states.

Sect: 101 Creation of New Department of the Interior Agencies

“The Bureau of Energy and Resource Management;” to be housed in the ubiquitous Department of the Interior.

Now bear in mind, the “resources” the bill alludes to exist within the geographical boundaries of the states, or exist on the coastal waterlines, and rightfully belong to the states and their residents.

(I smell Jim Oberstar’s (D) MN, great stinking mess called the Water Restoration Act, which would seize all water from any source whatsoever, including dried up lake beds and the rain off your roof, and claim it as owned by the federal government.)

Yup! That’s what we need, another damn federal agency, incorporated and working against the people. The truly sad part of this is, there are far too many mercenary Americans who will happily ignore what they know to be violations of individual and states rights, and who will perform these assaults against other Americans, with vigor. These people need to be shunned from our communities.

The CLEAR Act would establish a monthly auction in which fuel producers would bid for “carbon shares.”

And this is how you pass Cap & Trade without calling it Cap & Trade. Even our recent research into the invasive species of Kiri trees slated to be planted across northern Nevada revealed the added caveat of claimed “carbon credits.”

The Cap & Trade Act would do nothing to curb pollution and instead would simply allow polluters to buy access to increase pollution. It’s a cash cow and one that will adversely affect every household in the country. Higher energy costs that would be totally unregulated would force many families out of their homes; there would be no “credits” for individuals -- just for corporations! And thanks to the CLEAR act, we now have a back door “Cap & Trade.”

Carbon credits issued to corporations could be traded and sold to other polluters, creating a cash flow for the sellers of credit and extended pollution credits to those companies who cause the greatest harm to the environment. There would be no reduction in the level of harmful emissions. It is far cheaper to buy unused credits from another company than to go through the process of paying fines and penalties or actually reducing the amount of emissions.

Every U.S. citizen would receive a monthly check from the government. A household family of four would receive a rebate from the government totaling an average of $1,100 per year or $21,000 between 2012 and 2030.

Nothing like throwing in some cash incentives to get the American public to go along with this theft of states rights and the overwhelming control of land, ocean and waterways to be performed under new bureaucracies whose main functions would be to abrogate individual and states rights. And just so you know: If you cash the check…..you have agreed to the contract stipulated in the CLEAR Act: the right of the federal government to seize your states assets and sell them for profit even if it causes you harm.

Included in this latest theft of state-owned assets, and of assets as owned by the nation at large, are these special provisions:

Section 4. Fossil Carbon Limitation

This bill also includes a safety valve for carbon share demand. If the maximum price is reached in any one auction, the number of available carbon shares may be increased to exceed the aggregate quantity in order to ensure that all legal bids at that price are accommodated for that auction. However, these excess carbon shares must be redeemed within 90 days, and all derived revenues from this safety valve auction are deposited in the Clean Energy Reinvestment Trust Fund (CERT Fund) to be used exclusively to curtail the emission of non-carbon greenhouse gases and other climate-affecting substances, such as black carbon, or to fund domestic and international projects to reduce, avoid or sequester emissions through agriculture, forestry, and land use practices (emphasis mine).

Here is where the “cow fart tax” will most likely be implemented.

The bulk of the CLEAR act is simply the creation of new bureaucracies and seizing of states assets and natural resources. The bill simply lays the framework for the enlargement of the Department of Interior, the Bureau of Land Management and, not surprisingly, the Coast Guard*.

With the federal government now claiming it “owns” or controls 64% of all lands west of the Mississippi -- in direct violation of the Constitution, which prohibits the central government from owning property other than forts, bases, and other necessary structures within the sovereign states -- this latest bill is just one more reason to declare the House and Senate a threat to the life and viability of the nation.

History has shown us that allowing the federal government to usurp states in the management of their natural resources has produced massive environmental damage. The eleven westernmost states are riddled with more than 550,000 abandoned mines which have resulted in sink holes appearing spontaneously across these states. The holes fill with groundwater that is polluted beyond reclamation with mercury, sulfur, selenium and other toxins at levels so incredibly high, the water cannot be used, ever. And this is just one aspect of this environmental damage that goes on daily under the direction of the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Land Management. The only thing this department and agency are managing is the theft of resources belonging to the people and the transfer of profits, at any cost, to the government.

The CLEAR Act is nothing more than a system of taxation, fines, fees, penalties and royalties perpetrated by theft of land, water and natural resources from the states. More on this bill as we get into other sections.

*As of 2003, and citing the 1944 provisions, the Coast Guard ceased to be a civil service agency and is now a military branch and is designated by Homeland Security as the “national police” force and empowered to perform police functions not only on the water, but also on land.

Note http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/14C1.txt

2010-07-29T05:46:00.001-04:00

Private Property Rights at Stake

The Clean Water Restoration Act (S.787) is a dangerous infringement on private property rights. It would require farmers and ranchers to obtain permits for common, everyday operations, like driving a tractor near an irrigation ditch or grazing cattle near a mud hole.

By The National Cattlemen's Beef Association
April 2009

What is the Clean Water Restoration Act?

Currently, waters under the jurisdiction of the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) are defined as "navigable waters of the United States." Other waters are subject to regulation by individual states, which are better equipped to manage their own unique geographical concerns.

The Clean Water Restoration Act would remove the word "navigable" from the definition, thereby drastically expanding federal regulatory control over all wet areas. In addition, it would grant sweeping authority to regulate all “activities” affecting those waters.

This would amount to a massive land-grab by the government, not to mention an infringement on Americans’ constitutional rights to own and manage property without undue interference from the government.

Unprecedented Expansion of Federal Authority

The Clean Water Restoration Act for the first time would give the federal government broad power to regulate all waters, including:

* Ponds
* Small and intermittent streams
* Creek beds
* Drainage ditches
* Mud holes

All would be subject to federal regulation, including areas that only contain water during snow melts or the rainy season.

Reduces our Ability to Keep Important Waters Clean

Cattlemen don’t oppose efforts to keep our waters clean—in fact, we rely on clean sources of water to feed our animals and nurture our land.

The Clean Water Restoration Act would actually hamper the government’s ability to maintain clean waters. They are already struggling to handle a backlog of 15,000 to 20,000 permit requests.

At a time when our resources are already stretched thin, it is ridiculous to expand the government’s responsibility to mud holes and other wet areas with little to no environmental value to the public.

2010-07-29T04:28:00.003-04:00

Senate Approves Bill to Redefine the Power of the Clean Water Act

The White Mountain Independent Online
July 28, 2009

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick is continuing her "Defending Arizona Values" campaign by fighting against big government, as she announced her opposition to a bill (S.787: The Clean Water Restoration Act) greatly expanding federal water regulation.

The bill would remove a critical limitation on the reach of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (commonly known as the Clean Water Act), allowing Washington to infringe on property use by farmers, ranchers and small businesses across the district, Kirkpatrick's office said in a press release.

The bill eliminates the Clean Water Act's critical requirement that regulated waterways be "navigable," which would give the government the ability to police everything from creeks that run through farms to standing water in ditches, the press release said, adding that federal officials and courts would be able to hold up activities that do not affect any actual rivers or lakes.

Kirkpatrick feels this bill's goals can be accomplished by enforcing laws already on the books...

"In our communities we support clean water running through our creeks, streams and springs, but we do not support federal regulation that would make things tougher for folks in Greater Arizona... This sort of legislation is exactly why folks in Greater Arizona feel Washington is out of touch with our values. We understand the need to protect our water supply better than any Washington bureaucrat, and we know how to take care of ourselves. I am working hard to make sure that more of our leaders at the national level understand that."

"The Arizona Farm Bureau thanks Rep. Kirkpatrick for opposing this legislation. We all support clean water, but this legislation puts all water under federal control," said Kevin Rogers, president of the Arizona Farm Bureau. "It could require me to get a federal permit to clean out an irrigation ditch on my farm. It goes too far."

Fed Moves to Control All the Water in the U.S.

By Nancy Matthis, American Daughter
May 10, 2009

A bill to “clarify the jurisdiction of the United States over waters of the United States” has been introduced in the Senate — S.787, the Clean Water Restoration Act. To read the text of this bill, we recommend using the Open Congress version, which allows you to post citizen comments. Alternatively, the Library of Congress copy is here.

Draconian interpretation of government control of U.S. waters in the earlier Clean Water Act had been somewhat limited by Supreme Court decisions.

The bill was introduced by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI). His remarks before the Senate on the occasion of introducing the bill are here. In his opening statement, Feingold made it clear that his purpose was to recover the Orwellian power that had been impaired by the judiciary by means of legislation:

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to restore Clean Water Act protections for the same waters that were covered by the Act prior to two recent divisive U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

Here is an enumeration of the waters included:

WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES - The term ‘waters of the United States’ means all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds, and all impoundments of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters, or activities affecting these waters, are subject to the legislative power of Congress under the Constitution.

Congress justifies its power to meddle in every aspect of American life through the “commerce clause” in the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3):

The Congress shall have Power … to regulate Commerce … among the several States….

The founding fathers only intended that Congress should provide a level playing field for interactions between and among the states. In stark contrast to this original intention stands the extension of “waters” to include “all … intrastate waters and their tributaries. The language of this bill enables Congress to come onto a private family farm and dictate what a farmer can do with his duck pond, or even with his cistern, which might conceivably be emptied into a ditch that might eventually flow into an intermittent stream!

In short, Congress has the power to prevent any citizen from relying on natural sources of drinking, cooking and bathing water, and water to sustain a home garden.

This legislation, combined with the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, means that every United States citizen may only eat and drink at the pleasure of the government. Of course, most “reasonable” folk will assume that, although the government has this stranglehold on our lives, it will not actually be used for such a purpose.

As German history shows, the extent of governmental social engineering depends on who is in power. Recall that Hitler was elected, and for a time, very popular.

The more fundamental question is whether we are willing to give government such power over us, in the naive expectation that a government proven incapable of protecting us against food-borne salmonella can provide us with adequate food and water safety.

Do we want to take responsibility for assuring our food and water safety ourselves, as informed consumers, or do we want to trust a failed bureaucracy to protect us, at the sacrifice of our fundamental freedom?

Oppose Federalization of All Waters of the U.S.

Public drinking water supplies, such as those in towns and cities, are governed by state and federal regulations designed to insure safe, clean water for consumers. Unlike those whose water quality is governed by the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act, rural residents must insure that their own water supplies are clean and safe. No regulations exist to govern the levels of contaminants allowable in private wells, nor are there requirements for testing to be done on a regular basis. - Water Testing for Private Well Owners

EPA regulates public water systems; it does not have the authority to regulate private drinking water wells. Approximately 15 percent of Americans rely on their own private drinking water supplies, and these supplies are not subject to EPA standards, although some state and local governments do set rules to protect users of these wells. Unlike public drinking water systems serving many people, they do not have experts regularly checking the water’s source and its quality before it is sent to the tap. These households must take special precautions to ensure the protection and maintenance of their drinking water supplies. - EPA, Private Drinking Water Wells

Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
June 25, 2009

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced S. 787 on April 2, 2009. The bill, known as the Clean Water Restoration Act, would redefine the government’s control over water. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the Clean Water Restoration Act (S. 787) by a vote of 12-7 on June 18, 2009. As described below, this bill would place virtually all the waters of the United States under federal control.

U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is a ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and has recently issued a warning against the passage of S. 787. The legislation is the "biggest bureaucratic power grab in a generation," Inhofe said.

Since Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) moved to put a hold on S. 787: it cannot be voted on the Senate floor until at least 60 Senators vote to remove the hold. This adds an additional step to the process so the bill can't be rushed through. Hopefully this will force more Senators to read the bill and gain even more opposition to its passage.

Among other things, S. 787 would amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (enacted in 1972) by striking the term “navigable waters” from the bill and replacing it with “waters of the United States.” What does that mean to you? Simply put, it would federalize virtually every water deposit (including private wells) in the nation, placing restrictions on landowners and, therefore, threatening both private property rights and states' rights.

Chilling New Law Gives U.S. Government Ownership of All Water in Nation

By Sorcha Faal
May 8, 2009

Russian Military Analysts are reporting in the Kremlin today that the United States is preparing to take over the ownership of all of the water within its borders away from its citizens and states and outlaw its use except as allowed by its Department of Homeland Security in a move these analysts say will have a ‘chilling effect’ upon these once free people.

According to these reports, the top elite military-political and corporate classes currently ruling the United States ordered the introduction into the US Senate this past week on April 2nd a new law called the Clean Water Restoration Act (S.787 IS) to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act):

by striking 'navigable waters' each place it appears and inserting 'waters of the United States'
and then adding:

WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES - The term 'waters of the United States' means all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds, and all impoundments of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters, or activities affecting these waters, are subject to the legislative power of Congress under the Constitution.'

Russian legal experts in these reports state that no other Nation or Empire, in all of modern history, has sought to impose such a draconian law upon its peoples without it being a part of a much larger plan intended to subjugate them into total submission to the State's will.

Russian military experts, however, point out that in a World where the most precious commodity for human life is growing more scarce by the year, water must be looked at as a national, not private, resource subject to the control of the state for the benefit of all and not just those owning its legal rights...

To how the American people will react to this new grab for power by their government it is not known, other than to point out the fact that these people are growing more desperate by the day with new reports from the US showing that in the first three months of 2009 alone, they have bought enough guns to equip the armies of both China and India combined, and are continuing to ‘run into gun shows’ in panic buying of weapons and ammunition.

But, to the most nefarious motives behind this latest move by the US Government to take all of its nations waters away from its citizens, it can be best understood by the US representatives to this past March’s World Water Forum in Turkey where they were ordered by the Obama Administration to “remove language declaring water as a human right,” and which begs the common sense question:

If these Americans don’t believe water, which a human being will die within days if deprived of, is a human right, what exactly do they believe is one?

The answer to that question is, and most sadly, that the only rights remaining to the once great American people are those robbing them of their wealth for the benefit of their government, military, propaganda news media and corporate masters to whom they will now have to beg on hands and knees for even the merest sip of water to sustain their lives.

Their forefathers must be turning over in their graves in utter shame of the slaves they have truly become.

2010-07-29T03:18:00.000-04:00

Not So Private Property?: Clean Water Restoration Act Raises Fears of Land Grab

Fox News
December 14, 2009

Upwards of 40 percent of all land in the United States is already under some form of government control or ownership -- 800 million to 900 million acres out of America's total 2.2 billion acres.

The government now appears poised to wield greater control over private property on a number of fronts. The battle over private property rights has intensified since 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Kelo v. City of New London case that the government could take property from one group of private landowners and give it to another.

Outraged over that ruling and a series of recent efforts by government to wield greater control over private property, citizens are fighting back. Fox News' Shannon Bream takes a fair and balanced look at the controversy in a three-part series.

The Clean Water Restoration Act currently pending in the U.S. Senate could reach to control even a "seasonal puddle" on private property.

Eleven senators and 17 representatives in the U.S. House have sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasting the measure as one of the boldest property grab attempts of all time.

This bill is described by opponents as a sweeping overhaul of the Clean Water Act that could threaten both physical land and jobs by wiping out some farmers entirely.

"Right now, the law says that the Environmental Protection Agency is in charge of all navigable water," said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Western Caucus and an opponent of the bill.

"Well, this bill removes the word 'navigable,' so for ranchers and farmers who have mud puddles, prairie potholes -- anything from snow melting on their land -- all of that water will now come under the regulation of the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency," he said. Barrasso said the federal government's one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work in the west where the Rocky Mountain states have gone even further than Washington to protect land, water and the environment.

"The government wants control of all water -- that also means that they want control over all of our land including the private property rights of people from the Rocky Mountain west, the western caucus and the entire United States," he said.

But Jan Goldman-Carter of the National Wildlife Foundation said fears by ranchers and farmers are unfounded.

"That amended language is very clear that it preserves long standing exemptions for ongoing agricultural practices, forest roads. There are a number of very generous exemptions in there particularly for ranchers and farmers that I know have been worried about the effect of this legislation, but in fact those worries are largely unfounded," she said.

Goldman-Carter added that the United States has long regulated streams and other waterways that aren't 'navigable' by boat because to do otherwise would be to allow dumping into smaller water sources that lead to the larger ones used for drinking water and other purposes.

"I can't imagine anyone wanting to walk down to the stream and dump their oil or paint," she said. "Even if they did they're not going to be enforced against now and they never were, there simply isn't the ability to do that."

Aside from striking "navigable," the bill defines U.S. water as "all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds and all impoundments of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters."

It adds that any "activities affecting these waters are subject to the legislative power of Congress under the Constitution."

The legislation, introduced by Wisconsin Democratic Sen Russ Feingold, has the support of 24 senators. It passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in June but has not been scheduled for a floor vote, though it could be tacked onto other legislation as an amendment.

Click here to read the bill.

2010-07-28T17:08:00.000-04:00

National Ocean Council

The new National Ocean Council’s goals are based on its 32-page report... The stated goals of the Council include regulating investments, collaborating with unidentified international agencies, controlling public access to oceans and “protecting” ecosystems. This means that commerce and trade will be controlled by the Council, the UN will gain power over American oceans and the Great Lakes through UN subagencies, public access will be limited and the Endangered Species Act will be unleashed with heavy regulations... The targeted areas for Endangered Species Act regulations are the the Great Lakes, the Gulf Coast, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, South Florida and the San Francisco Bay (the Bay Delta is where the irrigation water for farmers was was cut off using the Endangered Species Act, causing food shortages, an increase in food imports and massive economic devastation). While this report does not clearly outline how the National Ocean Council’s schemes will be financed, regulatory permits for all activity on the water and mining (oil) leases will play a part, along with tax increases. The report does indicate that grants and assistance programs will be available so that state, local and tribal authorities will support the Council’s “efforts.” In other words, the Council will try to buy off the state and local governments to “collectively use” them for a base of support and influence.

By Cassandra Anderson, Infowars.com
July 28, 2010

Thirty states will be encroached upon by Obama’s Executive Order establishing the National Ocean Council for control over America’s oceans, coastlines and the Great Lakes. Under this new council, states’ coastal jurisdictions will be subject to the United Nations’ Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST) in this UN Agenda 21 program. America’a oceans and coastlines will be broken into 9 regions that include the North East, Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, the Gulf Coast, West Coast, the Great Lakes, Alaska, the Pacific Islands (including Hawaii) and the Caribbean.

Because of the decades of difficulty that the collectivists have had trying to ratify the Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST), Obama is sneaking it in through the back door, by way of this Executive Order establishing the Council. Because LOST is a treaty, Obama’s Executive Order is not Constitutional as treaty ratification requires 2/3 approval from the Senate. Michael Shaw said that the Agenda 21 Convention on Biodiversity treaty of 1992 failed to pass Congress so it was executed through soft law and administratively on local levels, and Obama’s Executive Order is a similar soft law tactic to enact the LOST treaty.

In fact, our Constitutional form of government is being completely destroyed because buried in the CLEAR Act (HR 3534) there is a provision for a new council to oversee the outer continental shelf- it appears that this Regional Outer Shelf Council will be part of the National Ocean Council. This means that if Congress makes the CLEAR Act into law, then the implementation of the UN Law Of Sea Treaty, as part of the National Ocean Council’s agenda, will be “ratified” in a convoluted and stealth manner, in full opposition to the Constitution and its intent.(1)

The excuse for this extreme action is because of the emergency in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama and Congress have always had the legal and military power to force BP Oil to take all necessary action to stop the gusher and clean the oil spew. While there is evidence that the problems in the Gulf have been a result of collusion and planned incompetence, it begs the question, why in world should America’s oceans and resources be controlled by Obama appointees? ...

THE SMOKING GUN:

Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is the overarching blueprint for depopulation and total control, and the National Ocean Council is clearly an Agenda 21 program:

The National Ocean Council is headed by John Holdren, an avowed eugenicist which is selective breeding through brutal means like forced abortion.

The National Ocean Council’s own report (Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning) incorporates a section of the 1992 Rio Declaration which is an original Agenda 21 document!

In fact, the report says that it will be guided by the Rio Declaration in cases “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” This means that regulations will be imposed even if the science is not understood or if the science is based on global warming manipulated data.(6)

The 3 primary tools of Agenda 21’s phony environmentalism are global warming, water shortages and the Endangered Species Act; the National Ocean Council intends to exploit all of these tools to their full extent.

The National Ocean Council’s main objective is to sink American sovereignty through the United Nations Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST) with the intended result of domination by the UN over our coasts and the Great Lakes. LOST originated in the 1970s as a wealth redistribution plan to benefit Third World countries. LOST sets rules for commercial activity beneath the high seas and establishes new international bureaucracies and a tribunal to interpret and apply rules to sea activity. And LOST can proceed with those rules, even against US objections! LOST threatens to complicate deep sea mining. LOST sets a precedent that US rights are dependent upon the approval of international entities. LOST also extends to ocean flowing rivers. (7)

REGIONALISM:

Michael Shaw pointed out that non-elected councils are increasingly expanding their jurisdiction through air quality boards, water quality boards, sewer systems, transportation districts, metropolitan planning, etc. to gain control over resources. Often, large corporations and financial interests form Public- Private Partnerships with the government within these councils.

