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Portal:Water
From SourceWatch
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This is part of the Center for Media & Democracy's water policy initiative. |
The special SourceWatch page includes articles related to water and climate change, water and energy, the growing tensions between corporations selling water and water services and communities needing clean water, and industry associations and front groups seeking to influence water policy.
Our United Water article highlights recent problems with privatizing water resources. The article discusses a recent report from the advocacy group Food & Water Watch criticizing United Water New York's plans to build a desalination facility for the Hudson River. "[The facility] is a classic example of how the interests of private water companies starkly conflict with the needs of the customers to whom they are providing this essential resource,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. The United Water article also reports on a lawsuit and counter-suit between the private water provider and the City of Camden over allegations of wasting taxpayer dollars and exposing the population to health risks.
Our Marcellus Shale article includes a discussion of the Halliburton loophole and the environmental hazards of hydrofracking. Efforts to extract the natural gas associated with the Marcellus Formation in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and neighboring states pose significant health hazards including both wasting fresh water and contaminating drinking water, according to the article and related sources. The article notes that the dangers of hydrofracking were expunged from the Dick Cheney energy task force report in 2001 and were downplayed in a 2004 report by the Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency, which led in part to exempting hydrofracking from regulation under the Clean Water Drinking Act, as part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act that passed as one of the major legislative initiatives of President Bush's second term.
You can also help by adding more information to SourceWatch pages about United Water Inc, the Halliburton loophole, hydrofracking, and natural gas extraction wells in your neighborhood.
World Water Week, held annually in Stockholm, Sweden, recently closed with a message to COP15, the major United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change this December. "Water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt," the statement stresses. Yet some criticize World Water Week for increased corporate influence, as PR Watch reported.
- March 2010: Saving U.S. Water and Sewer Systems Would Be Costly, states the The New York Times in a March 14 article focusing on America's aging water infrastructure . The article notes that, on average, a significant water line bursts every two minutes somewhere in the country; some of our nation's water pipes were built around the time of the civil war; and that the hundreds of thousands of annual ruptures damage streets and homes, and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies. Americans are accustomed to paying very little for this vital resource, the article suggests, and political backlash results whenever rate hikes are proposed. Read the complete article here.
- March 2010: 'City of Indianapolis Rejects Water Privatization': On March 10, City of Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard signed an agreement with Citizens Energy Group (Citizens), a public charitable trust, to manage the City’s water and wastewater utilities. The agreement effectively transfers the City's water services from the private corporation United Water to Citizens, which operates like a non-profit for community benefit. “With this agreement, I am rejecting privatization," Mayor Ballard said. "Our water and wastewater utilities will no longer be a political football. Local professional management, lower rates and outstanding service make Citizens the best choice to own and operate our community’s water utilities.” Read more here.
- January 26, 2010: 'CEO Water Mandate' awarded the Public Eye Greenwash Award for exhibiting "irresponsible and damaging behavior." The Public Eye Awards, intended to highlight Corporate Social Responsibility, were announced in Davos, Switzerland, as part of a “counter-gala” occurring during the World Economic Forum. The CEO Water Mandate was described as a UN-sponsored "club" of corporations that profit from water resources, with members such as Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical. In granting the award, Richard Girard from Canada’s Polaris Institute stated that the CEO Water Mandate "continue[s] to systematically pursue their policies of water privatization under the U.N. emblem,” without consideration for existing mandatory environmental and social standards." Read more on the CEO Water Mandate page.
- January 25, 2010: Inter-state Battle for Water Ends After US Supreme Court Decision: The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal of the State of Mississippi's lawsuit against the City of Memphis and State of Tennessee over the city's use of water in an underground aquifier that runs between the states. In its suit, the State of Mississippi claimed that the City of Memphis had been taking more than their share of water from the Memphis Sands underground interstate aquifer. The decision effectively ruled in favor of the City of Memphis, prompting mayor A. C. Wharton to state: "Frankly speaking, this lawsuit cast a cloud over our community given the invaluable role that water plays in economic development and industrial decisions. Having it dismissed ensures that this issue doesn't block progress in a number of significant ways."[1][2]
- January 3, 2010: "Will the Next War be Fought Over Water?" In his book Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization, journalist Steven Solomon argues that water is surpassing oil as the world's scarcest critical resource, and that the world is divided into water "haves and have-nots." Solomon writes, "consider what will happen in water-distressed, nuclear-armed, terrorist-besieged, overpopulated, heavily irrigation dependent and already politically unstable Pakistan when its single water lifeline, the Indus river, loses a third of its flow from the disappearance from its glacial water source." Solomon tells NPR that water's cost doesn't reflect it's true value: "In some cases, where there are large political subsidies, largely in agriculture, it does not [cost very much]...in many cases, irrigated agriculture is getting its water for free. And we in the cities are paying a lot, and industries are also paying an awful lot. That's unfair. It's inefficient to the allocation of water to the most productive economic ends."[3]
- September 30, 2009: "The Obama administration, attempting to show it's helping California with its water crisis, has summoned state officials and interest groups to a conference on how to deal with a shortage that's causing high unemployment and economic distress in the state's farm belt," reports Associated Press. Conservatives are criticizing the federal government, saying water restrictions to protect endangered species are "prioritizing animals above people." Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger remarked, "We have federal judges now protecting the salmon, protecting the smelt, we have the federal judges protecting all the species, and I say to myself, 'Where are the federal judges protecting all the farmers?'"
