Can you imagine living in a world where you have to pay for air? Unless we put colonies on the moon, the idea seems preposterous. But when it comes to water, the privatization of this essential element of life is a very real and alarming prospect for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
One of the most famous conflicts involving water issues occurred in South America in 1999. The government of the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, handed over the rights to the city’s water supply to Bechtel Water Company, who hiked up water rates. One hundred per cent increases in water prices were common, but increases as high as 300 per cent were reported around the city. Families earning $60 a month had to deal with $20 water bills.
The people of Cochabamba refused to cooperate. Many stopped going to work, organized mass protests and rioted in the streets. The government responded by declaring martial law, arresting protest leaders, shutting down radio broadcasts, and sending out riot police. The conflict resulted in the death of 17-year-old Victor Hugo Daza, who was shot in the face by a government sniper.
The issue of water privatization is also an important one in Canada. Many blame the deaths of seven people in Walkerton in 2000 on the private sector’s failure to adequately test the town’s water.
U of T hydrogeologist Ken Howard, the first environmental witness at the Walkerton inquiry, claims that Ontario is 20 years behind the rest of the world in protecting and managing its groundwater.
“When big cities like Toronto mainly use lake water,” explains Howard, “groundwater is usually ignored.” Because groundwater tends to move very slowly (about 10 metres a day, 100 times slower than a river), any pollution in the ground does not have serious impacts until many years later.
Howard offers a bleak scenario: “If I tell a politician that if they keep applying road salts they are going to cause real problems in 25 to 30 years, they’re going to turn around and say ‘I only have to worry about the next five years because that’s when the next election is.’
“Unfortunately if it’s out of sight for politicians it’s also out of mind,” concludes Howard.
Tom Muir, former senior environmental economist for Environment Canada, agrees with Howard that politicians are only interested in campaigns and dollars. At a seminar held on September 29, he said governments only see water as an economic resource, and not as an environmental or health issue.
“The existing system does not work. I don’t think the environment is a real federal government priority,” stated Muir. “The environment must become a priority on the same level as homeland security and terrorism. Otherwise, who and what are we protecting?”
In the desert state of Rajasthan, India, poor farmers have given up waiting for solutions from their government for their water problems. Several years of drought have resulted in shrivelling fields, young people leaving to seek work in the cities, and among the remaining villagers, unquenched thirst.
Rajendra Singh encourages villagers to take matters into their own hands. Renowned in India, he is regularly called a “modern-day Gandhi.” Singh, involved in a growing grassroots movement promoting local control of water, opposes government plans to privatize rivers, streams and wells.
Featured in the documentary Thirst, Singh is shown digging johads (reservoirs) with the help of village labourers. These small ponds hold rainwater, which soaks into the ground, seeps downstream, and fills the village wells. Farming yields improve and the village prospers.
“What we’re trying to do is make the community self-reliant,” says Singh. He has helped build an estimated 4,500 johads in about 1,000 villages in Rajasthan-all using local labour and materials.
Singh believes that local action is crucial for the development of poor farming communities, and that these small projects will pressure the federal government to back off from privatization plans.
In 2003 the inhabitants of Stockton, California thought they too could influence their city’s decision to privatize water services. They protested outside City Hall shouting, “Water for life, not for profit,” and “Let the people vote.” They believed that the OMI-Thames Water Company was not interested in maintaining the quality of their drinking water, only in making a profit.
Stockton Mayor Gary Podesto, however, supported the privatization of the city’s water supply. By privatizing water, he declared, the city would save 170 million dollars over 20 years, mainly through the replacement of aging pipes and water plants. He said that government-run utilities are essentially a monopoly, and creates no incentive for improvement. Private companies would bring in the profit incentive and improve services.
In a speech to the people of Stockton, he said: “It’s time that Stockton enters the 21 century in its delivery of services and think of its citizens as customers.”
The city council denied the citizens’ request to vote on the issue, and agreed to contract OMI-Thames Water.
Protesters in Cochabamba, however, were victorious. After seeing death, injuries, and the paralysis of the region’s economy, the government broke the contract with Bechtel. The company in turn sued the city for $25 million for loss of profits. The case is still pending at the World Bank court.
The deaths in Walkerton also raised some red flags. Howard says that after the Walkerton inquiry, the government produced only band-aid solutions. For example, the government is developing “vulnerability maps” to show how at risk the groundwater is to pollution. These maps indicate the most appropriate locations for landfills and highways.
“The government’s approach is very simplified,” says Howard. “It often takes very crude information from water well records to come up with a very simple index. The maps I’ve seen produced by this simple, cheap method seem almost worthless.”
Torontonians are now faced with their own water conflict. There are concerns that water from the Great Lakes will be sold to the US, and thus fall under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“If that happened,” speculates Stephen Bede Scharper, professor of religion and associate to the Institute for Environmental Studies, “Canada could lose its autonomy over its water. Any disputes about how much water should be sold would go to the World Trade Organization.”
The Canadian Catholic Organization for the Development of Peace wants to put a stop to these plans. The CCODP fears if Great Lake water were actually sold, not only would water prices skyrocket, but there would also be unpredictable environmental effects in the Great Lakes basin as a result of the drainage.
The CCODP and other religious organizations are concerned about the privatization of water because they believe that “water is a basic human right that should not be for sale,” says Scharper. “It is part of the common good and it has to be preserved for all people, not just the wealthy elite.
“Many people say water is going to be the oil of the 21st century,” he adds. “Wars may be fought.”
Yet he remains hopeful. “Ultimately these religious groups will prevail because water is absolutely essential for life. I have a feeling that a sense of the common good, instead of corporate greed, will prevail.”