Breaking areas into regions and placing authority with non-elected councils is a Communist trick used to hijack resources, thereby usurping local and state power by re-zoning the areas that do have Constitutional authority. Appointed bureaucrats are untouchable because their jobs are not dependent upon serving the voting population. And they are usually inaccessible to the public and do not have to face those who are affected by their “insider” decisions. When state and local governments become corrupt, the public is able to confront them eye to eye, but distant bureaucrats can avoid accountability. Regionalism is used as a psychological tactic to intimidate state legislatures into creating the system for a new political and economic order. (8)

Obama’s Executive Order that has created the 9 new regions amounts to re-zoning, and his appointed bureaucrats are answerable only to him. In David Horton’s testimony in 1978 on regionalism, he said that the State of Indiana made this declaration, “Neither the states nor Congress have ever granted authority to any branch or agency of the federal government to exercise regional control over the states.” Horton further stated that Congress holds all legislative power that is granted in the Constitution, as opposed to Executive Orders that are not legislative. Therefore, Obama’s Executive Order for re-zoning and appointing a governing body to usurp state and local power is Constitutionally invalid. (9)

The public must become aware of state sovereignty and the Tenth Amendment to demand that state and local governments assert these Constitutional laws and principles.

COASTAL AND MARINE SPATIAL PLANNING REPORT:

This is a general overview of the new National Ocean Council’s goals based on its 32-page report that uses indirect language and acronyms in order to confuse the public and local lawmakers. Depopulation advocates, globalists and collectivists, like John Holdren, faced opposition a few decades ago when they clearly expressed their objectives, so now documents are written in complicated and clouded language to fool those they wish to control. (10)

This report states that the Council’s jurisdiction will extend from the continental shelf to the coast AND additional inland areas will be involved. The National Ocean Council identifies “partners” as members of each regional planning body that will include federal, state, local and tribal authorities, with a top-down hierarchy of control.

The intentions of the Council are stated on page 8 of the report that include implementing LOST and other international treaties. The report also states that the Council’s plans shall be implemented by Executive Orders, in addition to federal and state laws. This section mentions ‘global climate change’ which is a new term substituted for ‘man made global warming’ after manipulated data and lies were exposed in numerous global warming scandals. ‘Climate change’ is blamed for sea level rise and acidification of oceans; evidence exists that these are global warming deceptions. (11)

The stated goals of the Council include regulating investments, collaborating with unidentified international agencies, controlling public access to oceans and “protecting” ecosystems. This means that commerce and trade will be controlled by the Council, the UN will gain power over American oceans and the Great Lakes through UN subagencies, public access will be limited and the Endangered Species Act will be unleashed, with heavy regulations. Incidentally, the Endangered Species Act is based on 5 international treaties. It has never had a successful result: of the 60 species that have been de-listed, not a single species was saved as a result of any restrictions stemming from the Endangered Species Act! (12)

The targeted areas for Endangered Species Act regulations are the the Great Lakes, the Gulf Coast, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, South Florida and the San Francisco Bay (the Bay Delta is where the irrigation water for farmers was was cut off using the Endangered Species Act, causing food shortages, an increase in food imports and massive economic devastation).

While this report does not clearly outline how the National Ocean Council’s schemes will be financed, regulatory permits for all activity on the water and mining (oil) leases will play a part, along with tax increases. The report does indicate that grants and assistance programs will be available so that state, local and tribal authorities will support the Council’s “efforts”. In other words, the Council will try to buy off the state and local governments to “collectively use” them for a base of support and influence.(pg. 28) Strings are always attached to federal money. The federal government and the Council are reliant on state and local governments for implementation through state and local legal authority, which means that state and local authorities hold the power to implement or refuse the Council’s directives, especially under the Tenth Amendment.

However, the report does state that disputes will be settled by consensus, if consensus fails, then the decisions will ultimately be made by the President. He is Commander in Chief of the Navy and has the power of the military behind him. Further, the report indicates that legislative changes and more Executive Orders may be necessary to achieve control.

An important point is made on page 5, which states, “Strong partnerships among Federal, State, tribal and local authorities, and regional governance structures would be essential to a truly forward-looking, comprehensive CMSP effort.” This means that the states, local governments and tribes have power. Our collectivist government needs the consent of the state, local and tribal authorities, to implement this scheme, otherwise, the feds wouldn’t bother to include these Constitutional authorities. If the state, local and tribal authorities are aware of, and willing to act on their Constitutional authority, then they can limit this federal power grab through the Tenth Amendment.

The report further states that signing onto the Council’s plan would be an “express commitment by the partners to act in accordance with the plan…” (pg. 20) Therefore, it is imperative that all of the states be aware of the Council’s intended usurpation and carefully protect their Constitutional jurisdictions and sovereignty. There are 30 states that will be affected by this new council. (pg. 12)

The Council’s strategy plan will go into effect immediately, fully developing Agenda 21 objectives and undue UN influence within 5 years. Interestingly, one article said that if state, local and tribal authorities choose not to participate in in writing the plans, the plans would be written without them. Therefore, it bears repeating that state and local governments must protect their Constitutional authority when dealing with the Council. The Constitutional authority that states and local governments have can only be taken if the power is given away.

SAVING OUR COUNTRY:

If your freedom is important to you, the most effective action that you can take is to e-mail this article and Michael Shaw’s “Understanding Agenda 21 Sustainable Development” booklet to all of your State Legislators, County Commissioners/ Superintendents and City Council members.

Here is the the link for the Agenda 21 downloadable booklet:

http://www.freedomadvocates.org/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,127/Itemid,81/

Tell all of your friends, co-workers and neighbors about Agenda 21 Sustainable Development and how it is destroying our country. The National Ocean Council is detrimental on so many levels and the time to act is now. If state and local officials refuse to stand up against this federal incursion, they must be thrown out of office in favor of representatives who support the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment.

For more information about local action, visit www.FreedomAdvocates.org.

Visit www.MorphCity.com for a special video presentation on July 30th for an interview with a local official who upheld the Constitution against encroachment by the federal government.

2010-05-29T12:31:00.003-04:00

Agenda 21 Alert: Science and Sewage

Cassandra Anderson
May 29, 2010

Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is the overarching blueprint for depopulation and total control, using the environment as the excuse for that control. The three major tools that are used are:

— Global warming

— Water Shortages

— Endangered Species Act

In the case of the California Delta, man made water shortages have been imposed on farmers by way of the ESA (Endangered Species Act) for the last three years. Still, the Delta smelt populations have declined, despite the restrictions. While the federal government refused to acknowledge that the cause for the decline in smelt populations was due to up to 1 BILLION gallons of partially treated sewage being flushed into the Delta per day, they blamed the water pumps for the decline in smelt. Their disastrous solution was to cut the water flow to farmers (who supply our country with 50% of its produce and nuts), thereby increasing the water levels in the Delta to dilute pollution.

This didn’t work, smelt populations declined. In fact, California had a wetter-than-usual winter, and instead of allowing more water to be delivered to farms, when the Shasta Reservoir filled to its safe capacity level, the water was bled out into the Pacific Ocean. Due to mounting pressure against the corrupt Department of Interior and obvious waste of water, the federal pump’s water delivery was increased in some areas. Many allege that this was also in part due to Central Valley Congressmen Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa voting in favor of Obamacare in trade for water to the farm areas. Ironically, the farms were promised 25% of the amount of water that had been contracted (40% is what is needed to keep the farms viable). Further, the farmers were promised a delivery up to 25% but they were only guaranteed a 5% increase, thereby making it difficult for them to get loans because the farmers, in turn, couldn’t guarantee a harvest with only a 5% increase of water.

Last week, Patricia Gilbert, a professor of ecology and oceanography from the University of Maryland, concluded that the smelt decline was a result of high ammonium levels from urine and feces. Specifically, she cited that the pollution was coming primarily from Sacramento, which doesn’t fully process its sewage before it is dumped into the Delta. Dr. Patricia Gilbert was then forced to resign from the National Academy of Sciences panel. The Academy forced her resignation because she went public with the information, and they found it a conflict of interest for her to review her own work. This is incredibly hypocritical, given the profound conflicts of interest within the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences is a quasi-governmental agency, created during Lincoln’s administration. The Academy advises the government in scientific matters in order to set public policy and law. The NAS is also a tax exempt private corporation (they do not publish their financial records on their website, nor do they list their donors). NAS is subsidized by federal grants and other “contributions” from undisclosed donors. New members are elected by current members, thus ensuring cronyism, a depopulation agenda and fraud.

For example, some of the prestigious members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) include Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, Gene Likens and Frederick Bormann, and Mario J. Molina.

John Holdren (Obama’s current science czar) and Paul Ehrlich are rabid eugenicists -- supporters of selective breeding often through brutal means like genocide and forced sterilization, who co-authored ‘Ecoscience’, which advocates a “global police force” to enforce totalitarian measures of population control that includes forced abortions and mass sterilization programs conducted via the food and water supply, among other horrors. It is interesting to note that Ehrlich’s work also appears in the United Nations Agenda 21 Global Biodiversity Assessment Report.

Gene Likens, along with Frederick Bormann, invented acid rain. In 1980, the NAS predicted acid rain would double the number of acid-dead lakes within 10 years, so a $600 million dollar study by the US government, that spanned 10 years, discredited Liken’s theory. Dr. Ed Krug found that acidity in the Adirondack lakes was not caused by coal processing in Pennsylvania (as theorized by Likens) but by local plants and soil. Because of the enthusiasm of policy makers, this scientific scandal was hidden until 60 Minutes got hold of it and it became widely publicized. After awhile, people forgot about Liken’s and Bormann’s science fraud and acid rain regulations were written into the federal Clean Air Act. The EPA trashed Dr. Ed Krug’s career thereafter.

Mario J. Molina, a professor at MIT, won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating alarmism over the ozone hole in the Antarctic, for which he blamed CFCs (chlorofluorocarbon gases from refrigerants and aerosol products like hairspray). Freon refrigerants were vilified as a major cause of the Arctic ozone depletion. It later came to light that ozone over the Arctic cyclically thins for a brief period of time, and there is no hole. However, corporate-controlled policy makers rushed to ban freon because the DuPont patent was expiring on it, and DuPont would lose the monopoly because other companies could manufacture freon cheaply. DuPont did own a patent on an alternative product that was more expensive and more difficult to produce, so freon was banned.

There is an obvious lack of easily accessible information about who funds the National Academy of Sciences in addition to the US federal government; clearly, the ruling-elite monopoly owners have an overwhelming amount of ‘influence’. There is evidence of financial ties to the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation, who are cohorts in depopulation of the planet, as evidenced by the support of Rockefeller’s Population Council.

The lawsuit to save the California Delta smelt and to close down the water pumps, based on the corrupt Endangered Species Act, was brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council and is funded by the Ford Foundation (the annual budget is $87 million dollars). The California Delta smelt debacle is a model of how the globalists plan to create water shortages via the Endangered Species Act in order to pursue the objectives of Agenda 21 (depopulation and control). Therefore, science should be scrutinized.

Valid science is independent and does not have a political or economic agenda attached to it.

Valid science considers ALL data, as opposed to ignoring that which does not fit in its paradigm.

Valid science has reproducible results.

Valid science freely provides information to the public without the necessity of the Freedom of Information Act.

The good news: Federal Judge Oliver Wanger ruled on May 25, 2010, that the biological opinion, provided by the National Marine Fisheries Services, a sub agency of the Department of Interior, failed to consider the impact that turning off the federal pump (owned by the Department of Interior) had on humans. Therefore, he allowed the pump to be reactivated at 40% -- enough to irrigate farms until June 15th, and then the case will be revisited. It is important to remember that the Department of Interior also determines which species are ‘endangered’.

While there are many good scientists out there, when public policy is concerned, or an economic agenda is at stake, we can see what happens to them as evidenced by Dr. Ed Krug and Dr. Patricia Gilbert. The NAS wanted to wait until Fall 2011 to issue their recommendation on the Delta issue, but now their advice is becoming irrelevant. In fact, this is a perfect model of how we can rid ourselves of tyranny. Because Dr. Patricia Gilbert took her results public, which clearly pointed the finger at the sewage issue, a condition that can be easily remedied, the Academy’s scientific edict may no longer matter. We can win against environmental tyranny through exposure -- it worked with ‘Climategate’, and it is unfolding in the Delta right now. Massive exposure of fraudulent science is an effective way to end Agenda 21; when respect for authority (of science) disappears, people stop following corrupt leaders.

2010-03-14T19:46:00.004-04:00

‘Peak Water’ Could Flush Civilisation

January 23, 2010

Irish Times - Forget peak oil. Forget climate change. Peak water is where it’s at, according to Scottish journalist and broadcaster, Alexander Bell, who has just written a fascinating book, Peak Water (Luath Press, Scotland).

“It’s the coming issue of our age,” says Bell. “Civilisation is thirsty. It has never stopped to think about what would happen if the water ran out.”

And while Bell acknowledges tackling climate change is important, he firmly states peak water would have happened with or without it ...

The idea of valuing water as a precious resource links right into the same issues raised by climate change.

In fact, the idea of an individual water footprint has already been raised. A water footprint encompasses the reality that we affect water beyond our borders when countries that have a short supply of water grow and make things that have a heavy demand on water.

Bell suggests that revaluing water across the globe would take a radical shift. He explains how, because water is growing scarce in traditional wheat-, rice- and maize-growing areas of the US, India and Pakistan, it should be possible that the wet north could replace production, in part.

He also suggests that the north European (and now North American) model of industrialised, liberal, capitalist society may be best suited to wet countries. Secondly, he suggests we are quite used to making naturally occurring materials such as coal or oil into assets, so why not water? There is already a price on water in some places but putting a price on water that changes people’s usage habits (both personal and agricultural) is a broader issue. Bell says:

“We should be the ones who build new houses with composting toilets and reed beds to clean the waste water. We should instigate rainwater collection on a large scale . . . We should ensure that more food is grown for local consumption. The wet world should grow vital food for the dry world.”

Bell also brings up the widely held belief that the next wars to be fought in the world will be over water. In fact, he states that such wars have already occurred in some places – for example, between Pakistan and India. And the investment bank Goldman Sacks has dubbed water the petroleum for the next century.

“With the Cold War over and the threat from mass nuclear deployment apparently gone, we have switched our fears to a water war,” he writes.

According to Bell, what both threats show is that we fear our capacity to self-destruct (many would argue that much of the rhetoric around climate change comes from the same place).

He adds: “the reality of changing our water use is colossal. It calls for a new kind of civilisation built on global co-operation. The penalty for not doing this will be widespread social chaos.”

2010-03-14T16:39:00.008-04:00

Food Security Threat: Goverment Set to Ban Public Fishing, Individual Food Production

By Mac Slavo, SHTFplan.com
March 10, 2010

In yet another example of government overstepping its bounds, the Obama administration is preparing to ban fishing in coastal areas around the country, as well as the Great Lakes and other inland water resources:

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.
That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.
“When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to end one of the best scientifically managed big game hunts in North America (spring bear), the results of their agenda had severe economic impacts on small family businesses and the tourism economy of communities across northern and central Ontario,” said Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano.
“Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored.
“In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President’s concern for jobs and the economy, and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority.”

Banning “recreational” fishing isn’t just an issue of economics, but is a threat to the personal liberty of each individual’s right to produce their own food. And banning fishing is just one of several policy changes the government is looking at.

In Federal Food Police Coming Soon To A Farm Near You, Tess Pennington points out the risks of letting the government oversee individual food production methods under HR Bill 875 and The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which specifically target agricultural goods, including crops and livestock on personal, non-commercial farms:

What is to stop the government from defining a small home garden as a food facility? Because of the vagueness of this bill, it is not only the micro farmers that are affected by this. Anyone who has a garden, or shares their produce with neighbors or even owns a local restaurant that supports local farmers and buys their produce could be affected. We could all be affected and pay the price dearly for not speaking up. Many say that this bill is unconstitutional in that state rights will be stripped away. If passed, the state cannot go in and take care of the problem. It is a federal issue, thus will have federal repercussions.

Slowly but surely, the federal government is moving towards eliminating the ability of individual Americans to produce their own food -- a direct attack on our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

For an administration with so much focus on “sustainability” it is ironic that they are attacking the very core of the sustainability movement -- the individual. As more restrictions on the public are cemented through use of Congressional mandates and Presidential Executive Orders, the rights of individuals to take their well being into their own hands is further impeded.

Of course, under recent administrations, government is the answer for everything. The rugged individual or neo-survivalist is now becoming the fringe extremist. Why would someone need to produce their own food when they could drive down to the local Walmart or Super Target and pickup up all the genetically modified food they need, manufactured under pristine conditions in one of several centralized processing plants?

All of these proposed changes aimed at our ability to produce our own food seem to fall, in part, under the United Nations’ Agenda 21 initiatives, which are touted as “sustainability development” programs. It seems, however, that the UN’s ideas for sustainable living focus more on collectivists ideologies than they do on the individual.

Rather than teaching individuals to become self sustaining, the goal of the UN’s Agenda 21 initiative is for the government to provide sustainability to the population. And according to Michael Shaw, president of Freedom Advocates, Agenda 21 can be summarized by three points and are supported by the documents prepared by the United Nations.

The goals of the UN include the abolition of rural and suburban private property, global citizenship education, and population control. It sounds scary, perhaps even unbelievable.

But don’t take our word for it, read the Agenda 21 Core Publications at the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development.

Based on this evidence, it is important to note that it is not only Barrack Obama that is pushing for restrictions on your ability to fish, or grow food, or manage your own livestock for personal use. This is a global effort with the dictates coming from the United Nations, and it has been happening for several decades.

Terrorism against our food supply and unsanitary conditions during food production are only minor issues to our food security when compared to what may be the greatest threat facing sustainable living -- our very own government.

2010-03-02T02:51:00.003-05:00

Texas County Restricts Well Water

By Regina Dennis, Tribune-Herald
March 1, 2010

A few county water suppliers are concerned that water-pumping restrictions being set by the county’s groundwater management district will prevent them from being able to serve future water consumers.

Well owners will have to apply for permanent historic-use-production permits through the Southern Trinity Groundwater Conservation District.

The permits will grant each well owner a maximum amount of water that may be pumped each year based on the well’s historic water use and the total number of wells in McLennan County.

The county’s combined water usage must not exceed 20,194 acre-feet — about 6.6 billion gallons — of water each year, an allowance set by the Texas Water Development Board.

Purdis Medlin, president of the Levi Water Supply Corp. in the Lorena area, told the district’s board at its biweekly meeting last week that limiting well owners’ water usage to historic levels could leave them unable to meet water demands if any new development occurs.

“We have people that were planning on developing some land in our area. But I’m concerned that if all we get is [based upon] our historic use, then we won’t be able to issue any more meters,” Medlin said.

James Smith of the Texas Rural Water Association attended the meeting with Medlin.

Smith monitors the rules mandated by different groundwater-conservation districts across the state and said Medlin’s concerns are shared by numerous other small water suppliers.

“If there’s new development, there will be an increased need for water. But if the suppliers can’t exceed their historic use, what we’re looking at is how restrictive that may be in providing water to consumers,” Smith said. “I think it’s something that the districts will have to consider as this progresses.”

Possible solution

Al Blair, an Austin-based civil engineer who has served as a consultant for the district on its groundwater-management plan, said one solution is to have water suppliers apply for additional, nonhistoric use production permits. That would guarantee them more water for their customer base.

However, those permits will be awarded only after the historic-use permits have been issued.

“I think it’s too early in the process to make that claim, that there won’t be enough water,” Blair said. “What our goal is right now is we want to protect the water being used now.

“We want to protect it and make sure you maintain that water and that it is not diminished. Then I believe we may have some room after that to guarantee water providers additional water for their future use.”

Blair said the Texas Water Development Board also is likely to review those water allowances in the next five years. The board potentially could increase the amount of water allotted to each region and grant more water to well owners.

The water district will have a meeting at 6 p.m. March 18 at the Hewitt Community Center, 208 Chama Drive, to answer well owners’ questions about the permit application.

2010-02-05T19:49:00.004-05:00

Pennsylvania State Capital Mulls Bankruptcy as a Budget Option

By Dunstan McNichol, Bloomberg
February 4, 2010

Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, will consider Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection along with tax increases and asset sales as options to address $68 million in debt service payments due this year, the chairwoman of a City Council committee said last night.

Every option, including tax and fee increases, bankruptcy and a state takeover through Pennsylvania’s Act 47 municipal oversight program will be considered, said Susan Brown-Wilson, chairwoman of the Budget and Finance Committee, which began a week of hearings last night to consider a 2010 spending plan.

The $68 million in debt service payments that Harrisburg faces in connection with the construction of a waste incinerator this year is four times what the city of 47,000 expects to raise through property taxes, and $4 million more than the city’s entire proposed operating budget.

“We need to see, what does Act 47 do for us; what does bankruptcy do,” Wilson said in an interview during a break in the opening budget hearing at Harrisburg City Hall. “You have to have all of them on the table.”

Harrisburg skipped more than $3.5 million in debt-service and swap payments last year, prompting draws on reserves and back-up payments by Dauphin County, where Harrisburg is located. The county has sued the city to recover its payments.

Wilson was among five Council members who voted last year to reject a 2010 budget proposal by former mayor Stephen Reed, who left office last month after 18 years. The proposal would have attempted to cover the debt service costs by selling assets such as an historic downtown market, an island in the Susquehanna River that includes the city’s minor-league baseball stadium, and the city’s parking, sewer and water systems.

