Maude Barlow: The Growing Battle for the Right to Water … By Tara Lohan, AlterNet…. Posted February 14, 2008…. http://www.alternet.org/water/76819/
Maude Barlow's new book about the water crisis is a call to arms to protect a fundamental human right.
From Chile to the Philippines to South Africa to her home country of Canada, Maude Barlow is one of a few people who truly understands the scope of the world's water woes. Her newest book, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, details her discoveries around the globe about our diminishing water resources, the increasing privatization trend and the grassroots groups that are fighting back against corporate theft, government mismanagement and a changing climate.

I invite each of you to make the time to open the link …http://www.alternet.org/water/76819/ and read Tara Lohan’s article on an absolutely fundamental water issue camouflaged by your Arizona government raging right under your nose in your on back yard…?

Ms. Lohan’s article is about 6 pages in length wherein she attempts to gel this topic of privatization into meaningful bite size, chunks, not an easy task.

There have been a number of individuals and organizations in Arizona who have attempted to shed light and bring into the spot light our government’s move to privatize your water and is implications both short and long term.

The manner in which our political leaders have chosen to address our lingering water dilemma rates prominence in the article … “and the reality is that we've interrupted the hydrologic cycle in many parts of the world and the American Southwest is one of them.” … “but there is not even an understanding that you've got to stop increasing the demand on water. In the U.S., people are moving into the very area of the country that has no water -- a huge migration is taking place to the American Southwest where they're building more golf courses.” … “I just read about a new water theme park in Arizona that will have waves so big you can have serious surfers, like real surfing in the desert. There is just this lack of understanding about how nature works, how the hydrologic cycle needs to be protected and how watersheds need to be protected, and when you start playing god by moving this stuff around like this we are just creating this massive crisis. There is not enough water for the demands being made on it in the American Southwest.”

Lohan continues in her article writing … “Well, as water dwindles in the world and available fresh water is becoming more scarce, the demand is growing, water is becoming a commodity, it is becoming valuable to those who want to put a price on it, which is why I called the first book Blue Gold. And this blue gold is attracting private sector interest in many, many ways, and there is a private sector interest coming together to control every level of water, from when we take it out of the ground, bottle it, to how we deliver it, to wastewater treatment, and now the biggest and newest is water reuse and recycling. That sounds benign at first, but when you really start to look at it, really it is about big, big corporations like GE, Dow Chemical, Proctor & Gamble getting into the ownership, control, and recycling of dirty water, which because there are billions of dollars at stake, in my opinion, becomes a disincentive to protect source water. And you can start to understand why governments, in collusion with these companies, are starting to spend millions of dollars on cleanup technology but will not enforce rules to stop pollution in the first place.
And then we have desalination. There are 30 desal plants planned for California alone. They are now talking about nuclear-powered desalination. They are talking about building those plants as we speak. The people in the anti-nuclear movement had better dust off and come back because it is all coming back with desalination. And then there is nanotechnology, which they want to be totally deregulated. I've got a great quote in the book where this guy says, "We are going to do to water what we did to telecommunications in the 1990s," which is total deregulation. They want governments out of the business of water.
I have a whole section in the book on how water has become such a hot commodity. When I wrote Blue Gold there was no water being exchanged on the Stock Exchange, now there are over a dozen indexes just for trading water. It has become a multi-multibillion-dollar industry just overnight. A lot of it is this water reuse -- it is the fast-growing section of the water industry. I argue that there is a race going on over who's going to control water, whether it will be seen as a public commons, a public trust, and part of our collective heritage that also belongs to the earth -- or whether it will be controlled by private corporations, and I don't know who will win.” …
While “we” – that’s you and me – are extremely reluctant to admit it, our Arizona rules and regulation respecting water and wastewater are most assuredly written to enable our ADEQ regulators NOT to enforce and stop pollution in the first place.

Lohan … Water is not just an environmental issue, but a national security issue, you discovered with this book. … MB: Yes, water has become an issue of national security in the U.S. Six years ago I couldn't find any inkling at the national level -- the Pentagon or White House -- of a coming water crisis, either globally or in the U.S. But in the last, two to three years, this has been hugely changed. There is now a consortium advising the Bush administration and the Pentagon -- it is called Global Water Futures. It is made up of this think tank called the Center for International Studies and Sandia Laboratories. Then I dug deeper and found it is being contracted out to be run by Lockheed Martin. And this consortium involves Coke and Proctor & Gamble and others. So you finally have the U.S. government saying, "Holy crap, we're in trouble here, you can't be a super power if you don't have energy and water." Now they've got this advisory body that not only has this think tank and the corporate side too, and the high technology side, and the military side. It becomes very clear what you are dealing with.
But our government, city, county, state and federal would have you believe they are committed to providing you SAFE potable (drinking) water when in fact… “It is a struggle at every level. But we just keep going. The fight back around the world is claiming space, but we have to have the weight of law behind us. We have to make, as a society, decisions about what matters. And if we believe that people shouldn't die because they can't afford water, then we have to bring things to bear to make that happen -- we have to change things. If the World Bank has money to give to Suez or Veolia, (two of the largest multinational for profit corporate owned private water purveyors) - - (by the way Suez, owns and operates the City of Phoenix facility at Lake Pleasant) - - they've got the money to give to a public agency.”
When do “we” say enough is enough and stop the proliferation of “corporate” control of our water and wastewater…?
Or maybe you really don’t believe its happening…?
The choice is solely ours to make … I invite us to make it wisely and in a reasonably expeditious manner.