World Water Day, March 22 2010
Corporate Greenwashing and World Water Day: Even though United Nations agencies coordinate World Water Day 2010 and run the official WWD website, Starbucks owns and manages the misleadingly-named website www.worldwaterday.net, which many may mistake for the official UN-Water website. Read more on the World Water Day page. UPDATE: As of March 14, 2010, www.worldwaterday.net routes viewers to www.waterday.org, where the Starbucks connection is not apparent. A cached version of the original page's privacy agreement can still be viewed here.
Quotes: UN-Secretary General Ban-Ki moon released a statement emphasizing the importance of World Water Day 2010:
"Water is the source of life and the link that binds all living beings on this planet. It is connected directly to all our United Nations goals: improved maternal and child health and life expectancy; women’s empowerment; food security; sustainable development; and climate change adaptation and mitigation. . .Our indispensable water resources have proven themselves to be greatly resilient, but they are increasingly vulnerable and threatened. . . Clean water has become scarce and will become even scarcer with the onset of climate change. And the poor continue to suffer first and most from pollution, water shortages and the lack of adequate sanitation. . . More people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war."
Events and Activism
The World's Longest Toilet Queue is a worldwide mass mobilization effort to set a Guinness World Record and demand action from global leaders convening at the April 22 High-Level Meeting on Sanitation and Water in Washington DC. More information can be found here.
The Organization Global Fast has launched an initiative called Offset The Water Crisis to raise money and awareness about the world's clean drinking water crisis. Global Fast is calling for World Water Day (March 22) to be a National Day of Sacrifice where students and community activists will sacrifice a meal, movie, or something else, and donate the money saved! For more information, visit [4]
"The global importance of water issues cannot be overstated," says Zafar Adeel, Chair of UN-Water. "Virtually all climate change impacts are expressed through water in one form or another, including more severe storms and extreme floods, and rapidly disappearing glaciers, often called 'Earth's water towers'."[5]
"Countries need to adapt to climate change jointly without delay!"[6] This is the main message of the Guidance on Water and Adaptation to Climate Change, developed at the the Meeting of the Parties to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Water Convention at their fifth meeting (Geneva, 10–12 November 2009). The complete Guidance can be found here. The UNECE Water Convention addresses the management of water resources that cross national boundaries. More details are available on the Guidance on Water and Adaptation to Climate Change page or the UNECE website.
According to a June 2008 technical paper for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there is "very high confidence" that "adverse effects of climate change on freshwater systems [will] aggravate the impacts of other stresses, such as population growth, changing economic activity, land-use change and urbanisation."
Protect and Strengthen our Public Water Infrastructure - Support a Water Protection and Reinvestment Trust Fund! According to Food And Water Watch, our water infrastructure is in desperate need of repair. In July 2009, Congressman Earl Blumenauer introduced a bill to establish a federal trust to provide permanent funding in order to protect our essential water resources, create tens of thousands of green jobs, and safeguard public health. Read more about the trust fund here, and sign the Food And Water petition here.
The Water Integrity Network is a "coalition" focusing on corruption in the public sector, but counts corporate lobbyists for the private water industry among its members. Although the WIN claims to be an international coalition of water-rights stakeholders, the steering committee membership consists of individuals with strong ties to the World Bank and private water lobbying groups such as AquaFed.
The Water Policy Institute is a think tank project of the major U.S. law firm Hunton & Williams. In the 2007 Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, Hunton lawyers argued that the EPA can not regulate carbon dioxide, under the Clean Air Act. WPI's corporate members include BP, Central Arizona Project and GE Water.
Water use has been growing at more than the rate twice of population increase in the last century, according to the United Nations agency UN Water.
Tapped or Bottled? Americans buy 29 billion bottles of water per year – bottles that are made from petroleum, travel thousands of miles (which requires burning fossil fuel), and eventually end up in landfills or our oceans. A new documentary, Tapped, made by the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car, highlights these problems, and reveal some pretty startling statistics:
- 18 million barrels of oil are used to transport water every year.
- There is virtually no testing for bottled water. One person is responsible for overseeing all of the regulation of bottled water in the U.S.
- Only 20% of bottles actually get recycled. Un-recycled bottles often end up in the oceans, adding to a dead zone of plastic that is already twice the size of Texas and growing.
Tap water, on the other hand, is well monitored, isn’t shipped thousands of miles, and is much less expensive. The National Resources Defense Council determined in a 1999 report that bottled water is no safer than tap water. Food And Water Watch is managing a campaign called Take Back The Tap to encourage restaurants, universities, and city governments to break the bottled water habit.
Golf Greens May Not Be Green: The UN estimates that golf courses use about 2.5 billion gallons/9.5 billion liters of water daily. Desiree D’Alessandro has created a "Political Remix" video addressing the role of golf courses in contributing to worldwide water shortage.
- "Water will be more important than oil this century," remarked former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali in 2003.
If you would like to help document water issues and the groups influencing water policy, this is the place for you. We rely on citizen journalists like you to expand, update and create articles.
You can view the existing articles on water issues here. The SourceWatch portals on climate change and coal issues also contain information relevant to water issues.
If this is your first experience with a wiki website, don't worry! To learn how you can edit any article right now, visit SourceWatch:About, our Help page, Frequently Asked Questions, or experiment in the sandbox. Other helpful pages are SourceWatch:References and Help:How to add an articles and resources section.
- Expand the SourceWatch articles on World Water Week and the Stockholm International Water Institute
- Begin a profile of the United Nations agency UN Water
- Search SourceWatch for water-related articles, and add "{{#badges: WaterEnergy}}" (without the quotes) to those not currently included in the water portal.
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