Selling Assets

The plan to raise $69 million by selling downtown features was reinstated last month by Linda Thompson, the newly elected mayor, in a substitute budget. The seven-member council has until Feb. 15 to approve a final 2010 budget.

Brown-Wilson said she would support leasing only city assets that don’t generate revenue, as the parking and water systems do.

Carol Cocheres, bond counsel for the incinerator’s operator, the Harrisburg Authority, told the city council at a Dec. 14 hearing that the city is already in danger of legal action for payments that were missed last year on $288 million in debt it has guaranteed with its full faith and credit.

“There’s never been a default like this in Pennsylvania municipal history,” she said. “This is all new territory.”

Risking Suit

Cocheres told council members that by skipping payments that are made on behalf of the authority, the city risks being sued and ordered to raise taxes or fees by Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp., formerly FSA Insurance, which has insured the bonds, or by the deal’s trustee, TD Bank.

City Controller Dan Miller, who was vice president of the council until January, has advocated bankruptcy as an alternative to selling assets.

Harrisburg’s credit rating was lowered two levels below investment grade to Ba2 by Moody’s Investors Service in October. The city faces a $164 million deficit over the next five years, mostly because of debt created by the incinerator, according to Management Partners Inc. of Cincinnati, a consulting firm hired to study the city’s finances as part of a state review.

2010-01-16T18:37:00.007-05:00

EPA's Plan to Set Water-Quality Standards in Florida, a National First

The Miami Herald
January 16, 2010

In a move cheered by environmental groups, the federal government on Friday proposed stringent limits on "nutrient'' pollution allowed to foul Florida's waterways.

The ruling -- which will cost industries and governments more than a billion dollars to comply -- marks the first time the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has intervened to set a state's water-quality standards.

"I'm thrilled,'' said Linda Young, director of the Clean Water Network, an advocacy group. "It is something that will ultimately start restoring Florida's waters.''

The agency issued the proposed regulations after reaching a settlement in August with five environmental groups that sued the federal government in 2008 for not enforcing the Clean Water Act in Florida.

The caps on phosphorus and nitrogen levels in Florida's lakes, rivers, streams, springs and canals would replace the state's vague "narrative'' approach to monitoring the effects of waste and fertilizer runoff, which the EPA deemed insufficient. The proposed rule includes provisions giving the EPA oversight authority to enforce the standards.

In Florida, 16 percent of rivers, 36 percent of lakes and 25 percent of estuaries are considered impaired, according to a 2008 report. Nutrient pollution is the most prevalent water-pollution problem in the state, contributing to algae blooms that kill fish and cause respiratory problems and infections among boaters and beachgoers. It also causes economic damage to property values, tourism and commercial fishing.

"New water-quality standards will help protect and restore inland waters that are a critical part of Florida's history, culture and economic prosperity,'' said Peter S. Silva, assistant administrator in the EPA's Office of Water, in a statement.

More than 10 years ago, the EPA told states to set limits on nutrient pollution.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection spent eight years collecting data and planned to present a draft proposal to a group of scientists and industry representatives last August. But the department abandoned the effort when the federal government interceded.

The EPA proposed standards based on geography and the type of water body using the state's data but its own methodology, which was reviewed by an independent authority, according to the 197-page report.

The agency's numbers don't deviate too greatly from what state regulators intended, though the federal standards are tougher when it comes to pollution in rivers and streams.

Take, for example, the Suwannee River basin: the state wanted to allow 1.730 parts per million of total nitrogen but the EPA set the number lower at 1.479 parts per million.

The EPA also went further than state regulators by proposing water-quality standards for South Florida canals and creating more rigid standards on upstream nutrient levels to protect downstream lakes and estuaries.

In other areas, the rules would give Florida flexibility by establishing a procedure for gradual compliance and allowing the state to set limits in certain areas.

Federal analysts estimated it would cost polluters $1.1 billion to $1.5 billion to comply -- but emphasized the state's draft proposal would have cost nearly the same amount. The cost estimates don't include the price tag for upgrading municipal stormwater systems.

A spokesman for Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Sole said the department was still reviewing the report late Friday and didn't have a response.

'WATER TAX'

But a coalition of agriculture and industry groups -- which formed two months ago to oppose the EPA rules -- responded quickly by calling the proposed limits a "water tax.''

"This terrible regulation is not needed because Florida nutrient standards are perfectly adequate,'' said Jim Alves, a lobbyist who represents power companies and wastewater utilities. "The science isn't there to do this regulation.''

Barney Bishop, the president of Associated Industries of Florida, said the cost -- which his group estimates at more than $50 billion -- would hurt business recruitment and job creation.

"It's onerous, stupid, ridiculous and idiotic,'' he said.

Ever since the lawsuit settlement, political officials and special interests have waded into the debate. Gov. Charlie Crist, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Bronson previously voiced strong objections and suggested the state might sue the EPA.

The issue is expected to generate intense political debate ahead of three public hearings throughout the state in February. The final rule takes effect in October.

2009-11-10T13:00:00.000-05:00

City's Water Problems Test Great Lakes Agreement

By Joe Barrett, The Wall Street Journal
November 9, 2009

WAUKESHA, Wis. - After studying its water woes for years, this former spa city of 68,000 has decided its best bet is to tap into Lake Michigan, 20 miles away.

But to get there, the city must pass through eight state capitals and get directions from two Canadian provinces, then it must route the treated water back. Waukesha must also win over skeptics in nearby Milwaukee, where it wants to buy the water.

"Everybody knows better than us how to solve our water problems," says Dan Duchniak, general manager of Waukesha's water utility, which plans to apply for the water through a new compact designed to protect the Great Lakes for generations to come.

As water becomes a bigger issue around the globe, Great Lakes states have moved aggressively to protect their most precious natural resource. A little over a year ago, President George W. Bush signed the Great Lakes Compact, which forbids any diversion of water outside the Great Lakes basin, the area where surface water flows into one of the lakes.

Places like Waukesha, which sits just outside the basin but within a county that straddles its edge, can apply for the water, but any of the Great Lakes states can veto the application. Ontario and Quebec also can weigh in. The compact is designed to assure that the door isn't wide open for thirsty cities outside the basin to drain the lakes.

If this first application isn't handled properly -- or ends up in a lengthy legal dispute -- the compact itself could come under fresh scrutiny.

"It's about the precedent," says Rich Bowman, director of government relations in Michigan for the Nature Conservancy. "Does Waukesha set a precedent that then allows Phoenix to say, 'You did it for Waukesha, you ought to do it for us?' That's what everyone is ultimately concerned about."

Waukesha, once called the Saratoga of the West for its spring waters and resort hotels, is today a mix of old and new neighborhoods surrounding a historic downtown.

The city's water troubles started in the 1980s, when the Environmental Protection Agency tightened its standards for radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element. After battling unsuccessfully against the regulation, Waukesha agreed to come into full compliance by 2018, under a deal with state officials.

When Mr. Duchniak was hired in Waukesha in 2003, his task was to study long-term options while tackling some near-term challenges.

The city gets most of its water from a 2,200-foot-deep aquifer that runs beside Lake Michigan from southern Wisconsin to northern Illinois. Overpumping has lowered the aquifer's level near Waukesha as much as 600 feet. As the water level in the aquifer fell, radium and sodium levels rose.

Mr. Duchniak responded by gutting an old pumping house in a historic neighborhood and converting it into a radium-treatment facility. The utility also drilled shallower wells to tap into ground water, diluting the radium from the deeper wells.

He pushed for a new water-rate structure, restrictive sprinkler laws, and rebate programs for residents to update their fixtures -- among the best conservation programs in the state, said Melissa Malott of Clean Wisconsin, an environmental group.

Mr. Duchniak considered several options to meet the city's water needs and allow for modest growth. The city looked at recycling its waste water, damming the Fox River and turning to the springs that once made Waukesha famous. But besides tapping into the lake, Mr. Duchniak said the only viable option is to buy up land and water rights to the city's west.

With a plentiful water supply in Lake Michigan and the ability to recycle the water back into the lake, "Why go develop some other area?" he asks.

So the city is forging ahead with its application to secure its water from the lake, preferably through Milwaukee's water system, which has excess capacity. The $78 million project would involve about 30 miles of pipes -- one bringing in lake water via a Milwaukee treatment plant and a second delivering treated waste water to a stream that leads back to Lake Michigan.

Ms. Malott of Clean Wisconsin praised the city's "thoughtful process" under the compact rules but said the application would be scrutinized heavily.

Milwaukee officials also are uneasy about using the city's water system to help another community grow.

"There will be pushback," says Milwaukee Alderman Robert Bauman.

He wants to be sure any deal rewards his city financially and fosters cooperation on issues like transportation.

Mr. Duchniak says Waukesha is preparing studies on the environmental impact of the project. He also says the city expects to pay Milwaukee about $2 million in annual water fees.

Waukesha expects to have its application before governors of the Great Lakes states by early summer. While he is optimistic about the city's chances, Mr. Duchniak says Waukesha is prepared to go to court if the application is turned down "for the wrong reasons."

2009-10-13T16:09:00.004-04:00

Water Wars: Mr. Universe Poses as a Populist

By Cassandra Anderson, Infowars
October 13, 2009

On Thursday, October 8, 2009, Arnold Schwarzenegger strong armed the California State Legislators to agree to a package to ‘fix’ the state’s aging water system, by threatening to veto over 700 bills on his desk. He has since backed down and called a Special Legislative Session.

Arnold pledged he would not take in special interest money, but he has accepted over $129 million dollars to date.

The parties who will determine the water package are the “Big 5″, which includes Arnold, Karen Bass (D), Derrell Steinberg (D), Sam Blakeslee (R),and Dennis Hollingsworth (R). At this time negotiations are secret and it is unclear whether the Peripheral Canal (with an estimated cost of $8 to $ 14 billion dollars) will be included.

Could this be Agenda 21 Sustainable Development on steroids, regarding the potential financial fiasco and new regulatory committees that will cause California to go on dialysis?

Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is happening in your community, too. Ask any builder whether it is more difficult now to get permits than it was prior to 1992. Ask any local realtor about zoning and land use changes in rural areas. Find out if your major water sources are privatized or owned by the federal government.

No one is demanding accountablility for the federal government’s ‘ownership’ of 48% of California’s usable water; instead, the focus is on collecting more water as opposed to efficiently using what is available.

The Peripheral Canal would siphon water from the Sacramento River and would circumvent the Delta. It appears that the biggest complaint in the Delta is pollution, however, it seems that urban pesticide runoff,agricultural pesticide and artificial fertilizer runoff and up to one billion gallons of partially treated sewage is not being addressed.

Arnold is pushing to have the agreement hammered out within one week. If the Legislators can come to an agreement, the proposed package will then hearings in both state houses, committees and a final vote that will require a 2/3 majority vote.

The voters of California will then be presented with a choice on funding the bonds for the new facilities and/or improvements.

Is Arnold a Populist, dedicated to the citizens’ interests, or is he a collectivist, committed to special interests? To answer that question, you may recall this photo of Arnold with banker Jacob de Rothschild and Warren Buffet:
http://www.911omissionreport.com/people_in_charge.html

You may recall Arnold entered into a Public Private Partnership (PPP), with funding from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, co-funders of the Peripheral Canal report. This PPP is ostensibly to ‘protect’ crucial water supplies. (http://gov.ca.gov/press-release/10760/).

You may recall Arnold pledging that he would not take in special interest money, but he has accepted over $ 129 million dollars to date.

2009-10-07T20:06:00.003-04:00

Water Wars: Corruption! Collusion! Scandal!

Cassandra Anderson, Infowars
October 7, 2009

The world is immersed in a dark bureaucratic nightmare, while lulled by the dream of a green sustainable future. This can be best illustrated by the Hegelian Dialectic, when simplified, is described as Problem > Reaction > Solution, wherein a Problem is created with an ulterior motive, a Reaction is provoked as a result of the Problem, and a predetermined Solution is then implemented. In the case of the California drought, the federal government created the Problem by cutting off water to farmlands, which has led to water shortages, dying farms and rampant unemployment. Now that a crisis has been established, people are beginning the Reaction phase, and looking for the Solution.

The predetermined Solution appears to be building the Peripheral Canal, which would collect water from the Sacramento River, instead of the Bay Delta, home of the ‘threatened’ smelt and salmon, thus bypassing the Delta. As the Reaction blooms, attention will be focused on the exterior drama instead of the convoluted hidden liaisons of the power elite, and the ultimate goal of control over water and food resources.

The plot line of the big picture is to implement Agenda 21 Sustainable Development, and it’s not just happening in California; you can see it in your own community!

The California man made drought,which affects the American food supply, was caused by the federal government enforcing the Endangered Species Act, which has a rich history of robbing landowners of their rights. A closer look is warranted at the parties involved.

The lead Plaintiff in the water cut off is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a false environmental agency, with an $ 87 million dollar budget, funded by the Ford Foundation, which is infamous for their affiliation with eugenics during WWII. The NRDC is operating against freedom and toward control of the masses as evidenced by their website; the legislative bills that visitors are encouraged to support include the Clean Water Restoration Act, which could federalize all water and the Law of Sea Treaty which would hand over unprecedented power to the United Nations on American marine waterways. Further, the NRDC works with the UN World Bank, which is notorious for water privatization (1). The NRDC is a proud member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The IUCN was created by the UN (Sir Julian Huxley of UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, to provide a more scientific base), advises the UN and develops treaties. The IUCN is active in identifying endangered species and one of their members include the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which is the agency that has the power to list endangered species. The IUCN frequently collaborates with the UN World Bank.

Laurance Rockefeller is named on the Board of Trustees of the NRDC. His family and the tax exempt Rockefeller Foundation have created and financed countless UN agencies and programs. The Rockefeller Foundation has gifted grants to the UN Population Council, which has its roots in eugenics, the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) and the UN World Bank. Read the transcript from Senator Norm Dodds’ interview with G. Edward Griffin for more information on the traitorous Rockefeller and Ford Foundations (http://www.realityzone.com/hiddenagenda2.html).

The Robert Redford Building houses the NRDC office in Los Angeles, and he is on the NRDC Board of Trustees. Robert Redford incessantly promotes man made global warming (which is based on corrupt science from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control), as well as Sustainable Development which, through the UN Global Biodiversity Assessment report, advocates erasing humans from 50% of the landscape and massive depopulation. Further, he is on the Global Council on Awakening Arts and Entertainment, which is closely related to the Club of Budapest, a branch of the Club of Rome, an organization famous for writing that they would use pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages and famine to unite them, and then named humanity as the enemy (2).

The Solution supported for this manufactured crisis is the Peripheral Canal. The ’scientific’ report for the Peripheral Canal was funded by Sephen Bechtel and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (3)

The Bechtel Corporation is well known for privatizing a major water source in poverty stricken Bolivia after it had defaulted on a World Bank loan, and then they reportedly raised the water utility rates by over 50%. You can read a long history of their crimes and shoddy workmanship here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechtel). Interestingly, Stephen Bechtel served on the Board of Trustees for the Ford Foundation from 1961- 1970!

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the other sponsor of the Peripheral Canal Report, has ties with the Rockefeller Foundation’s eugenics movement and funded their Population Council, as did the Ford Foundation (4).

Arnold Schwrzenegger enthusiastically endorses the Peripheral Canal Solution; it is interesting to note that he has received $ 190,000 dollars in campaign contributions from Bechtel and $ 346,000 dollars from Hewlett Packard. Astonishingly, he has accepted over $ 129 million dollars in ‘donations’, with almost $ 5 million dollars from agriculture and farming and over $ 20 million from real estate, development and construction. He has been quoted as saying, "Any of those kinds of real, big, powerful special interests, if you take any money from them, you will owe them something" (5).

Arnold also entered into a Public Private Partnership (PPP) deal with the Northern Sierra Partnership to ‘preserve’ over 25 million acres of land that provides 60% of California’s water. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation gifted $ 10 million dollars toward this project. PPP’s are a tool of Agenda 21 Sustainable Development to control land use and water rights (6). Read this excellent article by Tom DeWeese for more details (http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=234).

Arnold does have the power, as Governor, with the State Legislators, to assert the 10th Amendment to eradicate federal intervention (as there is no provision in the Constitution for federal oversight of wildlife), to declare sovereignty and State ownership of the land and water, to reassess water usage allotment (48% is taken by the federal government for the environment), to keep the pumps running and to repair the entire water infrastructure of the State! Will he and the State Legislators do the right thing…..Or will he let the federal government control the water, food and people? Will he build the Peripheral Canal (at an estimated cost of $10 – $ 50 billion dollars) and allow it to be privatized by Bechtel? Or the Wold Bank? Or will he allow the federal government to finance it, from fiat money, and then take total control over it like they did with the CE Jones water pump?

The other zealous supporter of the Peripheral Canal is Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is in favor of allowing the Department of Interior to lead the State on the drought issue, which is ironic as the Department of Interior caused the drought, and it is a conflict of interest because they are being sued for the biological opinions that they provided. Watch this video and see her admit to not understanding what is going on (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaghV-OuU5k).

Feinstein is currently involved in turning more state land and resources over to the federal government by declaring a lake area in the Mojave desert into a National Monument from which no resources (like water) shall be extracted. The Wildlands Conservancy bought the acreage for $ 40 million dollars (6).

Interdependency of nations is on a fast track with our food and water supply. How long will we ignore Agenda 21 Sustainable Development and contribute to our own demise?

Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is a complicated, bureaucratic program by design! With a clearer understanding of what it looks like, it is easy to spot all around you. Watch this video with Michael Shaw to learn how to get rid of it in your State: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5cgOkwW23Y .

(1) http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/209/43398.html

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome

(3) http://www.calsport.org/7-19-08.html

(4) http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderprofile.asp?fndid=5268&category=79

(5) http://www.arnoldwatch.org/special_interests/index.html

(6) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2009/2009-09-18-091.asp

2009-10-01T01:44:00.002-04:00

Water Wars: Colossal Land Grab by the UN and the Feds

By Cassandra Anderson, Infowars
September 30, 2009

The Federal government, influenced by the United Nations, is stealing American land and resources as Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is implemented in all states. Sustainable Development seems appealing and desirable on the surface, but it is actually a plot to erase humans entirely from 50% of American land, with a ban on extraction of resources, like water!

Dr. Michael Coffman, the creator of the Agenda 21 map, covertly obtained secret United Nations documents he used to compile the map which illustrates the resource acquisition goals of the Globalists at the UN. While Sustainable Development appears to be benign, its accompanying Global Biodiversity Assessment report states that only one billion people can be sustained in an industrial society!

Agenda 21 “biological diversity” map

An example of this is playing out right now in California, regarding the man made drought. This situation affects every American, as California’s Central Valley supplies our country with 50% of its vegetable, fruits and nuts ( http://www.cdfa.ca.gov//, see the California Agricultural Statistical Review report). The federal Endangered Species Act, regarding the ‘threatened’ smelt minnow, is being used to severly restrict the water pump that delivers water from the Delta to the Central Valley farmlands, thus creating the drought condition. Both the federal Department of Interior and the federal Department of Commerce are claiming jurisdiction in order to control water resources.

California’s water usage is divided as follows:

48 % Environmental (federally regulated)
41 % Agricultural
11 % Urban

Interestingly, the subagencies of these two federal agencies that supplied the biological opinions are influenced by the United Nations. The UN was created in 1945, and the following year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was created by the UN to act as a scientific advisor. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, a subagency of the Department of Interior, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service, subagencies of the Department of Commerce, are memebers of the IUCN, and supplied the biological opinions. There are many lawsuits disputing the validity of these opinions.

The UN’s scientific advisor, the IUCN also counts the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) as a memeber. The NRDC is the lead Plaintiff in compelling the water cut off. It is important to note that the NRDC has a budget of $87 million dollars, and is funded by the “philanthropic” Ford Foundation. You can check out their website to see the bills they are promoting for ’sustainablility’, like the Clean Water Restoration Act (S787), which could put all water under federal contol, the Law of Sea Treaty that would give the UN incredible power over American marine waterways and the Global Warming Cap and Trade bill.

Further, this is an example of the “global to local” battle combining governmental and non governmental agencies to accomplish the objectives of Agenda 21, per Sustainable Development and legal expert Michael Shaw. The IUCN has many NGO’s as members including the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation and the National Audubon Society. Most people do want to support natural flora and fauna, but it is false environmentalism when the underlying intention is mass depopulation.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is an abomination, according to Michael Shaw, as it opens the door for federal authority over State sovereignty. The US Constitution grants the federal government no authority over wildlife! Under the Constitution, States have jurisdiction over essentially all land. Beginning in 1900, federal officials operating under the ‘commerce clause’ enforced federal law to gain authority over certain poaching activities. The adoption of the initial Endangered Species Act was in the 1940’s and the current Endangered Species Act of 1973 is based on a United Nations model! The Department of Interior is now in charge of listing species that they deem endangered or threatened- imagine the power in that. The dubious biological opinions have caused massive resource loss and economic upheaval. For instance, just this year alone, the water restrictions on the Delta have spilled over 600,000 acre feet of usable water into the Pacific Ocean!

Another example of federal intervention, according to Mike Henry at http://www.farmwater.org/, is the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992, which reduces water delivery or export by 1.2 million acre feet of water each year! Even when California has wet years, the amount of water allowed for delivery is still reduced by 1.2 million acres of water, despite the existence of more water; the amount delivered is based on contracts, not the water level, and the excess water flows into the Pacific.

