Bursting Out of the Bottle

Why the World Needs to Share its Water

“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” – Benjamin Franklin

from tribal rain dances to countless philosophical metaphors, water saturates the human psyche. When scarce, water strips the rational human being down to a burning thirst that demands satiation before all other needs. However, when it is shared and held in trust it is the fluid connection that binds the community of life together. A worldwide movement is calling for a return to a “water commons” approach* (collective management of an essential resource for the common good), in contrast to the dominant “water as commodity” ideology supported by those who profit by its sale.

Multinational corporations like Suez (France), and RWE (Germany) lead the corporate rush to capture what has been estimated as a 450 billion dollar market: providing clean water to the public for profit. The World Bank has financed these and other corporations to expand operations, claiming privatization of water aids development. The results tell a different story. In 2001, shortly after South Africa privatized their water system, an outbreak of cholera killed 300 people, and harmed over 350,000. A main cause of the tragedy was that people who couldn’t afford to pay their new water bills had their water pipes shut off, and were forced to use untreated, contaminated water for their basic drinking and sanitation needs.

The threat of privatization of public water also exists in North America, but here water commodification appears in a more consumer-friendly incarnation. The US leads the world in bottled water consumption (33.4 billion litres in 2007). The bottled water industry’s multi-billion dollar advertising campaigns capitalize on the public’s growing mistrust of tap water, and promote their product as superior. While concerns about contamination are sometimes valid, tap water safety monitoring is much more frequent than that required of the bottled water industry. A National Resource Defense Council study found arsenic, bacteria, and a variety of other contaminants in one third of over one thousand bottles (103 brands) they tested. The study concluded that “bottled water regulations are inadequate to assure consumers of either purity or safety.”

Health risks aside, the bottled water industry is the poster child for unsustainable practices. It takes approximately three litres of water to produce, from package to product, one litre of bottled water. With desertification and pollution threatening the earth’s fresh water resources, such waste is unacceptable. Further, the sheer volume of water extracted by bottling is documented to have dried up watersheds and disrupted hydrological cycles in fragile wetland networks.

In response to the litany of problems associated with bottled water, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Toronto are among the growing list of cities that have banned bottled water in public offices. In 2007 the US Conference of Mayors recommended that City Halls nationwide stop serving bottled water. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is considering a resolution – tabled in January – asking them to urge all Canadian municipalities to “phase out the sale and purchase of bottled water.” The campaign against bottled water made such a splash last year that Time magazine listed “the war on bottled water” as number four in their top ten food trends of 2008.

Debra Anderson is at the front lines of this war. She is a founding member of the McCloud Watershed Council (MWC), a coalition of citizens formed when Nestlé proposed to “appropriate and sell millions of gallons of water belonging to the town of McCloud, California.” Upon learning that one of the world’s largest corporations was proposing an environmentally risky bottling operation in her picturesque mountain village, Anderson was deeply concerned. When she learned that Nestlé would pay $0.09 a gallon for water they could turn around and sell for over $10 a gallon she was outraged.

In November 2004, Anderson and three of her neighbours organized a forum to educate the community about the negative impacts of Nestlé’s proposal. With a bit of creative networking, the women brought in a panel of experts that included an economist, a hydrologist, and water activist Terry Swier, who had been at the centre of the fight against Nestlé’s destructive actions in Mecosta County, Michigan. Three months later the MWC was born. The outcome? Nestlé, to date, has been unable to begin their project and McCloud has a group of citizens who are passionate about protecting their water for generations to come.

Maude Barlow, Chair of the Council of Canadians and senior advisor on water to the UN, champions the idea of a global water commons, which recognizes the essential nature of water to all life and protects it from for-profit exploitation. Her organization demands that access to clean water for drinking and sanitation be recognized as a human right by the UN and thus also by international law.

We can all embody a water commons approach in our everyday decisions. We can withdraw our economic support of the bottled water industry – don’t buy it! – and encourage local businesses (like restaurants) to do likewise. We can respond to fears about tap water contamination by demanding that our governments invest in improving public water works, and supporting them when they do. Join with others in your community and educate yourselves with online resources, and don’t forget World Water Day, March 22. Sign or start a petition to send to your local and federal leaders, asking them to actively support water as a human right. Perhaps a public drinking fountain is the perfect spot to collect signatures!

* The commons is “everything we inherit or create together and must pass on undiminished, to future generations,” according to OnTheCommons.org

Download a “Tap Water Challenge Organizing Kit” and find information about movements across the US. www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org

Council of Canadians website where you can find information about water commons, water as a human right, and send a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada. www.canadians.org/water

Website of an award-winning documentary on water with links to a huge number of organizations, big and small, at work on water issues worldwide.
www.flowthefilm.com/takeaction

The UN’s water site, with links to World Water Day and a whopping load of statistics.
www.unwater.org

The MWC site quoted above.
www.mccloudwatershedcouncil.org

About the Author

Find out more about Jodi Peters