There is even more federal intervention with the CW Jones pump that was built by the federal government. The pump will be paid off by 2030, yet the federal Bureau of Reclamation under the Department of Interior will still own and maintain it. It’s time to assert the 10th Amendment.

Michael Shaw encourages people to educate themselves, their communities and their state and local governments. You can find out more at his great website that also contains free downloadable information at http://www.freedomadvocates.org/.

Thanks to Dr. Michael Coffman, president of Sovereignty International at http://www.sovereignty.net/ and Mike Henry of http://www.farmwater.org/.

2009-08-05T09:25:00.000-04:00

Privatizing Water for Profit and Population Control

Reuters
August 5, 2009

French water distribution firm Lyonnaise des Eaux, a unit of GDF Suez, won permission from the European Commission on Wednesday to acquire six firms active in water collection, treatment and supply in France.

Lyonnaise des Eaux (LDE) is to buy shares held by Veolia Eau-Compagnie Générale des Eaux (Veolia Eau) in six subsidiaries owned jointly with Veolia Eau.

The executive arm of the 27-nation European Union said in a statement that its investigation had revealed the proposed deal would not harm competition in the markets concerned.

LDE and Veolia Eau have decided to sell each other their holdings in nine joint subsidiaries which they control together. At the end of the proposed operation, LDE will take sole control of six of these companies, the Commission said.

The transaction would not raise competition concerns given the limited market shares of the companies to be acquired, the Commission said.

2009-08-02T22:38:00.001-04:00

Could the EPA Be Building a Case for Strict Regulations on Private Wells?

Associated Press
September 24, 2009

CUTLER, Calif. – Over the last decade, the drinking water at thousands of schools across the country has been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxins.

An Associated Press investigation found that contaminants have surfaced at public and private schools in all 50 states — in small towns and inner cities alike.

But the problem has gone largely unmonitored by the federal government, even as the number of water safety violations has multiplied.

"It's an outrage," said Marc Edwards, an engineer at Virginia Tech who has been honored for his work on water quality. "If a landlord doesn't tell a tenant about lead paint in an apartment, he can go to jail. But we have no system to make people follow the rules to keep school children safe?"

The contamination is most apparent at schools with wells, which represent 8 to 11 percent of the nation's schools. Roughly one of every five schools with its own water supply violated the Safe Drinking Water Act in the past decade, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency analyzed by the AP.

In California's farm belt, wells at some schools are so tainted with pesticides that students have taken to stuffing their backpacks with bottled water for fear of getting sick from the drinking fountain.

Experts and children's advocates complain that responsibility for drinking water is spread among too many local, state and federal agencies, and that risks are going unreported. Finding a solution, they say, would require a costly new national strategy for monitoring water in schools.

Schools with unsafe water represent only a small percentage of the nation's 132,500 schools. And the EPA says the number of violations spiked over the last decade largely because the government has gradually adopted stricter standards for contaminants such as arsenic and some disinfectants.

Many of the same toxins could also be found in water at homes, offices and businesses. But the contaminants are especially dangerous to children, who drink more water per pound than adults and are more vulnerable to the effects of many hazardous substances.

"There's a different risk for kids," said Cynthia Dougherty, head of the EPA's Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water.

Still, the EPA does not have the authority to require testing for all schools and can only provide guidance on environmental practices.

In recent years, students at a Minnesota elementary school fell ill after drinking tainted water. A young girl in Seattle got sick, too.

The AP analyzed a database showing federal drinking water violations from 1998 to 2008 in schools with their own water supplies. The findings:

• Water in about 100 school districts and 2,250 schools breached federal safety standards.

• Those schools and districts racked up more than 5,550 separate violations. In 2008, the EPA recorded 577 violations, up from 59 in 1998 — an increase that officials attribute mainly to tougher rules.

• California, which has the most schools of any state, also recorded the most violations with 612, followed by Ohio (451), Maine (417), Connecticut (318) and Indiana (289).

• Nearly half the violators in California were repeat offenders. One elementary school in Tulare County, in the farm country of the Central Valley, broke safe-water laws 20 times.

• The most frequently cited contaminant was coliform bacteria, followed by lead and copper, arsenic and nitrates.

The AP analysis has "clearly identified the tip of an iceberg," said Gina Solomon, a San Francisco physician who serves on an EPA drinking water advisory board. "This tells me there is a widespread problem that needs to be fixed because there are ongoing water quality problems in small and large utilities, as well."

Schools with wells are required to test their water and report any problems to the state, which is supposed to send all violations to the federal government.

But EPA officials acknowledge the agency's database of violations is plagued with errors and omissions. And the agency does not specifically monitor incoming state data on school water quality.

Critics say those practices prevent the government from reliably identifying the worst offenders — and carrying out enforcement.

Scientists say the testing requirements fail to detect dangerous toxins such as lead, which can wreak havoc on major organs and may retard children's learning abilities.

"There is just no excuse for this. Period," said California Sen. Barbara Boxer, Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. "We want to make sure that we fix this problem in a way that it will never happen again, and we can ensure parents that their children will be safe."

The problem goes beyond schools that use wells. Schools that draw water from public utilities showed contamination, too, especially older buildings where lead can concentrate at higher levels than in most homes.

In schools with lead-soldered pipes, the metal sometimes flakes off into drinking water. Lead levels can also build up as water sits stagnant over weekends and holidays.

Schools that get water from local utilities are not required to test for toxins because the EPA already regulates water providers. That means there is no way to ensure detection of contaminants caused by schools' own plumbing.

But voluntary tests in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Seattle and Los Angeles have found dangerous levels of lead in recent years. And experts warn the real risk to schoolchildren is going unreported.

"I really suspect the level of exposure to lead and other metals at schools is underestimated," said Michael Schock, a corrosion expert with the EPA in Cincinnati. "You just don't know what is going on in the places you don't sample."

Since 2004, the agency has been asking states to increase lead monitoring. As of 2006, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found nearly half of all schools nationwide do not test their water for lead.

Because contaminant levels in water can vary from drinking fountain to drinking fountain, and different children drink different amounts of water, epidemiologists often have trouble measuring the potential threats to children's health.

But children have suffered health problems attributed to school water:

• In 2001, 28 children at a Worthington, Minn., elementary school experienced severe stomach aches and nausea after drinking water tainted with lead and copper, the result of a poorly installed treatment system.

• In Seattle several years ago, a 6-year-old girl suffered stomach aches and became disoriented and easily exhausted. The girl's mother asked her daughter's school to test its water, and also tested a strand of her daughter's hair. Tests showed high levels of copper and lead, which figured into state health officials' decision to phase-in rules requiring schools to test their water for both contaminants.

Many school officials say buying bottled water is less expensive than fixing old pipes. Baltimore, for instance, has spent more than $2.5 million on bottled water over the last six years.

After wrestling with unsafe levels of arsenic for almost two years, administrators in Sterling, Ohio, southeast of Cincinnati, finally bought water coolers for elementary school students last fall. Now they plan to move students to a new building.

In California, the Department of Public Health has given out more than $4 million in recent years to help districts overhaul their water systems.

But school administrators in the farmworker town of Cutler cannot fix chronic water problems at Lovell High School because funding is frozen due to the state's budget crisis.

Signs posted above the kitchen sink warn students not to drink from the tap because the water is tainted with nitrates, a potential carcinogen, and DBCP, a pesticide scientists say may cause male sterility.

As gym class ended one morning, thirsty basketball players crowded around a five-gallon cooler, the only safe place to get a drink on campus.

"The teachers always remind us to go to the classroom and get a cup of water from the cooler," said sophomore Israel Aguila. "But the bathroom sinks still work, so sometimes you kind of forget you can't drink out of them."

2009-08-02T21:25:00.000-04:00

Next Target Is Your Water Footprint

London Times
September 13, 2009

Environmentally conscious consumers already fret about how to cut their carbon emissions. Now Whitehall officials plan to urge the public to reduce the amount of water they use because of worries about the West sucking up supplies from some of the world’s driest countries.

The government has commissioned research to audit everyday items from a morning cup of coffee to a bag of carrots according to the volume of water used in their production. Eventually products could be labelled with this number.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which has set up a water footprint steering group, wants to broaden public awareness of climate change to include water supplies.

Defra believes consumption could be cut if shoppers were aware of how much is used to produce common items. A takeaway latte, according to figures already gathered by officials, requires 200 litres (44 gallons) to grow the coffee beans, transport them and serve the coffee in the cup. It takes another 2.5 litres to make the plastic lid for a takeaway latte. A cotton T-shirt with a slogan on the front uses an estimated 4,000 litres.

The new research will assess items both for how much water they use and for the impact on the country where they are produced. This could mean, for example, that a product imported from a dry country would be rated worse than one from a place where water was plentiful...

2009-08-02T20:47:00.001-04:00

Democratic vs. Corporate Control of Water: A Fight for Survival

Published By Public Citizen

Perhaps the greatest theft of common resources facing humanity and the planet today is the corporate takeover of the world’s water. Global capitalists argue that our water scarcity problems will be solved by turning water into an economic good – a commodity to be controlled by global corporations and sold to the highest bidder in international markets. Yet who really believes that corporations, whose very purpose is to increase profits for their shareholders, will improve water conservation, help get clean water to those in need, and provide a water secure future for all of us?

Every crisis provides an opportunity. The world’s fresh water crises may be the most critical area of concern for global justice advocates. The fight to protect the global commons – particularly the world’s precious freshwater sources – is a fight for planetary survival that takes its lead from communities in the Global South where the fight against privatization of water has already become a life or death struggle. The movement for direct democratic control of our most precious resource – water -- has the potential to unite the vast majority of people against the forces of corporate greed. It’s not too late to assume collective responsibility for our shared water heritage and spawn a new legacy of responsible, ecologically and socially sustainable, stewardship of our watersheds, but we must act now.

The World Is Running Out of Freshwater

Despite the seeming abundance of water on this planet, less than one half of one percent of the earth’s water is able to support human life. The rest is trapped in oceans and polar ice. A modern legacy of factory farming and flood irrigation, the building of mega-dams, toxic dumping, wetlands and forest destruction, and pollution and urban sprawl has rapidly depleted the world’s limited supply of fresh water. Already, over one billion people lack access to clean water and 2.5 billion people don’t have adequate sewage and sanitation services. Consequently, over 2,112,000 people – mostly children – die annually from diseases such as diarrhea and cholera.

To add to the threats facing the planet’s lifeblood, while the world’s population increases yearly by 85 million new people, per capita water use is doubling every twenty years. This insatiable thirst is being driven mainly by modern industrial farming and manufacturing, which consume respectively 65% and 25% of water used by humans. But humanity is paying the price for the exploitation of this essential resource. By 2020, two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to lack access to clean water if the current development continues.

Conflicts over scarce water supplies threaten to destabilize entire regions and are likely to define the next century in much the same ways that conflict over oil have in recent times. Hotspots where water reserves are dwindling include the Middle East, Northern China, Mexico, California and almost two dozen countries in Africa. Israel, for example, is threatening to re-ignite war against Lebanon if the Lebanese government carries out its plans to tap a tributary of the Jordan River, which is a major source of Israel’s scarce water.

Similar border disputes between the U.S. and Mexico over the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers, which are so over-tapped that they no longer empty into the sea for weeks at a time, may soon escalate as well. In the free trade zones along the US-Mexico border, water is a precious commodity, delivered weekly to many communities by truck or cart. Clean water is so scarce that children are forced to drink expensive soft drinks or bottled water to avoid serious health risks. For the first time in history, more people now live in cities than in rural areas, so the demand for drinking water in urban centers threatens to tap water supplies traditionally earmarked for agriculture, creating a food security crisis.

Profiting from Planetary Misery

Transnational corporations see this water scarcity crisis as a huge profit-making opportunity. If corporations control the limited supplies of an element that no one can do without, they stand to gain untold fortunes. Water is the new oil. In 2001 the water services industry, dominated by just a handful of corporations, made close to a trillion dollars in profits, which is substantially more than the pharmaceutical sector and almost 40% of the oil industry’s revenues. "Water is the last infrastructure frontier for private investors," says Johan Bastin of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Selling water to the highest bidder will only exacerbate the worst impacts of the world water crisis.

Throughout history, societies have viewed water as a sacred, common heritage to be protected and shared. In fact, only 5% of the world’s water is now privately controlled. Because of its vital nature, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights recognizes access to water as a basic right of all people. The World Health Organization has identified clean water as the single most important factor in determining public health. For centuries, governments have invested public resources in constructing water and sanitation infrastructure in order to deliver safe and clean drinking water. Outbreaks of water born diseases such as typhoid and cholera were nearly eliminated from the Americas after public water utilities were developed in urban centers.

In the United States, for example, 85% of the population receives water from taxpayer-subsidized, publicly owned and operated utilities. Unfortunately, after decades of neglect and mismanagement, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated, in the late 1990's, at that time it would cost approximately $375 billion to repair and upgrade decaying water and sewage infrastructure over the next 20 years.

Corporations and investors are ramping up a concerted, multi-pronged effort aimed at forcing governments to privatize public services and to commodify water in the global commons. Already, much of England and France have privatized water systems. The result has been rate increases, deteriorating service, loss of local control and increased corruption. Since water services were privatized in France, customer fees have increased by as much as 150%. A number of public officials have been convicted of accepting bribes from companies bidding on public service contracts and sentenced to time in prison.

Private corporations seek to increase profit margins by cutting costs; hence lay-offs and inferior services almost always accompany privatization. In England, private companies fired nearly 25% of the work force, approximately 100,000 workers, when they acquired rights to the water system. Delays in service and accidents routinely follow the firing of often the more experienced personnel. Since 1999, Thames Water, the largest water and wastewater company in England, has been convicted of environmental and public health violations two dozen times and fined roughly $700,000 after allowing raw sewage to flow into open waterways, over streets, onto people’s lawns and over children’s toys—even into people’s homes.

The same multinational corporations aggressively taking over the management of public water services around the world are now vying for the lucrative U.S. market, one of the world’s largest with annual revenues estimated at $90 billion. A change to the U.S. tax code in 1997 opened the way to greater private sector involvement in the U.S. water delivery and treatment business. Companies are now able to bid on 20-year contracts that include the operation, design of new plants or upgrades, maintenance and even complete transfer of ownership of water systems to the private sector.

Until now, mainly small public utility operators have controlled the U.S. water industry. In rural areas, small, privately owned utilities were common, but multinational corporations are rapidly buying even these out. These companies have weaseled into venues like the U.S. Conference of Mayors where they peddle privatization as a simple, cost-saving solution to cities’ aging infrastructures and regulatory compliance headaches.

On a global scale, water privatization is being pushed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in dozens of financially-strapped countries, where global water conglomerates are dramatically raising the price of water beyond the reach of the poor and profiting from the Global South’s search for solutions to its water crises. Corporations, such as Vivendi, Suez, RWE and Bechtel, cherry pick the profitable urban water systems while letting shantytowns and rural areas fall by the wayside.

The World Bank has made privatization of urban water systems a condition for receiving new loans and debt cancellation. In Ghana in 2001, the World Bank required urban water rates to be increased 95% to prepare for privatization by making the water system appear more lucrative for international bidders. Following these rate increases, a number of people were jailed for being unable to pay their water bills. Many people who live in urban slums without access to tap water pay even higher prices for water delivered by private tanker truck operators. The poor, particularly women or girls whose traditional duties include collecting water, and babies suffer considerable hardship, illness and even death when they are forced to consume unsafe water after public supplies become too expensive.

Water for All, Not for Sale

All hope is certainly not lost. The fight to protect the world’s water from corporate control is well underway and rapidly gaining new ground. Powerful, vibrant social movements against water privatization have gained a number of key victories in countries including Bolivia, Argentina, Nicaragua, Ghana, South Africa and the United States.

In August 2002, the Nicaraguan National Assembly became the first parliament in the world to suspend private profit making in the use of water. Nicaragua has faced the privatization of its banks, telecommunications and electricity plants, but when the government, at the behest of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, began to push for the privatization of the major hydro-electric plants and the water utilities in the country, the people of Nicaragua drew the line in the sand. The Nicaraguan anti-privatization law sets an important precedent across the Americas.

In Cochabamba, Bolivia, thousands of workers, peasants, farmers, and students soundly rejected water privatization by ousting Bechtel in 2001 after the company raised water rates by up to 200% and began taking over local wells. This heroic battle was not without grave consequences, leaving one young man dead, and a number of wounded. Bechtel – a company that made $14 billion in profits in 2001, nearly double Bolivia’s entire GDP -- is now using an investment treaty to sue the Bolivian government for $25 million in estimated lost profits. The case is being heard not in a domestic court in Bolivia, but in the World Bank’s secretive International Court for Settlement of Investment Disputes based in Washington, DC. Hundreds of social and environmental justice groups and pro-democracy organizations have called on Bechtel to drop this egregious suit.

South Africa is at the heart of the international movement to demand access to clean and sufficient water as a fundamental human right. Coalitions such as Anti-Privatization Forum and Soweto Electricity Crises Committee are organizing against the illegal cutoffs of water and electricity in poor townships. South Africa is the only country to guarantee basic water rights to every person in their national constitution. Yet more than 10 million residents have had their water cut off since the government implemented a World Bank-supervised cost recovery program. More than 100,000 people in Kwazulu-Natal province became ill with cholera recently after water and sanitation services to local communities were cut off for nonpayment. Privatization has also involved the installation of pre-paid water meters – a technology that was legally outlawed in England.

The Real Solutions are Clear and Simple

The solutions to the world’s water scarcity crises are readily available: expand public and community controlled water utilities, repair dilapidated water systems, save water by installing drip irrigation systems rather than flooding, stop polluting existing supplies, increase water conservation, reclamation and watershed management just to name a few. None of this will happen if corporations are permitted to turn the global commons into profit playgrounds.

If we allow the commodification of the world’s fresh water supplies, we will lose the capacity to head off the impending water crises. We will be condoning the emergence of a water elite that will determine the world’s water future in its own interest. In such a scenario, water will go to those who can pay the most, not to those who need it. This is a scenario we cannot afford.

In the United States, organizations such as Public Citizen’s Water for All campaign are helping communities to fight the privatization of water services and corporate takeover of water supplies. They are also uniting the U.S. movements with other countries that are fighting against many of the same corporate actors to keep their water safe and protect water as a human right. This is a global movement that is just beginning to flex its power and develop new strategies to protect the global commons.

This movement shares the views that water is a common good and access to water is an inalienable human right. Water belongs to the Earth and all species and must not be treated as a private commodity to be bought, sold and traded for profit. Because the global water supply is a shared legacy, protecting it is a collective responsibility – not the responsibility of a few shareholders.

The Meaning of Privatization

Published By the State Environmental Resource Center
Overview of Privatization of Water Utilities in the U.S.
Historically, about half of U.S. water systems were privately owned. That number decreased after World War I due to the availability of government financing.

According to the National Association of Water Companies, the proportion of water services in the United States provided by private water companies, whether measured by customers served or volume of water handled, has remained close to 15 percent since World War II.

In 1995, private- or investor-owned water supply utilities accounted for about 14 percent of total water revenues and for about 11 percent of total water system assets in the United States.

While municipal water in the United States has been traditionally viewed as a public resource, private management and ownership are on the upswing, particularly by international companies. The market is now estimated at $2.5 billion per year.

The French and German conglomerates have been expanding the market of water management services in the United States.

Corporate Players

The European companies that specialize in the privatization of water services have bought America’s largest private water utilities. United Water Resources was purchased in 2000 by Paris-based Suez, the world’s largest water company. Vivendi, the second-largest French water giant, bought U.S. Filter in 1999 and became a member of the powerful U.S. Coalition of Service Industries through its subsidiary, U.S. Filter. On January 10, 2003, RWE, a German utility conglomerate, purchased American Water Works, which serves 15 million people in 27 states and three Canadian provinces and is the largest publicly-traded water company in the United States.

European-based utility giants have been bidding aggressively for new contracts to run American water systems. American Water Works, bought by RWE, now controls Illinois-American Water Co. U.S. Filter, owned by Vivendi, treats sewage for Oklahoma City and New Orleans, supplies drinking water to Tampa and Indianapolis, and recycles Honolulu’s wastewater. Suez treats sewage for Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Springfield, Massachusetts, and supplies drinking water for Pittsburgh, Hoboken, New Jersey, and Plainfield, Indiana, through its United Water subsidiary.

Private water companies are pushing for legislation to require cash-poor municipal governments to consider privatizing their waterworks in exchange for federal money. From 1995 through 1998, the water utility industry, its employees, and their political action committees, spent less than $500,000 on campaign contributions. But in the last two election cycles from 1999 to 2002, campaign spending more than tripled to roughly $1.5 million. More than half of the sector’s campaign spending came from two large New Jersey-based companies, United Water and American Water Works, both of which are owned by foreign private water companies.

Federal Trend Toward Privatization

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have asked for less federal regulation in deference to more state independence, and states have become more comfortable in outsourcing to the private sector certain activities that were once wholly the province of municipal government.

In 1996, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report that identified the need for improvements in the U.S. water infrastructure. By 2001, bipartisan legislation to fund these projects had been introduced in Congress. It required utilities for the first time to consider alternate management options, including private partnerships, before they receive federal money.

In 1997, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) extended the privatization contract limits to 20 years, which encouraged private water companies to begin expanding their operations in the United States. Liberalization of federal tax laws has helped encourage private participation in the operation of publicly-owned plants that were funded by public bonds or grants. Industry representatives are now pushing for even more incentives to use the tax code to increase privatization activity, especially in the water area.

State Trend Toward Privatization

From 1988 to 1997, the rate of privatization in the U.S. increased by more than half. In the name of smaller government, states will likely consider numerous privatization schemes in the next few years.

Reluctant to raise rates, local officials seek private partners to share the financial burdens of upgrading treatment plants and monitoring for a growing list of regulated contaminants.

Cities have viewed privatization as an option for many years. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more, joined with the Washington-based industry group, the National Association of Water Companies, to lobby the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to change language in the tax code that penalized cities with loss of tax-exempt status if they contracted private companies for more than five years.

Long-Term Water Contracts and State Actions

The number of water systems that are operated under long-term contracts by private companies has grown from approximately 400 in 1997 to about 1,100 today. Urban utilities can now enter into contracts of up to 20 years for the operation of such systems under liberalized federal tax laws. Vivendi and Suez secured 20-year, billion-dollar contracts in some of America’s largest cities, including Atlanta and Indianapolis. Cities from Camden, New Jersey, to Stockton, California, also have contracted or are looking to contract with these companies.

Privatizing Water: The Profit Stream

By Hugh Jackson, Las Vegas Review-Journal
February 29, 2004

You've got to hand it to Oscar Goodman. Most mayors go to the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting and get lobbied by companies. Oscar, ever the clever one, used the meeting to let his kid's company lobby the mayors.

What's more, face time with a national collection of muckety-mucks who control purse strings usually doesn't come as cheap as the price of a rented room and a few drinks.

In fact, it's not Las Vegans who should be upset with Oscar. It's the multitude of corporate citizenry who get in the same room with all those mayors the old-fashioned way -- dishing oodles of money to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. They probably think Oscar and his kid are poachers.

See, the conference has what it calls a "Business" Council, but which should be called a corporate council, in that nearly every one of the 84 members is a large, publicly-traded corporation. Each of them pays $12,000 a year to belong to the council, and some of them fork over more than that to sponsor and support periodic shindigs like the one Oscar and his kid were attending in Washington.

And perhaps nobody has hooked up tighter with the conference than the European conglomerates on a mission to -- drum roll please -- privatize water.

The three big ones are Suez, RWE and Veolia. They belong to the conference Business Council under the names of their U.S. subsidiaries, United Water, American Water Works, and USFilter, respectively (though USFilter changed its name to Veolia Water a few days ago). They've tried to control water and charge too much for it in nations around the globe, but it hasn't worked out like the companies hoped -- it's been a big fiasco, mostly. So in the past few years the companies have focused on the United States, because ... you know, that's where the money is.

But 85 percent of the water that pours from a tap in the United States is delivered by a publicly owned and operated system, and polling shows overwhelming support for publicly-funded water systems. How's a corporation going to convince a city to hand over control of its water?

By schmoozing mayors. For instance, at January's conference meeting in Washington, Veolia footed the bill for mayors to film video presentations to be available at the U.S. Mayors Web site. The program was an extension of the "Meet the Mayors" database long-sponsored by Veolia and prominently featured in the upper right corner of the usmayors.org homepage.

And the schmoozing, apparently, works. Atlanta entered into a private water contract during the administration of then-mayor Bill Campbell, a former conference committee chair and key voice on behalf of the organization's congressional lobbying efforts. New Orleans began spending money on a privatization process under the administration of then-mayor Marc Morial, a former conference president. Stockton, Calif., privatized its water system under Mayor Gary Podesto, a prominent member of the conference's industry-sponsored "Urban Water Council" who credits the conference for turning him on to the wonders of water privatization.

But while schmooze works, privatization hasn't. Atlanta got out of its contract four years into a 20-year pact when it became clear that the private company could deliver brown water but not the promised financial savings. New Orleans has dropped $6 million in six years, only to learn that it's still impossible to tell if privatization will save any money, and the privatization process has stalled. Stockton officials sidestepped a public referendum and rammed privatization down the throats of an unwilling citizenry, only to have it thrown out in court for failing to account for environmental impacts of the deal.

Coming up empty in big cities and larger towns, the water privateers are now heading for smaller communities, like the Village of Hempstead, N.Y. If cities such as New Orleans and Atlanta have trouble obtaining credible, timely information from these companies and holding them accountable, it's frightening to think about how corporations might run roughshod over small towns. Oh, the mayor of Hempstead Village, by the way, is the current president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The conference does some decent work -- a couple years ago, at the height of the congressional fight over White House designation of Yucca Mountain as the planet's one and only nuke dump, it adopted a resolution opposing nuclear waste transportation.

But the conference has also been infiltrated by corporations who actually work against the interests of the nation's cities: the big water corporations want Congress to make it harder for cities to get federal water infrastructure assistance, in an effort to put even more financial pressure on cash-strapped cities so they'll be forced to scramble for wild-eyed solutions like privatization.

So perhaps Las Vegans have a beef with Oscar after all. The next time he attends a conference meeting, instead of shilling for his kid he should make himself useful and ask his colleagues from around the country what the hell they think they're doing sucking up to companies that want to control people's water and turn it into a profit stream. Oscar's a persuasive guy. Maybe he can help stop the corporate water privatization push before it comes to a town near you.

Henderson resident Hugh Jackson is a researcher and policy analyst for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

2009-08-02T19:10:00.000-04:00

Water and Wages Illustrate a Partisan Divide

By Michael Teitelbaum, CQ Politics
March 15, 2009

"The water companies have also dramatically increased their lobbying and federal election campaign spending. In Washington, they have already secured beneficial tax law changes and are now trying to persuade Congress to pass laws that would force cash-strapped municipal governments to consider privatization of their waterworks in exchange for federal grants and loans. Government and industry studies have estimated that U.S. cities will need between $150 billion and $1 trillion over the next three decades to upgrade their aging waterworks." - Bill Marsden, Cholera and the Age of the Water Barons, February 3, 2003

The House passed legislation March 12 reauthorizing $13.8 billion over five years in wastewater treatment grants and loans as part of a broader $19.4 billion package of water quality measures.

The bill passed, 317-101, after the House rejected a Republican amendment, 140-284, to strip language requiring contractors to pay prevailing wages. The bill (H.R. 1262: Water Quality Investment Act of 2009) included five water quality bills that separately passed the House in the last Congress.

Although the bill enjoyed solid bipartisan support, there was vigorous debate over an amendment by Connie Mack , R-Fla., that would have removed a provision applying the Davis-Bacon Act (PL 88-349) to projects receiving federal funding.

Davis-Bacon — a Depression-era law that enjoys union backing and is a lightning rod for Republican opposition — requires contractors on federal projects to pay prevailing wages. The water bill would extend that requirement to state and local projects receiving grants or loans through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund...

The underlying bill would reauthorize the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which provides low-interest loans and grants to local communities for construction of wastewater treatment facilities, for the first time in 15 years.

It would provide $300 million each year through fiscal 2014 in state management assistance and $100 million in annual grants to nonprofit organizations to provide technical and management assistance in improving wastewater treatment systems in rural areas, small municipalities and tribal communities.

The bill includes a “Buy American” provision that would require most steel, iron and manufactured goods used in projects financed by the revolving fund to be produced in the United States.

House members expressed frustration that clean-water legislation stalled in the Senate in the last Congress. In combining five bills that passed the House last year, members said they hoped to make it easier for the Senate to clear the legislation.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is expected to mark up its own water quality bill at the earliest opportunity, building off legislation that the panel approved in 2008...

2009-08-02T18:09:00.000-04:00

Investing: The Best Water Plays

By David Bogoslaw, BusinessWeek
July 26, 2009

Put on your snorkel and get ready for an expected flood of investing in water-related stocks as the push for government spending on water infrastructure and services to meet higher environmental standards accelerates. That bodes well for a number of water-related stocks and mutual funds.

On July 15, Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) introduced a bipartisan bill that would create a water trust fund for investing in America's broken drinking-water and sewage-treatment systems. The Water Protection & Reinvestment Act (H.R. 3202) would create a $10 billion annual fund to repair decaying pipes and sewer systems that threaten public health, the environment, and overall security.

And a bipartisan Senate bill (S. 1005) that would reauthorize the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and provide $38.5 billion for Environmental Protection Agency water-infrastructure programs over the next five years reportedly has the support of both parties and is expected to be acted on by the Senate in the near future. These revolving funds haven't been reauthorized in 22 and 12 years, respectively. A House version called the Water Quality Investment Act of 2009 (H.R. 1262), which would reauthorize the Clean Water State Revolving Fund at $13.8 billion over five years, was passed in March.

Of course, there's quite a bit of fiscal stimulus already flowing toward companies that can help rebuild the country's faltering water infrastructure. William Brennan, co-manager of the $17 million Kinetics Water Infrastructure Advantaged Fund (KWIAX), estimates that $13.9 billion of the Obama Administration's stimulus package has been put toward overhauling water infrastructure and other water-related activities but says "that's just a Band-Aid on an open-heart-surgery patient." The U.S. is roughly $600 billion behind in revamping water pipes and sanitation systems, Brennan says, and he expects the government to push for rebuilding with greater voracity.

Expecting a Surge of Investment

U.S.-based water funds are currently much smaller than their counterparts in Europe. U.S. investors have been slow to appreciate the importance of water as "the backbone of every activity," from manufacturing to energy to daily living. And so far, Americans haven't experienced water shortages to the same degree as people in other parts of the world, Brennan says. He expects a surge in water investment to begin over the next one to three years: "Water-stress areas in California, Texas, and Florida are real and are only getting worse."

Other states have water woes, too. In a dispute over water in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint basin, which includes Lake Lanier, that dates back to the 1970s, Florida and Alabama are seeking a permanent injunction to prohibit withdrawals in Georgia in excess of 2000 levels, according to the metropolitan Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. A U.S. District Court ruling on July 17 declared almost all of the water Georgia has withdrawn from Lake Lanier illegal, since the lake was built to provide hydroelectric power. That means Atlanta may soon need to find alternate sources of water. The judge said the Army Corps of Engineers needed to get approval from Congress before the Atlanta metropolitan area could use Lake Lanier as its primary water source.

Among Brennan's top holdings are Veolia Environnement (VE) and URS (URS), which provides engineering, construction, and technical services to the power, infrastructure, federal, and industrial and commercial market.

Calvert Global Water Fund (CFWAX) holds 30% of its assets in water utilities, 40% in infrastructure companies, and 30% in water technologies. Jens Peer, a portfolio manager for the $1.4 billion fund, says 65% to 70% of the 100 to 105 water stocks he's identified worldwide are pure plays, which he defines as deriving more than 50% of their revenue from water-related activities. The pure plays tend to be small- and mid-cap stocks, while the larger-cap names usually include other components besides water.

"We only invest in non-pure plays if they have at least 10% of their revenue coming from water activities, and they have to be a top-three player in their markets," Peer says. While General Electric (GE) owns a top desalinization business, its overall water exposure is too small for him to invest in the company.

Timing is Key

Of the $480 billion in fiscal stimulus that is expected to be spent by governments around the world over the next two years on green components, Peer estimates that roughly 20%, or $96 billion, will go to water-linked projects. Half of that will be spent in China, and the majority of the remainder will be spent in the U.S., he says.

Although the enormous spending on water infrastructure Peer foresees should trigger greater investment in water companies, he says the timing of the fiscal spending is important. For example, Tetra Tech (TTEK), a consulting and engineering company, will be one of the initial beneficiaries, while companies that make larger pipes will benefit closer to the end of the projects.

Peer thinks American Water Works (AWK), which provides water and wastewater services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers in North America, looks cheap and is benefiting from the regulatory climate that supports higher rates.

Slightly more risky but worthy of attention is Calgon Carbon (CCC), which specializes in filtration equipment but also does mercury removal, which Peer says will be a big topic in 2010 and 2011. He also likes Insituform Technologies (INSU), which repairs sewers and water pipes with minimal digging up of streets and disruption of traffic. He expects to see repairs accelerate in some states because of underinvestment in recent years.

Manufacturing and Pharmaceutical Discharge

Brennan estimates that 70% of the 2 million miles of underground water pipes in the U.S. are beyond their useful life and need to be replaced. Water quality has declined over the past 50 years, with manufacturing discharge going into rivers and surface water, and bigger concentrations of prescription pharmaceuticals being discharged in wastewater. That will drive the need for wastewater treatment and other water-purification services. Brennan expects the EPA to target those areas for improvement in the next couple of years.

Bozena Jankowska, who co-manages the $53 million Allianz RCM Global Water Fund (AWTAX), focuses primarily on water utilities in view of the relative shortage of other pure-play water stocks. That's mostly a result of industry consolidation in recent years, in which smaller technology manufacturers have been swallowed up by conglomerates such as GE, Siemens (SI), and ITT (ITT).

"So if you want to invest in technology, you're getting other types of products," she says. "If you buy ITT, you're getting part defense, part water pumps. At Danaher (DHR), industrial technology [generates just] 25.7% of total revenue and includes water technology, while the remainder is medical technology."

Utilities are a good way to capitalize on the global growth prospects of water because of the need to replace aging infrastructure and build new systems in emerging markets, as well as the need to comply with tighter environmental standards, says Jankowska. Growing awareness in the U.S. of the need to invest in infrastructure is prompting regulators to approve higher rates for public water utilities, which will enable them to replace equipment and should improve returns over time, she says.

Water utilities are expected to spend up to $1 trillion over the next 20 years to improve their systems, according to Neil Berlant, lead manager of the PFW Water Fund (PFWAX). He says he avoids utilities entirely on a belief that none of the money these companies spend to improve their systems in order to meet tougher local and state regulations will result in higher revenues.

But Isn't Access to Clean Water a Human Right?

True, utilities will have to charge higher prices to pay for their capital spending, but that in turn will drive consumers—both households and manufacturers—to look for ways to cut down on their usage, which will only exacerbate the problem for utilities, he says.

While water utilities have "enormous opportunities," when it comes to "parlay[ing] an explosion of interest in water, I don't see them as primary candidates for [investment]," says Berlant. "Their prospects, by and large, are nowhere near those of companies they have to purchase from, like pump makers and filter makers."

Another challenge utilities face comes from the growing trend by states such as Connecticut and other countries to declare access to affordable, clean water and sanitation a human right. What the pricing implications are for utilities whose business it is to supply water is one issue the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility is flagging in a new report that scores public and private utilities on 21 key disclosure issues.

Berlant prefers technology companies such as Energy Recovery (ERII), whose products can remove salt from water in a much less energy-intensive way. That should attract money from socially responsible investment managers. But at nearly 36 times projected 2009 earnings and more than 24 times estimated 2010 earnings, it's too expensive for some fund managers, including Jankowska.

Indeed, one good bet for the future is that water—and the shares of the companies that supply it and make it fit for human consumption—will become more costly as the world's thirst for the life-giving liquid intensifies.

2009-08-02T17:48:00.000-04:00

Stop Congress from Pushing Water Privatization

By Food & Water Watch

The Water for the World Act 2009 sets the goal of bringing safe drinking water to 100,000,000 people for the first time. This is an important goal for which the U.S. should strive. However, the bill contains a corporate-biased peripheral component that encourages public-private partnerships, which have been used in the U.S. and abroad, to privatize municipal water systems. Act now by telling Congress to remove this corporate-biased component of the bill.

Chances are good that you, like 85% of Americans, receive your household water from a publicly owned and managed water company. This ensures that decisions are made locally and that revenue is reinvested at home.

The Water for the World Act 2009 was introduced in the House as H.R.2030 by Rep. Blumenauer (D-OR) and in the Senate as S.624 by Senator Durbin (D-IL). Food & Water Watch has written alternate language that removes the privatization loophole, and we are lobbying the bill's sponsors to get it corrected, but Congress needs to hear from you. Tell them it is unacceptable for the U.S. government to be pushing privatization on poor countries.

Aqua America: A Water Profiteer

Published By Food & Water Watch
September 2008

In the United States, 86 percent of people on community water systems receive their drinking water from a public utility, and these public operators have kept drinking water safe and affordable for most households. Public utilities provide nearly 250 million people with high quality water that costs less than a penny per gallon.

But even the best management can’t stop the effects of time.

Across the nation, water and wastewater systems are aging, pipes are crumbling and growing populations are straining already overburdened water supplies. The mounting repair and replacement costs are taxing many municipalities, especially small towns that have limited financial resources.

The federal government has traditionally provided assistance to these struggling utilities, but that funding is going dry. In the face of seemingly insurmountable improvement costs, as a last resort, cash-strapped municipalities are selling their water and sewer systems to corporations that are aggressively marketing themselves to local officials.

Aqua America, Inc., is one company trying to cash in on the infrastructure crisis. It is voraciously eating up small systems.

With nearly 200 acquisitions over the last 10 years, Aqua America has grown into the second largest publicly-traded water and wastewater corporation based in the United States, serving three million people in 13 states (including Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Missouri, New York, New Jersey and Ohio). It has pushed its way to the top through a strategy of aggressive acquisitions and drastic rate increases.

Aiming to make several dozen acquisitions a year, the company targets smaller systems to avoid a citizenry armed with resources to fight the takeover. And it pursues systems in states that have fast growing populations, corporate friendly regulatory environments, and considerable investment needs. Of course, all of this is done with an eye toward its bottom line.

Not long after taking over a system, the company begins its almost continual process of increasing rates. In just the first nine months of 2007, the company increased rates in nine locations. It has nine additional rate increases pending and plans even more over the course of 2008.

While families see skyrocketing water bills, the company sees booming revenue growth: 13 percent in 2007 alone. But rather than reinvesting all the money from community bills into improving their water and sewer systems, as a public utility would do, the company is “delivering solid returns to its shareholders.”

Discontent is growing among its customers, and many communities are beginning to speak up. In some cases, they even are kicking out Aqua America and reclaiming public control over their vital water and sewer infrastructure.

Aqua America is failing to protect the public interest. Instead of private control of their water systems, communities need — and overwhelmingly support — a national trust fund for clean and safe water. Federal support for public utilities will do what Aqua America has not done; and a trust fund will help ensure families across the country have access to clean, safe and affordable water.

Key Findings:

Aqua America is hiking up water bills through rapid-fire rate increases and infrastructure surcharges.

Aqua America is aggressively acquiring new systems, especially places with high population growth, little competition and weak regulation.

Aqua America is cutting and running on communities with the greatest needs and least profitability.

Aqua America is expanding into unregulated industries to avoid public oversight of pricing.

Communities are fighting to kick out Aqua America and reclaim public control over their vital drinking water and clean water infrastructure.

2009-08-02T16:46:00.000-04:00

Who Owns the Country's Drinking Water?

Published By the Center for Responsive Politics
Originally Published on September 13, 2002

Across America, pipes are cracking, water systems are failing and century-old infrastructure is badly in need of repair. By some estimates, it will cost more than $300 billion to upgrade all of the aging water facilities in the country.

Congress is currently considering legislation that would pour money into communities to fix the ailing systems.

But tucked into the House version of the water bill is a little-noticed provision that could decide whether drinking water remains a public resource or becomes a private commodity. Under the House bill, if a community wants federal funds to help upgrade its infrastructure, then it has to agree to consider privatizing its water system. The bill also would make it easier for private water companies to be eligible for the same subsidies that public utilities currently receive.

The bill is at the top of the private water industry's legislative wish list. Only a few cities in the United States have privatized their water—San Francisco and Atlanta among them—and the industry has been struggling to compete with public utilities. The private water companies have long complained that the federal assistance offered to the public utilities gives them an unfair advantage in the marketplace, and the water companies have seized on the House bill as a way to force open the market.

The roster of private water companies in the U.S. is a complex web of foreign-owned subsidiaries that are constantly merging into even larger companies. The French firm Suez owns United Water Resources, the company that supplies water to the city of Atlanta. Paris-based Vivendi Universal is primarily an entertainment company, but it also runs the largest water distributor in the world, Vivendi Environnement. Vivendi Environnement, in turn, owns U.S. Filter, which distributes Culligan bottled water. And the German corporation RWE paid $4.6 billion this year to acquire American Water Works, the largest private water company in the United States.

The companies themselves have done some lobbying, but they've left most of the work in Congress up to their trade group, the National Association of Water Companies (NAWC). NAWC spent more than $360,000 on lobbying in 2001, and formed the "H2O Coalition" to push for privatization. The H2O Coalition also includes the Water and Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers Association and the National Council on Public-Private Partnerships as members, but it's primarily NAWC's creation. Representing the coalition, NAWC's executive director testified before Congress on the water bills.

The going for the industry's lobbyists has been tough. Despite the work of the H2O Coalition, pro-privatization language was removed from the Senate water bill earlier this year. NAWC acknowledged that it was outgunned by the larger, more powerful Water Infrastructure Network, an association of environmentalists, labor unions and trade groups. The network has heavily lobbied Congress for federal funds, mainly geared toward public utilities, to help upgrade the nation's water systems. Among the group's members is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which has contributed $1.8 million so far in the 2002 election cycle in individual, PAC and soft money donations, 83 percent to Democrats; and the Carpenters and Joiners Union, which has given $3.2 million, 85 percent to Democrats.

Against such a tide of giving, contributions from private water companies are barely a drop in the bucket. Vivendi Universal has given the most, more than $780,000 so far in the 2002 election cycle, 72 percent to Democrats. But only about $23,000 of that total came from the company's American subsidiary, U.S. Filter. American Water Works has given nearly $160,000, 74 percent to the GOP, while United Water Resources has contributed nearly $100,000, 75 percent to Democrats.

NAWC has contributed a little more than $38,000 to candidates, 69 percent to Republicans. In its 2001 annual report, NAWC bewailed a "downward trend" in industry contributions to the group's political action committee. The trend was "principally due to industry consolidation," the association wrote, with the PAC raising a "disappointing" $21,100 in 2001. Looking ahead to the 2002 elections, NAWC noted in its annual report that it had developed a series of "new procedures and practices designed to heighten awareness of the PAC and increase receipts."

NAWC did throw a successful fundraiser for Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), raising more than $23,000. Grassley is the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees tax issues. NAWC and the water companies have been lobbying the government to lift the federal cap on private-activity bonds, which the water companies use as a cheap way to borrow money. In 2001, Grassley added an amendment to the Senate's tax bill that would have allowed the industry to get around the cap, if they used the money they raised to meet arsenic safety standards. But Grassley's amendment was struck from the bill at the last minute.

Grassley is also a favorite of the water companies because of his strong support for the fuel-additive ethanol. Over the years, the Iowa senator has introduced several bills that would ban the use of the a rival additive, MTBE, and replace it with corn-derived ethanol. MTBE has been found to contaminate groundwater and has been linked in some scientific studies to cancer. Water companies have been footing the bill to purify the water of MTBE contamination and have been lobbying for either federal funding for the cleanup, or an outright ban of MTBE.

Privatizing U.S. Drinking Water

By Erica Gies
August 11, 2008

We turn on the tap, and clean water flows. Most of us take this service for granted because we consider water, necessary for life, a basic right. In fact, this notion stems back to an ancient Roman legal precedent called the public trust doctrine. This fundamental tenet says that crucial natural resources, especially water, belong to everyone.

But 1.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean water, according to the United Nations. Waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery kill 2.2 million a year. This was true in the United States until government took over our water infrastructure as a public health measure.

However, now many aging U.S. municipal water systems are deteriorating. One-fifth of our drinking water is lost to leaks, while overworked treatment plants release 1.2 trillion gallons of raw sewage into waterways annually, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Stark estimates show that Americans will need to spend up to $1 trillion by 2019 to make necessary upgrades. Unfortunately, federal funding for water systems has plummeted, and some strapped communities have turned their facilities over to private companies, hoping they will make water system improvements government hasn’t.

Thirteen percent of U.S. municipal water systems have been privatized already, mostly turned over to European multinational companies with misleading names such as American Water Works and United Water.

Privatization advocates argue that corporations can best provide and update water infrastructure. However, early adopters, including Atlanta; New Orleans; Indianapolis; Jersey City, N.J.; and Lexington, Ky., have seen privatization fail by a number of measures.

Water prices usually rise shortly after privatization -- sometimes dramatically. Privately owned water utilities charge customers significantly higher rates than those publicly owned: up to 50 percent more, according to Food & Water Watch, which compared rates charged by publicly and privately owned utilities in California, Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York.

High water prices can be catastrophic for the poor. In Bolivia in 1999, the government granted a 40-year water privatization contract to a Bechtel subsidiary. Rates increased immediately by as much as 200 percent. Many families were paying one-fifth their income for water, which resulted in rioting, government instability, and Bechtel’s withdrawal from the country.

In some parts of the U.S., new industry-backed laws allow utility managers to turn off water due to customer nonpayment. In Pennsylvania in 2005, managers cut off water to thousands of people unable to pay their bills.

The significant environmental costs of privatization are just as troubling. Some companies push expensive, environmentally destructive schemes to increase water supply -- such as desalination plants -- because their profits are tied to how much they spend on infrastructure improvement. High-cost projects generate huge profits for the corporation, while draining public coffers. Tampa Bay Water partnered with private company Veolia Water to build the largest desalination plant in the nation. The facility cost $158 million and will serve just 10 percent of the area’s water customers.

The simple, inexpensive solution to meeting U.S. water needs is not privatization but conservation. California, the country’s biggest water consumer, could cut its wasteful use of water by 20 percent in the next 25 years, while meeting the needs of a growing population, a healthy agricultural sector, and vibrant economy, according to the Pacific Institute. Stormwater capture is also an important, less expensive strategy. But corporate water managers have little interest in conservation because the more water they sell, the bigger their profits.

One of the best and cheapest ways to assure a clean water supply is to let nature work. In 1989, New York City contemplated a new $6 billion water filtration plant. Instead, the city spent $1.2 billion over 10 years to purchase and restore its watersheds, allowing a 2,000-square-mile forest to clean the water. Other communities, such as Auburn, Maine, have done likewise. Private companies oppose this watershed approach, because it reduces the need for costly treatment methods, thus reducing water prices and profits.

In fact, water privatization can actually reduce water quality. In the United States, the National Association of Water Companies lobbies congress and the EPA to block higher clean water standards, which it views as an unnecessary expense.

For all these reasons, communities are breaking contracts with corporations. The list of the disenchanted includes Laredo and Angleton, Texas; Felton, Stockton, and Santa Paula, Calif.; Buffalo, N.Y.; East Cleveland, Ohio; Bridgeport, Conn.; Rockland and Lynn, Mass.; and Milwaukee, Wis.

A 2005 poll by an independent research company found that 86 percent of Americans support a national, long-term trust fund for water infrastructure. So do I. This solution would allow us to update aging community water systems, while keeping our drinking water securely in public hands.

Americans have a fundamental right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Clean affordable drinking water is essential to life; it too is an inalienable right.

Erica Gies is a freelance reporter whose work has been published by the International Herald Tribune, Wired News, Grist, E/The Environmental Magazine, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian.

The Blue Gold Rush (Excerpt)

By Kayla M. Starr, Sentient Times
Originally Published in December 2002/January 2003

Water Privatization

Because multinational corporations now realize that water scarcity and pollution are going to define the next century, a huge movement is taking place to commodify and privatize ownership of water. Poised to capitalize on this crisis are giant “corporate water bandits,” multinationals who are searching the planet for opportunities to turn the misery of water-starved regions into profits for their executives and stockholders. As Bob Dylan sang, “The pump don’t work cause the vandals took the handle.” The results are higher bills, bad water, poor service, non-functioning fire hydrants—and no control over the corporate owners. The very survival of untold millions of people could rest on decisions being made today behind closed doors in corporate boardrooms and government offices throughout the world. With each drop of water that falls into the hands of private interests, any sustainable solution to the global water crisis moves further and further from the public’s grasp.

It goes without saying that those who control water supplies will exercise economic and political power at almost unimaginable degrees. Bulk water exports—transporting water from water-rich countries to water-poor countries—could have disastrous consequences. Massive extraction of water from its natural sources results in ecological imbalance and destruction. Groundwater is being over-extracted as it is, and once aquifers are emptied or polluted, they are almost impossible to restore.

There is a false perception that when water services are privatized, the financial burden will shift from the public to the private sector, which will save taxpayer money by assuming the costs of repairing, upgrading and maintaining infrastructure. In reality, taxpayers simply wind up paying for these projects through their monthly bills. Tax-free public financing translates into lower-cost projects, while taxable private financing results in higher interest rates. As a result, consumers are also forced to make higher payments on company loans.

In the U.S., the National Association of Water Companies is lobbying hard to push the Water Quality Investment Act through Congress. It contains a provision that requires cities to “consider” privatizing their water systems before receiving any federal support for upgrading or expanding municipal water systems. This boondoggle would spend your local taxes to offer your water for sale to private corporations, or else the city could be sued.

Once a government agency hands over its water system to a private company, withdrawing from the agreement borders on the impossible. Proving breach of contract is a difficult and costly ordeal. And multinational trade agreements, such as NAFTA and the pending FTAA, provide corporations with powerful legal recourse. A private company, for example, can use the North American Free Trade Agreement secretive tribunals to contest challenges to privatization. And in World Bank loan deals, which often makes water privatization a condition for loans to poor nations, companies are usually guaranteed cash payments if a government agency returns its water system to public control.

Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund strongly encourage the governments of developing countries to sell to private, multi-national companies the rights to deliver essential services, such as water, to the population. This is part of their controversial policy of “structural adjustment” for debt repayment.

As Marq De Villiers tells us in his well-researched book, “Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource,” the trouble with water “is that they’re not making any more of it.” Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, in their recent book, “Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Theft of the World’s Water,” echo his sentiment, writing that groundwater depletion is “one of the great unseen but looming crises facing our planet.” According to Barlow’s research “Aquifers cannot be cleaned once polluted and they’re shrinking rapidly. Global warming trends are rapidly destroying wetlands. Desertifi-cation is spreading and suppressing rainfall. There’s hardly a river flowing that’s not choked with human runoff. As the world’s population rapidly expands, these devel-opments are gradually intensifying into a ticking time bomb under the industrialized world’s complacent assumption that the water supply is endless. The world’s water supply is fast falling prey to corporate desire for the bottom line. Indeed, the human race has taken water for granted and massively misjudged the capacity of the earth’s water systems to recover from our carelessness.”

Vivid evidence mounts that corporate profits are increasingly drinking up scarce water resources. In some cities and countries, water has already been privatized, leading to higher rates of consumption and depleted resources. And in other places, poorer residents actually pay more for water than their richer neighbors, while Perrier, Pepsi and Coke’s sales of bottled water are taking water away from municipal supplies. Experience has been that the foreign company immediately raises prices so that many vulnerable members of the population are no longer able to afford the service they once had. This translates to disease and death for the helpless poor. As the population becomes resentful, riots and killings create a negative environment and the company may leave the area with losses and a bad reputation.

The Costs of Privatization

In places like Cochabamba, Bolivia the results of water privatization are resoundingly negative for the population, the local governments and the multi-national company. The Cochambamba water company was privatized in 1999, to a consortium including the Bechtel corporation, which engaged in an engineering scheme to drill a 19km tunnel in the hills to channel water to the city. To help finance this, water bills went up as much as 200%. Residents were enraged. Some people had to literally choose between buying food or water. Finally, tens of thousands of people protested, blocking roads out of Cochabamba for several days. Police responded with violence, killing several people. Bechtel ultimately canceled the contract, but filed a demand of $25 million from Bolivia to recoup its investment and to recover a portion of their anticipated profits.

With the privatization of water in Manila, capital of the Philippines, both consumers and workers shared the cost of creating enterprises profitable enough for the multinationals. Although the winning consortia had bid at certain price levels, within two years one company—led by International water, a UK/US consortium—was demanding a doubling of prices. Employees were reduced by a succession of measures. Workers were then effectively forced to apply for their own jobs. The net result? 7,370 employees were reduced to 4,580.

Cutting off consumers from a water supply has become a common occurrence under privatization. In 1992 in the UK, where there were sharp price increases following the privatization of water, a massive 21,282 customers were disconnected and there was widespread alarm at the health implications for poor families. The British Medical Association called for the disconnection of water supplies to be made illegal because of the vital role of water in health and disease prevention. New guidelines reduced the cutoffs, but the companies then introduced pre-payment meters, which effectively functioned as devices by which the consumers cut themselves off if they could not afford to pay. There continued to be bitter criticism from consumer groups, medical groups and the press. In 1998, after a court ruling, the new Labor government announced it would make it illegal for companies to cut off water supplies to homes, schools or hospitals for non-payment.

In the Czech Republic a multinational takeover of water dramatically raised prices. VaK Jizníechy, a subsidiary of the UK-based Anglian Water, increased water rates to households by 100.7% from 1994 to 1997, nearly double the national average. In 1999, following the company’s acquisition of the majority of the equity shares, water rates to households increased by 39.8%, while sewage rates to households increased by 66.6%, far higher than any other increase in the price of water in the country.

Here in the United States

Mecosta County, Michigan sits at the center of the largest supply of fresh water on Earth. But when the Perrier Group of America was given permission to drill wells and extract up to 260 million gallons of water per year for free, bottle it, and sell it throughout the Upper Midwest, the people of Mecosta County grew very concerned. A group of residents formed the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, and sued to stop the company, pointing out that water, like air, is a public resource—not a commodity.

In the mid-nineties the municipal water utility in Atlanta, Georgia, was sold to United Water Resources. URW has since been taken over by French-based Suez Lyonnaise, the biggest water conglomerate in the world, which has reaped millions in profits. Their first step in Atlanta was to cut 400 of the 700 employees from the water works. Customers began to complain that brown water was flowing from their faucets, fire hydrants were going dry, pipes leaked, water bills increased, and they were unable to get the company to respond. The city government is demanding that these problems be addressed or they will find the company in default of their contract. However, the taxpayers must pay for the expensive legal battle to attempt to regain control of their own water. Similar events occurred when URW took over the water system in Jacksonville, Florida. The residents have finally bought back their water service in a $219 million buy-out. The citizens of Huber Heights, Ohio and Chattanooga, Tennessee are now engaged in similar legal battles to get their water back.

These are but a few examples of the disastrous effects of privatization and what consumers are doing to save their water supplies. As citizens become more educated, they are finding ways to reclaim the rights to their own water.

Fighting Back

Water activists recommend a set of standards that should be included in any agreement of public-private partnerships in the water delivery sphere: The involvement of water users in the planning of the systems, local stewardship and watershed protection, water preservation and reclaiming of polluted water systems. Underlying all these standards is the recognition of water as an essential part of life and the right of all beings to clean water, whatever their social or economic status.

Barlow and Clarke lay the blame for the world’s water crisis squarely and unequivocally at the feet of global corporations. Blue Gold lavishes scorn on governments that “are abdicating their responsibility to protect and conserve water” while pointing fingers at oil, gas, rubber, paper, car, and commercial farming industries who use more than 25 percent of the world’s water and trash much of the rest. Governments, they argue, should eschew globalization and embrace “a set of principles and ethical considerations directly opposed to the predominant standpoint of the global economy.” Water must be “decommodified,” they explain, restored to its natural state, and turned over to local public control. Only then will access to water become a right rather than a privilege. Conservation projects must filter through political systems throughout the world and wash away once and for all the corporate scum that has so long treated water as an endlessly exploitable resource. We can all drink to that.

Resources: Public Citizen’s “Water for All Campaign” works with grassroots groups in the U.S. to oppose the privatization and bulk sale of water resources and to protect universal access to clean and affordable drinking water by keeping it in public hands. Public Citizen offers information on water privatization, networking and expertise for local groups fighting corporate water takeovers. You can learn more and get help by contacting Public Citizen at www.citizen.org/cmep/water; cmep@citizen.org; 215 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E., Washington, D.C., 20003, (202) 546-4996.

2009-08-02T15:45:00.002-04:00

California Farmers Say Feds Make Drought Worse

USA TODAY
July 28, 2009

FIREBAUGH, Calif. — The road to Todd Allen's farm wends past irrigation canals filled with the water that California's hot Central Valley depends on to produce vegetables and fruit for the nation. Yet not a drop will make it to his barren fields.

Three years into a drought that evokes fears of a modern-day dust bowl, Allen and others here say the culprit now isn't Mother Nature so much as the federal government. Court and regulatory rulings protecting endangered fish have choked the annual flow of water from California's Sierra mountains down to its people and irrigated fields, compounding a natural dry spell.

"This is a regulatory drought, is what it is," Allen says. "It just doesn't seem fair."

For those like Allen at the end of the water-rights line, the flow has slowed to a trickle: His water district is receiving just 10% of the normal allocation of water from federal Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs. He says he's been forced to lay off all his workers and watch the crops die on his 300 acres while bills for an irrigation system he put in are due.

"My payments don't stop when they cut my water off," Allen says.

Although some farmers with more senior water rights are able to keep going, local officials say 250,000 acres has gone fallow for lack of water in Fresno County, the nation's most productive agriculture county. Statewide, the unplanted acreage is almost twice that.

Unemployment has soared into Depression-era range; it is 40% in this western Fresno County area where most everyone's job is dependent on farming. Resident laborers who for years sweated in fields to fill the nation's food baskets find themselves waiting for food handouts.

"The water's cut off," complains Robert Silva, 68, mayor of the farm community of Mendota. "Mendota is known as the cantaloupe capital of the world. Now we're the food-line capital."

Three years of dry conditions is being felt across much of the nation's most populous state.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a water emergency in February and asked for 20% voluntary cuts in water use. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Drought Monitor lists 44% of the state as in a "severe" drought.

In arid Southern California, cities and water districts have raised rates to encourage conservation and imposed limits on use. In Los Angeles, restaurants are banned from serving tap water unless diners ask for it. Residents can't hose down driveways or sidewalks. Lawn watering is permitted only on Mondays and Thursdays.

This drought is in line with conditions two decades ago, says Elissa Lynn, senior meteorologist for the California Department of Water Resources. But the new federal rulings to protect smelt and salmon have limited water pumping from the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta, a vital link between water and its users.

Here in the state's biggest farming region, fingers are pointing at the government, not nature.

"As California standards go, this is not a drought," says Bill Diedrich, a Firebaugh farmer and director of a water district.

"It is the pumping restrictions."

The federal restrictions arise from environmental suits brought under the Endangered Species Act that argue pulling water out of the delta harms fish. A federal judge in 2007 ordered new biological studies and restrictions on water pumped out of the delta for farmers.

A group of water authorities filed countersuits. While the issue remains unsettled, the rulings have idled the water pumps for 11 months a year, Westlands spokeswoman Sarah Woolf says. Environmental groups say water officials and farmers are overstating the problem.

"This is not a fish vs. farms problem," says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, an environmental research group in Oakland. "I believe they're using the drought as an excuse to try and overturn these environmental decisions."

Richard Howitt, professor of agriculture and resource economics at University of California-Davis, estimates that statewide about 30% of the water shortage is a result of the environmental restrictions and 70% is drought. But the impact of the regulations hits particularly hard here in the farm region, he says, because complicated water-rights laws leave Allen and his neighbors at the end of the line in water distribution.

Howitt says his studies suggest that the restrictions could put as much as 45% of irrigated acreage in the Fresno area out of production — jacking up prices for melons, broccoli, tomatoes and other produce. The area also is a big producer of almonds, pistachios, lettuce and wheat.

Potential solutions such as more dams or a canal to bypass the delta and bring water to users are pipe dreams for a state with a huge budget deficit.

Meantime, the roads along this farm area are filled with signs warning that less water means less food. "If you like foreign oil, you'll love foreign food," says a sticker on Allen's truck.

"I wish they'd just put humans first and turn those pumps on," Allen says.

Food Aid Grows in California's Agricultural Heart

The Wall Street Journal
September 2, 2009

California's Central Valley normally serves as the nation's food basket. But amid a severe drought in the region, so many farmers have lost their jobs, they are being forced to line up for food handouts and other assistance.

Selma, Calif. - The combined punch of drought, water restrictions and recession has created an ironic situation in California's Central Valley: Officials are handing out tons of food in the heart of one of the nation's most productive agricultural regions.

At a dusty flea market in this Fresno County town last week, more than 800 people -- many farmworkers -- lined up for two weeks' supply of cereal, rice, canned tomatoes and other basics. They waited in 99-degree heat as the food was distributed from 6 a.m. until late afternoon.

"We either have money for gas and medicine, or food -- not both," Helen Hernandez, a 51-year-old mother of four, said after collecting a pallet of food from the relief drive. Ms. Hernandez said her husband, David, 49, has been out of work since losing his $1,200-a-month job at a tomato-packing house last year.

For the 12-month period ended June 30, the Fresno Community Food Bank distributed a record 14.5 million pounds of food to residents of a three-county area -- double the previous year. So many people mobbed one food-distribution center two weeks ago that some who had waited in triple-digit heat for hours were turned away empty-handed after the food ran out. Unemployment in the counties in July ranged from 13.9% to 15%, compared with 11.9% for California as a whole, state officials say.

"There's never been this kind of need in the Central Valley, ever," said Dana Wilkie, chief executive of the Fresno food bank. "In some communities, we're serving 80% of the residents."

The Central Valley, a 400-mile-long, 18-county inland area that relies heavily on agriculture, has suffered in the recession amid low demand for products like milk and almonds as well as a collapse in its once-booming housing market. At the same time, the region is grappling with drought and federal environmental rulings that have reduced water shipments to local farmers to as little as 10% of their normal allotments.

Some farmers have sidelined much of their acreage, throwing packers and field pickers out of work. In the Westlands Irrigation District, which serves about 700 farmers in the western part of the valley, more than 260,000 of the 600,000 acres that are typically home to tomatoes, lettuce and other crops have been taken out of production this year, officials say.

In all, farmers in the valley stand to lose between $1.2 billion and $1.6 billion in revenue this year, with 60,000 to 80,000 people thrown out of work, projects a study by the University of California, Davis.

"This is the worst I've ever seen it in the valley," said John Harris, chairman and chief executive of Harris Farms in Coalinga, Calif., which is farming about 4,500 acres compared with a normal total of about 14,000.

In June, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed a state of emergency for nine Central Valley counties and asked President Barack Obama to declare Fresno County a federal disaster area. The designation was intended, in part, to help finance food shipments to the county.

But officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency rejected the request, saying state and local entities had adequate resources. Mr. Schwarzenegger last week appealed the denial, which FEMA officials say they are reviewing. In the meantime, Mr. Schwarzenegger's office allotted about $4 million for five weeks' worth of food shipments, which began about a month ago.

At the recent food distribution in Selma, 46-year-old Leticia Reyes waited to load food in her car. Laid off a few weeks ago from her $1,200-a-month job at a fruit-packing plant, the mother of four said the family is left to pay its $600 monthly rent and other bills on her husband's $900-a-month pay as an auto mechanic and her $600 in monthly unemployment benefits.

"We're really struggling, so this food helps a lot," said Mrs. Reyes.

2009-08-02T14:14:00.000-04:00

Age of the Water Barons

By Bill Marsden
February 3, 2003

A yearlong investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a project of the Center for Public Integrity, showed that world's three largest water companies — France's Suez and Vivendi Environnement, and British-based Thames Water, owned by Germany's RWE AG — have since 1990 expanded into every region of the world. Three other companies, Saur of France, and United Utilities of England, working in conjunction with Bechtel of the United States, have also successfully secured major international drinking water contracts. But their size pales in comparison to that of the big three.

The investigation shows that these companies have often worked closely with the World Bank, lobbying governments and international trade and standards organizations for changes in legislation and trade agreements to force the privatization of public waterworks.

While private companies still run only about 5 percent of the world's waterworks, their growth over the last 12 years has been enormous. In 1990, about 51 million people got their water from private companies, according to water analysts. That figure is now more than 300 million. The ICIJ investigation, which tracked the operations of the six most globally active water companies over a 12-year period, showed that by 2002, they ran drinking water distribution networks in at least 56 countries and two territories. In 1990, they had been active in only about a dozen countries.

Revenue growth, according to corporate annual reports reviewed by ICIJ, has tracked with the companies' overseas expansion. Vivendi Universal, the parent of Vivendi Environnement, reported earning over $5 billion in water-related revenue in 1990; by 2002 that had increased to over $12 billion. RWE, which moved into the world water market with its acquisition of Britain's Thames Water, increased its water revenue a whopping 9,786 percent – from $25 million in 1990 to $2.5 billion in fiscal 2002.

This explosive growth rate has raised concerns that a handful of private companies could soon control a large chunk of the world's most vital resource. While the companies portray the expansion of private water as the natural response to a growing water shortage crisis, thoughtful observers point out the self-serving pitfalls of this approach.

"We must be extremely careful not to impose market forces on water because there are many more decisions that go into managing water — there are environmental decisions, social-culture decisions," said David Boys of the U.K.-based Public Services International. "If you commodify water and bring in market forces which will control it, and sideline any other concern other than profit, you are going to lose the ability to control it." [Listen to David Boys]

So far, privatization has been concentrated in poorer countries where the World Bank has used its financial leverage to force governments to privatize their water utilities in exchange for loans...

Having firmly established themselves in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia, the water companies are expanding into the far more lucrative market of the United States. In recent years, the three large European companies have gone on a buying spree of America's largest private water utility companies, including USFilter and American Water Works Co. Inc.

Peter Spillett, a senior executive with RWE's water unit Thames, told ICIJ his company projects that within 10 years it will double its market to 150 million customers primarily because of expansion into the United States. So far, the Europeans have privatized waterworks in several mid-sized U.S. cities, including Indianapolis and Camden, N.J., and are trying to secure contracts in New Orleans. Their expansion, however, recently ran aground in Atlanta, where the city canceled its 20-year contract — the largest of its kind in the United States — with a Suez subsidiary after only four years and returned control to the public utility.

The water companies have also dramatically increased their lobbying and federal election campaign spending. In Washington, they have already secured beneficial tax law changes and are now trying to persuade Congress to pass laws that would force cash-strapped municipal governments to consider privatization of their waterworks in exchange for federal grants and loans. Government and industry studies have estimated that U.S. cities will need between $150 billion and $1 trillion over the next three decades to upgrade their aging waterworks.

Worldwide, the ICIJ investigation showed that the enormous expansion of these companies could not have been possible without the World Bank and other international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development and the European Bank for Reconstruction. In countries such as South Africa, Argentina, Philippines and Indonesia, the World Bank has been advising the leaders to "commercialize" their utilities as part of an overall bank policy of privatization and free-market economics.

In South Africa, heavy lobbying by private multinational water companies, such as Suez, together with advice from the World Bank helped persuade local councils to privatize their waterworks. Some communities began turning their utilities into commercial enterprises as a preparatory step to outright privatization. Others immediately contracted out to private water. Urged by the World Bank to introduce a "credible threat of cutting service," the local councils began cutting off people who couldn't pay. An estimated 10 million people have had their water cut off for various periods of time since 1998. The result has been cholera and other gastrointestinal outbreaks.

The ICIJ investigation focused on the activities of these companies in South Africa, Australia, Colombia, Asia, Europe, the United States and Canada.

The investigation showed that while these companies claim to be "passionate, caring and reliable," as one company states, they can be ruthless players who constantly push for higher rate increases, frequently fail to meet their commitments and abandon a waterworks if they are not making enough money. As in South Africa, the water companies are pillars of a user-pay policy that imposes high rates with little concern over people's ability to pay. These rates are then enforced by water cutoffs despite the serious dangers to people's health that these actions create.

The water companies are chasing a business with potential annual revenue estimated at anywhere from $400 billion to $3 trillion, depending on how you do the math. Water is the basis of life and, if they have to, people will pay just about anything to get it.

"These companies want to crack open this oyster and go get the pearl inside. It's big money," said Boys of Public Services International.

The World's Water Woes:

About 1.1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water.

About 2.4 billion people lack access to sanitation. Most are in Africa and Asia.

Roughly one-third of the global population lives in countries with moderate-to-high water stress. Water stress occurs when water consumption exceeds 10 percent of renewable freshwater resources.

West Asia faces the severest threat. More than 90 percent of the population in the region lives under severe water stress.

About 80 countries, comprising about 40 percent of the world's population, had experienced serious water shortages by the mid 1990s.

In less than 25 years, two-thirds of the world's population will live in water stressed conditions.

By 2020, water use is expected to increase globally by 40 percent.

Two billion people (about one-third the world's population) depend on groundwater. Countries around the world face rapidly depleting groundwater resources, including parts of India, China, West Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, the former Soviet Union and the western United States.

The cost of bringing poor universal access to water by 2015 is projected to be $30 billion a year.

Source: United Nations Environment Programme, GEO-Global Environment Outlook 3, Past, Present and Future Perspectives About 1.5 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. The United Nations predicts that by 2025 two thirds of the world's population will experience shortages of clean water. Experts claim enormous financial resources will have to be expended to meet this need.

Water companies, seeing profit in the crisis, are using current fears over the scarcity of clean water to advance their financial interests, says Riccardo Petrella, professor at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and an advisor to the European Union on Science and Technology.

"Water has become important for capital because water is increasingly characterized by a crisis of scarcity," he told ICIJ. "And scarcity is the basis of modern capitalism."

"They enter into the water sector in the developing countries because they start from the principle that even the poor are ready to pay for water," he said. "They say 'water for free is not possible – even the poor understand this."

Financial fund managers are taking note of the expanding water market. Switzerland's second oldest bank, the Pictet Bank, last year started its Global Water Fund in the United States after starting a similar one in Europe two years earlier. They offer a basket of water companies and predict that by 2015 75 percent of European and 65 percent of U.S. water utilities will be privatized.

As Thames' executive Peter Spillett said: "You have such a steady market, there is huge growth potential." He noted that "water stocks actually do better than other utilities" because of the long-term contracts that stretch for 10 to 30 years, offering a reliable and predictable return on investment. "That is why a lot of pension funds as well as private individuals are willing to put money into it," he said.

Suez told ICIJ it instructs all its companies to be profitable within three years, and the rate of return has to be at least 3 percent over the cost of capital.

But the private companies are increasingly running up against strong opposition because of the vital nature of water itself and the politics that swirl around it. The most famous example of this is the privatization in Cochabamba, Bolivia. After Aguas del Tunari, a consortium jointly owned by Bechtel and United Utilities, took control of the city's waterworks in 1999 without any contract bidding, the company announced water rate increases of up to 150 percent. Manager Geoffrey Thorpe threatened to cut off people's water if they didn't pay.

The contract gave the company control over ground water and allowed it to close down people's private wells unless they paid Aguas del Tunari for the water. Union leader Oscar Olivera said: "They wanted to privatize the rain." When protests erupted throughout the city of 450,000 in 2000, police and army troops were called in. They killed two people. The government reacted by canceling the concession. Aguas del Tunari is suing the Bolivian government claiming losses of a reported $25 million, although Bechtel has stated that it has not put a number on its claim. The suit is before the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, an organization of the World Bank Group.

It was on the advice of the World Bank that Bolivia began privatizing its water services in the mid 1990s. Discussions about Cochabamba's water began in 1995, Christopher Neal, the World Bank's external affairs officer for Latin America, told ICIJ. "The Bolivian government agreed, as a matter of policy, with the Bank's view that [privatization] was needed there," Neal said. [Listen to Christopher Neal] However, according to Menahem Libhaber, the bank's lead water engineer for Latin America, the bank opposed the Cochabamba deal with Aguas del Tunari because it believed it was not financially viable.

In an interview with ICIJ, Bechtel spokesman Jeff Berger blamed the Bolivian government for the Cochabamba debacle. He claimed the government failed to explain the long-term benefits of privatization to the people by delivering flyers and taking out ads in newspapers.

The Free Marketers

Although Neal told ICIJ the "bank is not ideological" about privatization, the investigation showed that privatization is a hallmark of many of its loan projects.

Lending about $20 billion to water supply projects over the last 12 years, the World Bank has not only been a principal financer of privatization, it also has also increasingly made its loans conditional on local governments privatizing their waterworks. The ICIJ study of 276 World Bank water supply loans from 1990 to 2002 showed that 30 percent required privatization — the majority in the last five years.

In major water privatizations around the world — such as Buenos Aires, Manila and Jakarta – the ICIJ investigation showed that the World Bank flexed its financial muscle to persuade governments to tender long-term waterworks concessions to the major private companies.

The investigation also showed that the bank advised the countries how to privatize their waterworks and often helped finance the privatization process. In the case of Buenos Aires, the World Bank not only helped finance the privatization but also took, through one of its branches, a 7 percent stake in the new company, Aguas Argentinas, which is controlled by Suez. The World Bank loaned one of its own senior managers to negotiate large water rate increases with the Argentine government. The manager then headed a World Bank team that gave a $30 million loan to Argentina. This occurred at the same time that Aguas Argentinas and its shareholders were making huge profits of as much as 25 percent. One shareholder, an important Argentine businessman, earned a profit of $100 million on the privatization.

In Jakarta, Indonesia, the ICIJ investigation showed that World Bank officials not only encouraged privatization of the city's utility but also stood by as two multinationals secretly negotiated with the Suharto regime for the transfer of the public waterworks into their control. The two companies, Suez and Thames, entered into partnerships with a business crony and a son of the former dictator Suharto to gain control over the city's waterworks. Both men then made significant profits on the deal.

The bank claims its policy of privatization alleviates poverty by bringing management efficiency and private capital to developing countries whose cash-starved water utilities are usually in a mess. The bank argues that private companies succeed in bypassing the usual bureaucratic morass and political cronyism and corruption that corrodes so many public utilities in poorer countries. While it is clear that considerable improvements have been brought to many waterworks as a result of privatization, in many cases, the companies put in relatively little capital of their own, relying primarily on loans from the World Bank and related international financial institutions to help cover costs of repairing and expanding waterworks networks.

There's also evidence that if the World Bank applied the same energy and money to improving local utilities, while allowing them to maintain control of their water systems, the local utility would actually perform better than private companies.

In Manila, Maynilad Water, of which Suez controls 40 percent, announced in December 2002 it was pulling out of its 25-year contract, abandoning a waterworks serving an area of 6.5 million people. The company was unable to raise capital to meet contract demands and, as an independent study commissioned by the local regulator indicates, contracted work to affiliate companies. Maynilad is before an arbitration court seeking $337 million from the Philippines government as reimbursement for what it claims is invested capital. The government argues, however, the company is owed only a fraction of that amount. The company is also transferring to the government debts totaling $530 million.

A Global Oligarchy

The investigation also showed that the water companies have joined forces with the World Bank and the United Nations to create an array of international think tanks, advisory commissions and forums that have dominated the water debate and established privatization as the dominant solution to the world's water problems.

"What we have seen during the 1990s has been the setting-up of a kind of global high command for water," Riccardo Petrella, a leading researcher on the politics of water, wrote in the French daily Le Monde in 2000.

Global Goals for Water Access

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council presented these global targets, called Vision 21, at the Second World Water Forum in the Netherlands in March 2000 to address water supply and sanitation issues facing the developing world. By 2015, the council proposed:

To halve the number of people without access to sanitation facilities.

To halve the number of people without access to adequate quantities of affordable and safe water.

And by 2025:

To provide water, sanitation and hygiene for all.

Source: Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council

The leading think tank on water issues and the principal adviser to the World Bank and United Nations is the World Water Council, which was established in 1996 by the World Bank and the United Nations. It is headquartered in Marseille, France, and one of its three founding members is René Coulomb, a former Suez vice-president.

In 1998, the WWC created the World Water Commission to promote public awareness of water issues and to help formulate global water policies. The commission holds water conferences around the world and channels its policy statements through international forums held every three years.

Men with strong privatization backgrounds run the commission. These include former Suez CEO Jérôme Monod, Enrique Iglesias, president of the Inter-American Development Bank and Mohamed T. El-Ashry, CEO of the World Bank/U.N. Global Environment Facility. Commission chairman is World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin.

Both of these institutions strongly support privatization and a user-pay policy. "Global experience shows that money is the medium of accountability," the commission said in a 2000 report.

The commission has held two international forums on water with a third planned for Kyoto, Japan, in March 2003. At its forum at The Hague in March 2000, the commission issued a policy statement that said water management was the main problem facing mankind and the solution was to treat water like any other commodity and open its management to free market competition.

Serageldin stated that water delivery should be in private hands, but publicly regulated, in the same way as private companies run the food industry.

The ties that bind the World Bank to the major water companies include shared membership on the boards of various policy institutions as well as personal and business relations.

Monod was special counselor to the International Monetary Fund's director, Michel Camdessus, when Monod was Suez's CEO. After Camdessus retired in 2000, he was named chair of the "International Panel for New Investments in Water," an initiative organized by the water companies. The panel's directors include William Alexander, group chief executive of RWE's Thames Water of London, and Suez Vice President Gerard Payen.

At its first meeting in Paris in February 2002, the panel focused on "how to increase the rate of return on water projects, and the related difficulty of implementing the full cost recovery pricing of water."

Another panel member is the Global Water Partnership (GWP). The chairwoman of its steering committee is Margaret Catley-Carlson, a former Canadian deputy health minister. She is also chairwoman of the Suez Water Resources Advisory Committee. The GWP is a partnership of government, corporate and professional organizations examining water issues. It claims: "The water crisis is a governance crisis, characterized by a failure to value water properly and by a lack of transparency and accountability in the management of water. Reform of the water sector, where water tariffs and prices play essential parts, is expected to make stakeholders recognize the true cost of water and to act thereafter."

On another front, water companies are working closely with the European Union to enforce trade barriers against any country that refuses to open its water utilities to privatization.

Working with the EU trade officials, the water companies are also trying to persuade the World Trade Organization to force countries to open their utilities to free market forces. Documents obtained by ICIJ show that the European Commission trade office works closely with Thames, Suez, Vivendi and other private water companies to push for a reduction in trade barriers with the WTO.

In a May 2002 letter, EU trade commissioner Ulrike Hauer wrote to Thames, Suez and Vivendi, thanking them for their contribution toward negotiations to reduce trade barriers in "water and waste water services" with a view to open these markets to European companies.

On a third front, the French government recently made a proposal to the quasi-governmental International Organization for Standards (ISO), a regulatory branch of the WTO, to set international standards for water utilities. Effectively, the committee would develop rules on how to manage all aspects of water service and delivery. Critics believe this will help the WTO forge trade rules that would force countries to open their public utilities to privatization.

"The companies have a clear strategy based on three things: the WTO, the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Org) and the ISO," Petrella told ICIJ. "Through trade, intellectual property and standardization they are going to conquer the water world."

Financial Titans, Bribery and Fraud

In addition to their political connections, each of the three leading companies has enormous financial resources. Each is among the top 100 corporations in the world. Together they had revenue in 2001 of $156.7 billion and continue to grow at a rate of about 10 percent a year, outpacing the economies of some of the countries in which they operate. The gross domestic product of Bolivia, for example, is $21.4 billion. The companies also have more employees than most governments. Vivendi Environnement, alone, employs 295,000 worldwide; Suez employs 173,000.

Both Suez and Vivendi have doubled their customer base in the last 10 years with Suez serving 125 million water customers and Vivendi 110 million. RWE's Thames Water is a distant third with 51 million but its recent acquisition of American Water Works Co. Inc. will increase it to 70 million.

In France, both Suez and Vivendi have close political ties with the national and local governments. Executives of the two companies have been charged and, in some cases, convicted of illegal campaign contributions to politicians and of using bribery and fraud to obtain water and other municipal contracts. In one case, witness testimony implicated former Suez CEO Monod, who is now chief adviser to French President Jacques Chirac. Monod has never been charged and has denied any wrongdoing.

Though competitors, the companies often form joint ventures to obtain water concessions in foreign countries. The ICIJ investigation, for example, revealed that Thames and Vivendi formed a business alliance in 1995 to capture the Asian market. Suez and Vivendi share interest in Buenos Aires. And Thames and Suez, with the support of the former Indonesian dictatorship, divided up Jakarta.

Finally, the private water companies make promises they often can't keep – a tactic one World Bank water official called "over selling." Essentially, they promise to deliver a better service at a lower price. The ICIJ investigation found, however, that governments often drive up water prices just prior to privatization to give water companies room to immediately reduce prices and win popular approval. Once a company has won the contract and lowered prices, it often quickly attempts to renegotiate for higher rates and reduced performance targets. The fact that the companies now control the city's waterworks gives the company tremendous leverage in these negotiations. In many cases, water prices soar and original targets for expanded water and sanitation systems are not met.

In Buenos Aires, for instance, Suez-controlled Aguas Argentinas almost immediately put pressure on the government to renegotiate the concession contract for more favorable terms.

Thames Water executive Peter Spillett complained to ICIJ that his company has lost contracts because of this tactic. "What we find a bit hard is that in many cases our competitors seem to go in much lower, and then within a year or two of having successfully gotten that contract, they seek to re-negotiate with the government of the city."

Since the companies prefer to be paid in American dollars, falling local currencies usually lead to demands for rate increases. Despite earning substantial profits, Aguas Argentinas recently canceled expansion plans and threatened to curtail services unless the government agreed to higher rates to compensate for foreign exchange losses.

The companies claim privatization is good because it brings the latest ideas and technology to tired public utilities and clarifies the responsibilities and mission of the water utility.

"In many cases, when only public servants are involved with delivering water services or sanitation services, the goals which are expected by the political decision-makers are not visible, they are not explained," Suez Vice President Gérard Payen told ICIJ. "When you involve the private sector, the community has more information and the situation is more transparent."

But the ICIJ investigation showed that companies frequently insist that all or part of their contracts remain secret. Regulatory authorities in Buenos Aires, Manila and Jakarta told ICIJ they often feel powerless in the face of demands from the water companies because they don't have access to company figures.

When companies are fined for not achieving performance targets, they often don't pay, preferring to appeal rulings in lengthy and expensive arbitration and court proceedings.

Even in developed countries, such as Australia and Canada, which generally have stronger regulatory bodies than poorer countries, privatization has weakened public accountability. In Sydney and Adelaide, Australia, major sewage treatment and water quality problems were kept secret from the public as regulatory authorities and the private companies argued over responsibility. In Hamilton, Ontario, a private company took several years before it agreed to settle fines after millions of gallons of sewage spilled into the streets and flooded basements.

Nor is there any assurance that the private companies are financially reliable. Since 1998, when Hamilton privatized its utility, the city has had five different operators. Two of the companies, one of which was Enron Corp., collapsed under the weight of fraud scandals. In a period of just five years, the concession has been owned by the city government, one local company, two American companies and was recently taken over by the German utility RWE.

"You don't know who you are dealing with," said Hamilton city councilor Sam Merulla. "When you deal with the private sector on behalf of the public sector, you need stability. In Hamilton, it has been a revolving door of international corporate owners dealing with one of the most precious things we have – water."

Global Expansionists

Having established firm footholds on six continents, the big three water companies say they now intend to concentrate most of their efforts on the potentially lucrative markets of North America, China and Eastern Europe. All three told ICIJ they hope to more than double their revenue and their client base in the next 10 years.

Thames' Spillett said China is opening up because the World Bank is ready to spend money there, which makes it more attractive to private companies.

"China is a bit of a sleeping giant because for people at the World Bank there has always been a bit of difficulty regarding financing issues. They tend to have gotten a bit clearer just recently." Some countries are definitely not on the privatization agenda any more. Yves Picard, managing director of Vivendi in South Africa, said his company is not interested in concessions in southern Africa unless the World Bank or other institutions finance the capital costs. Otherwise, he said, there is no payback for the company because people are too poor to pay the high water rates private companies charge to cover their capital costs.

Dependence on the World Bank appears to be increasing. There is rising concern among the companies that capital markets are not open to them because water is such a volatile political issue and many poorer countries have unstable local currencies.

In a presentation on private sector involvement in the water business before the World Bank in February 2002, J.F.Talbot, chairman and CEO of France's third-largest water company, Saur, warned that without increased financing from institutions like the World Bank major international water companies will "stay at home."

Much of their expansion plans depend on whether people ultimately accept the idea of water as a commodity. In other words, the days of the free glass of water are gone. Everyone must pay for water is the principal message sent out by the World Water Council and its affiliate organizations. The fact that people are increasingly accustomed to buying bottled water can only be encouraging for the big water utilities.

Yet, concerned about the backlash from privatizations such as Cochabamba's, the companies are beginning to couch their words in less mercantile terminology. After all, what makes water different is that, like air, it's irreplaceable. There are no choices allowing customers to reject one for another. How can anyone market something that is both vital to life and has no alternative? As the cholera victims of South Africa know only too well, nothing can replace clean water.

"Everybody who thought water was a commodity lost," Vivendi's President Olivier Barbaroux told ICIJ. "We do not sell water. You take the water and you give it back. Exactly the same amount. What we are doing is bringing the water to your home, making it clean for you to use, and then taking it back and putting it back in nature clean. And that is the service we are bringing."

Suez's Payen flatly stated: "Water is not a commodity. It is a public good. It is also a social good. It is essential for life." So what does Suez sell? "We provide the essentials of life."

Thames, however, is sticking to the commodity message. "Water is both a commodity and a [public] service," Spillett said. He then compared the water business to a brewing company.

"Clearly people do not understand the value of water and they expect it to fall from the sky and not cost anything. But if we use an analogy with beer – that's 99 percent water – but breweries have added their hops and malt, and it has gone through a lot of processing and the end product has a lot of added value and people are prepared to pay a lot of money for it. In a sense purifying water from the raw state, then treating it and bringing it to people and taking it away again is almost the same industrial product. You have a lot of value-added there and people, if they don't realize it's got a value and don't pay for it, don't treat it as a very precious resource. Of course, it is."

The companies also claim that they are not really privatizing water, but rather managing utilities under in partnership with governments. They call these "Public Private Partnerships" or PPPs.

For critics of privatization, however, the essential issue is not water itself, but access to water. And the key to access is control – who has their hands on the tap.

2009-08-02T13:07:00.000-04:00

Managing World Water

By Daniel Moss, Foreign Policy in Focus
June 3, 2009

Flawed U.S. Policy

A principal U.S. policy tool for solving the world water crisis is the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009. This act builds on a similar law signed by President Bush in 2005. The bill seeks to provide "100 million of the worlds poorest with sustainable drinking water and sanitation by 2015." Operationally, the proposed law establishes an Office of Water within USAID, an agency that embodies the entrepreneurial and privatizing spirit associated with shrinking the public sector.

If passed, the Water for the World Act will further enable the role of private investment in public drinking and wastewater infrastructure in developing nations, according to Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch.

"Water privatization has proven a commercial failure in most countries around the world because private companies have, time and again, proven incapable of meeting their obligations to both their customers and their shareholders," she argues. "Reinforcing the role of private investment in the water infrastructure systems of developing countries will only perpetuate the problems that this well-intended act is designed to solve. Instead, we must work with developing countries to implement sound water policies based on public management of this essential resource."

In reports to Congress, USAID largely measured its success in implementing the Simon water acts by the amount of dollars spent on water systems. Investments in extending service and repairing ailing infrastructure are certainly critical. In this time of financial crisis, these ought to be a core part of public spending programs to reactivate the global economy. However, it matters a great deal how the money is spent, with what oversight and based on what political agenda. Certainly, the recent damage caused by channeling public monies to poorly regulated mortgage companies ought to offer pause about a similar strategy for water. These funds must be channeled to local governments and public utilities (with no strings attached mandating privatization) and to non-governmental organizations working on community-led, commons-based water strategies.

The Obama administration's performance at the World Water Forum was lackluster. It did not sign the alternative declarations to declare water a human right or seek to move policy deliberations to the UN. Whether the administration's plate is too full to pay attention or it is intentionally, repeating the Bush administration's poor stewardship of the globe's natural resources is still unclear.

In his inaugural address, President Obama promised to the world's people "to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow." So there is hope that the administration has been too busy to give this important issue proper attention. But hope is a poor substitute for action. It is still early on in the new administration, time enough to press for change. That change will happen when citizens insist that water debates are public debates about how to best manage our common water resources.

Globalization in Our Local Economy: Our Water, Their Profits

By Jonathan Leavitt, ZNet
July 8, 2003

Background on the Privatization of Water and Related Trade Treaties

Over the last decade we have seen a significant rise in attempts by corporations both national and international to get control over one of the last great sources of available public funds. These of course are local municipal budgets and the public spending that goes in support of everything from public education to trash pickup to water delivery systems. Almost every community has begun the slow devolution from the public sector model to the corporate model. The process of globalization has accelerated this push for privatization.

With promises of greater efficiency and cost savings for strapped communities, these corporations have begun making in-roads into what has always been a relative safe haven for local control and autonomy from the growing influence of the corporate model. Not content with simply calling all the shots in the world of International politics and economics through the IMF and World Bank and the spider web of international finance, not content to call all the shots via their powerful federal government lobbyists working out of Washington, not content to call the shots at Statehouses across the country, they now want to finish their assault on government by the people by bringing their failed model in to our backyards. As is so often the case, the first wave of this new corporate assault was aimed at disenfranchised communities whose economic distress was seen as the perfect weakness to exploit.

It's important to understand that there is a history of privatization of water delivery systems that date back hundreds of years. In fact, many of the first contracted water delivery systems were done by private companies. But the circumstances of the country were much different then. There was very little public infrastructure or municipal revenue sources that could support municipal building projects of this scale.

The nature of corporations was different as well. Multi-national trade treaties did not exist in the format we are familiar with today. And corporate charters were reviewed every year to see if the corporation had served the public good. Thankfully by the time corporations received their "personhood" (with all the rights of a US citizen, but none of the responsibilities) through a number of bad Supreme Court rulings, most of these private water efforts had moved into public hands. So as we speak today in the United States, we have roughly 85% (about 60,000 cities or towns) of our water delivery systems in the hands and control of public municipalities.

Now however it is a new age, and corporate America has spent the last thirty years trying to figure out how it could escape the basic concepts of democracy through the creation of international trade treaties where local decision making (still accessible to regular citizens and responsive to citizen outcry) could be overruled.

Here's how these trade treaties and globalization of our local economy work using three distinct examples. The first is taking place in Nottingham, NH where USA Springs, plans to build a water bottling plant. It has applied for a permit to pump hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day from an aquifer that underlies Nottingham, Barrington, and other towns in 3 watersheds. This could mean pumping 310,000 gallons per day, enough to fill one million 20 oz. bottles every 24 hours. USA Springs has said it plans to sell the bottled water in Europe.

In a letter to US Representative (now Senator) John E. Sununu, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said that "nothing in the WTO agreement requires local authorities to permit bulk extractions of water that would be contrary to sound resource management and conservation or that would create hazards to human health. Of course, once local authorities decide to permit bulk water to be extracted from an aquifer, bottled, and sold as an article of commerce, WTO rules would likely apply to the sale of that article of commerce."

The State of New Hampshire claims the right to determine whether a large groundwater withdrawal such as the USA Springs proposal would harm other groundwater users. If the State grants a permit to withdraw a certain amount, it believes it reserves the right to change the amount at a later date. And under the GATT, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, quantitative restrictions affecting exports are prohibited, but exceptions can be made for natural resource conservation. Unfortunately the GATT trade agreement that dealt primarily with goods is no longer the main agreement of trade issues and has now been both updated and overtaken by the WTO and more severe trade agreements such as GATS which sets up privatization of services and TRIPS which governs and pushes forward Intellectual Property Rights which corporations use to make profits out of GMO seeds, or to prevent developing countries like Brazil from providing cheap HIV medicine for its poor.

Under the soon to be enacted GATS, General Agreement on Trade in Services, there are no exemptions for natural resource conservation. Under the GATS section on domestic regulations, any regulations considered "more burdensome than necessary to assure quality of service" are considered unfair barriers to trade. A trade tribunal would resolve the determination of whether or not regulations are considered fair or unfair. In other words, if the state of New Hampshire opens this door up even a crack, then the tentacles of these trade treaties will have enough maneuvering room to work their poison.

As another important example of how trade issues relate to the issue of water is the example of when Sun Belt Water of California sought to suck up tankers of bulk water from lakes in British Columbia. In response to public pressure the Canadian government denied the request and passed a law prohibiting bulk water exports in the future. However as a foreign investor under which NAFTA grants new rights and privileges, Sun Belt Water took its case to NAFTA for arbitration. Under NAFTA, foreign investors can directly sue if they believe government action has taken place which is "tantamount to expropriation" of their property; i.e. if government regulation or law harms its ability to profit from its investment. If it wins, the government must compensate it for its losses. Similar provisions are likely to be in FTAA.

If Canada loses they will either have to change the law or pay billions to compensate the corporation for "future expected profits." The same principle might eventually apply to the state of New Hampshire under soon to be enacted trade treaties and its battle with USA Springs.

The other scenario is taking place in many more cities and towns across the country and the world, including my hometown of Lawrence, MA currently faced with the possibility of their water works being turned over to United Water / French Suez.

This is how the corporations work in this particular scenario. First, they identify communities whose finances are shaky (Tax base weak resulting in a small budget, no room for capital improvements, bonding capacity already reached) and whose water delivery system needs significant replacement work or a complete overhaul. Then they connect with local "players" to serve as ambassadors of the privatization concept. (i.e. former councilors)

Keep the process as "closed" as possible. For example, make no effort for citizen input on the process. Meet in private. Avoid any and all publicity about the process. (This allows all the "players" in this kind of process (law firms, engineering firms, firms that handle municipal finance questions) to benefit richly off the process alone. For instance Lawrence has paid out nearly $4,000,000 for Wall St. Consultants already. These are names you will hear over and over againâ€¦. Hawkins, Delafield and Woods, Malcolm Pirnie, Advest, Inc when you look into water privatization all over the country.

Then they begin to circulate carefully designed public relations materials to both elected officials and the residents of the community. In these public relations pieces they list the glowing recommendations that come from citizens in communities that have relationships with the multi-national, clients of the company, and of course both employees and representatives of organized labor.

This multi-national will also begun making promises about what it will bring to the city. It lists its "Community Initiatives" like a "Buy Lawrence First" policy, scholarships to the Boys and Girls Club, Adopt a School Program, Urban Outreach Program, and support for Minority and Women Owned Small Businesses.

Let's start with a "Buy Lawrence First" policy. Exactly what kinds of materials and services will a water treatment plant need from the small businesses of Lawrence? Probably none. But it sure sounds good and looks great in print. Next, there is the promise of scholarships to local youth. Well this will be useful since by going with United Water / French Suez, many local fathers and mothers will lose their water Department jobs. Jobs that would have helped pay for college for local residents.

Then there is the "Adopt a School" program that will probably entail sending corporate speakers into 5th and 6th grade classes to tell them how great corporate economics are and that many of them should look into the exciting career opportunities in the world of water delivery systems. "Urban Outreach" for these multi-nationals means learning how to say, "Your water rates have gone up again" in both English and Spanish.

And as for the last promise of support for "Minority and Women Owned Small Businesses, these corporations know that it is these groups that are most likely to oppose this corporate takeover. These are the groups that best understand who corporate economics works for (and who it doesn't work for). So they want to appease them with false promises and token pledges of support.

Ramifications for the Community

The ramifications for the community begin on the economic level. Most communities are overextended in terms of revenue for public services. In Lawrence our community's water revenue goes directly into an "enterprise fund" that is used solely for water related issues. It's criminal that during difficult fiscal times, communities are being misled into handing over one of the few sources of revenue they have under their full control and a public service that pays its own way.

There is also the fact that money normally circulated back into the community via a public workforce (and almost guaranteed to be spent locally) is now shipped out to distant foreign shareholders. And lastly is the reality that privatization and globalization of our local economy leads to rate increases. Corporations must seek to maximize their profits. Once the workforce has been slashed at the beginning of the privatization, the only remaining way to maximize profit is to increase water rates.

In Cochabamba, Bolivia, Bechtel (who also just received almost a billion dollars worth of infrastructure re-building contracts for Iraq) oversaw a water privatization project that drove household water rates up to $20 a month in a city where most families earned $67 a month, and imposed draconian financial restrictions on water use. When the people rose up to protest they were brutally repressed and seven died. (Eventually the people succeeded in taking back the water system and Bechtel is still trying to force the city to pay $40 million for "expropriation".)

In Manilla in the Philippines, a Bechtel water privatization scheme led to a 400% increase in water rates.

In Pekin, Illinois water rates increased 204 percent over eighteen years of privatization by American Water Works.

In Nelspruit, South Africa, water rates rose by more then 400% between 1995-2000 after the system was privatized. We also need to consider the history of privatization and globalization that fosters corruption. For example
Suez and Vivendi have been convicted of bribing government officials to obtain contracts.

French Suez officials had to flea Indonesia after the government was overthrown, because of their collaborations with the dictatorship resulting in the water delivery system being thrown into complete disarray.

And only four months ago the mayor of Atlanta pulled out of the biggest contract in the nation, with United Water – Suez. The city found evidence that the company failed to perform maintenance, billed the city for work it didn't do, ignored customers cries for service, cut staff to dangerously low levels and occasionally delivered filthy, brown water.
And finally on the economic front is that privatization and globalization in our local economy leads to job losses.

In Atlanta the work forces was slashed from nearly 700 jobs to nearly 300.

Following privatization in England, over 10,000 workers were let go.

Following privatization in the Philippines half of the original workforce was let go.

Following privatization in Indianapolis nearly 200 workers were laid off.

The issue of local control is also vitally important to understand. Companies are accountable to shareholders, not consumers. If CEO's and corporate boards don't seek to maximize their profit, then they are subject to lawsuits on behalf of these shareholders. This means that rather then being held accountable by the residents of a city or town, multinationals will conduct business by the terms of what will increase their bottom line for the short term.

We need to keep in mind that Privatization and globalization isn't simply a matter of signing off on a local company to do some contracting for a city/town. Instead we are dealing with an almost irreversible process. The fact is that once the infrastructure of a system has been turned over to privatization all the "institutional memory" is lost from the city. When it comes time to renegotiate a contract, the corporations hold all the cards because it would require a huge capital investment from cash starved cities to re-claim. Cities and towns are then at the mercy of these corporations.

For example, the city of Chattanooga tried to buy back its water system from American Water Works in response to exorbitant fire hydrant rates. During the battle, American Water Works paid lawyers and public relations firms more then $5 million. Unable to match this campaign, the city had to abandon its buyback efforts. And under closed trade tribunals (the highest law of our land), a private corporation can challenge the reversal of privatization as being an act of "expropriation" and win huge financial settlements from cities or towns.

The remaining issue for us to consider is the quality of Water. Privatization and globalization of our local economy undermines water quality. Corporations can reject local, state, and federal laws that apply to water quality again as "barriers to free trade" and are backed up by the lobbying group for private water companies, the National Association of Water Companies (NAWC). NAWC intensively lobbies both Congress and the EPA to prevent higher water quality standards from being adopted.

A likely scenario to be repeated here in the United States is the situation that took place in Walkertown, Ontario, seven people died and 2300 others became ill as a result of E. Coli contamination in the drinking water. The private company charged with testing the water knew the water was contaminated. But under regulations designed to encourage privatization, they were not required to report it.

2009-08-02T12:13:00.000-04:00

Why For-Profit Water Companies Are Behind a Bottled Water Backlash

AlterNet, Independent Media Institute
July 31, 2008

The United Kingdom has been a central battleground in the bottled water backlash over the past twelve months. We regularly hear news stories in the British press of new anti-bottled water campaigns popping up with catch phrases like "Turn on To Tap Water," "Tap Into Water" and "London on Tap."

One would think that there is a strong grassroots movement in England actively confronting the bottled water industry. While this may be true to a certain extent, the reality is that the majority of the anti-bottled water campaigns in place in the UK are initiatives of for-profit private water services companies.

An important grassroots effort of note was undertaken by British food and agriculture advocates called "Sustain" which has published two important reports on bottled water use in the UK. Their 2006 report, Have you bottled it? which examined a number of issues related to bottled water, was coupled with a short report that disclosed the amount of UK government funds spent on bottled water. Sustain's report generated a large amount of press about the issue and helped put pressure on all levels of government in the country to disclose the amount of public monies used for the purchase of bottled water. The 2006 report was followed up in 2008 with an updated version called The taps are turning.

On the heels of Sustain's 2006 report, many companies in the UK private water services industry launched anti-bottled water and pro-tap water campaigns. By embarking on pro-tap water campaigns, the private water industry is treading in some contradictory territory. On the one hand, these companies, as do publicly-owned and managed water utilities in North America (95 percent of the water utilities in Canada are publicly run, 85 percent in the US), see the bottled water industry as a competitor. In places like Canada, public water providers and water utility workers see the bottled water industry working to undermine the public's confidence in tap water. By weaning people off of public tap water in order to consume more and more bottled water, the ground is laid for greater public acceptance of the privatization of water services.

In the UK however, where the public water delivery and treatment system was completely sold off to corporations under Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in 1989, the relationship with the bottled water industry is different (for a detailed briefing on UK water privatization visit Public Services International Research Unit). Private water delivery companies see bottled water as a direct competitor for their product, tap water. By launching high profile pro-tap water and anti-bottled water campaigns, often in collaboration with popular daily newspapers, these initiatives can be seen as nothing more than a renewed form of market advertising for their products.

It is not surprising, then, that the pro tap water movement in the UK has achieved such prominence. With the PR teams from several private water companies working on the issue, and the use of the print media for promotion, it is bound to achieve some prominence.

In the past six months, almost every private water services company in the UK has mounted its own PR campaign promoting tap water. Thames Water (formerly owned by German services giant RWE), the private company in charge of all of London's water and sewerage services, is involved with two high profile campaigns promoting tap water, "London on Tap" and "Water on Tap" with London newspaper The Evening Standard. Both campaigns are designed to promote London's drinking water through restaurants and hotels. These two campaigns alone have generated a huge media response in the UK and have actually been credited with causing a drop in the sale of bottled water.

The UK private water services industry has been using similar tactics to confront the bottled water industry for years. As far back as 2000, Thames Water was claiming in the media to have better tasting water than bottled water. In 2001, another private water company, Yorkshire Water organized a "Tap-v-Cap" challenge that showed 76 percent of the people who participated could not tell the difference between bottled and tap water. In 2004 Yorkshire Water actually trademarked "their" water under the brand Icytonic.

While these campaigns have been successful at raising critical concerns about the consumption of bottled water and helped to foster popular action, there is a fundamental contradiction when these initiatives have their root in private for-profit water services corporations.

In many respects these campaigns are simply market advertising for the product being sold by the private water company, namely, tap water, couched in the discourse of environmental activism. Hitching onto the bottled water backlash is an easy way for these companies to rebrand themselves as providers of safe water and champions of the environment.

In many cases, however, the opposite is true when these companies are consistently fined for environmental and financial abuses. As recently as June, 2008, Severn Trent, which serves 3.7 million customers in the Midlands and mid Wales, was fined the equivalent of $70 million for delivering poor service to its customers and for deliberately providing false information to UK water and sewerage industry regulators Ofwat. In April of this year, Thames Water, the UK's largest private water company, was also fined $18.9 million for similar abuses.

These are only two in a long list of reprimands directed at the UK private water industry since privatization. Take, for instance, the recent boil water advisory for 250,000 Anglian Water customers in central England. With these problems in mind, it is no surprise that these companies will jump at any chance to paint themselves in a greener light.

For anti-bottled water activists in North America, where across the board water privatization has not occurred, British water services corporations and anti-bottled water campaigns seem like strange bedfellows. Given that the climate for privatization is not yet favourable, North American water services corporations focus much of their public relations initiatives lobbying legislators and searching for new markets. For the private water services industry in North America, it is not much of a stretch to believe that they welcome increased consumption of bottled water given its role in setting the stage for the privatization of water services.

Private water services companies in North America know that people who are convinced to buy bottled water as their main source of drinking water are likely to lose confidence in their publicly delivered water. These companies are comfortable with the bottled water industry fomenting and then capitalizing on the public's fears of public water utilities while simultaneously cultivating consumers' willingness to pay large amounts of money for a litre of water. In this way the bottled water industry helps grease the wheels for the acceptance of privatized water services.

The advocates of water service corporations can point to an increased willingness to pay for clean and safe water. This willingness to pay is demonstrated by the high consumption of bottled water. If people are prepared to pay for bottled water because they have been convinced it is safe and healthy, they will also be willing to pay for privatized water services.

Because the privatization of the UK's water utilities took place before bottled water had become ubiquitous, British water service corporations can concern themselves with competing against the bottled water industry for what amounts to the same consumer market for their products. They are also using the opportunity to clean their questionable environmental records.

The next time we hear of a new tap water campaign coming out of the UK, let's cheer for the profile the issue is getting, but we need to be wary that such a campaign is driven by a for-profit water services company whose aim is to promote its brand of privatized water.