Water is a remarkable substance. Like air, it is necessary for the existence of virtually all life forms. It is present – although in differing amounts – throughout the world. It moves naturally throughout the Earth’s crust and atmosphere. It respects no political boundaries or property lines.
Also like air, water traditionally is part of the Commons. Naturally occurring worldwide, it is essential to all humans and must be available to all as a matter of moral right. Water, moreover, has for centuries been sacred to many religious beliefs.
All the water on the earth today has been here since the formation of the planet. The earth has a finite quantity of water, and practically speaking, humankind is unable to create more. Most of the earth’s water is unavailable, being frozen, salty, or in the atmosphere. Less than one percent of the water on the planet is available to sustain all the life forms that depend on fresh water. Moreover, contamination can diminish the available fresh water supply. Water unquestionably is a critical and precious resource.
Public access to water wherever it was found diminished with high-volume extraction and diversion, coupled with long-distance transportation via pipelines and vessels. Today, the corporatization of water supply and distribution threatens the availability of potable water because, among other ills, it leads to the extraction of water in excess of natural recharge and to the removal of significant quantities from a watershed.
That means that having plenty of water in your locality is no longer a safeguard against scarcity, even here in the Northeast. There is not enough river water in Maine, for instance, to irrigate blueberry fields and to support the spawning of Atlantic salmon. Nor is there enough water in the Ipswich River in Massachusetts to support urban development.
The corporatization of water takes many forms. Water is unsustainably expended to convert arid land for housing and industry, for agriculture, and for golf courses and other recreation. International trade treaties and agreements classify water as a commodity of trade. Municipal water and sewer services are contracted out to corporations. The justifications, whether promoted by industry or by government, typically disregard significant impacts on local communities and on the environment.
When a municipality runs its water system, local accountability and a maxim of service to all are paramount. When the municipality contracts the service out, however, these virtues are displaced by a corporate profit motive and by absentee control. Typically, rates increase markedly, exceeding the reach of citizens of limited income; safe water is then, practically speaking, no longer available to all citizens. Similarly, when water is an international commodity of trade, community concerns over maintaining an adequate supply of clean water for local needs – human, agricultural, industrial, and recreational – are likely to suffer. Thus, implicit in the corporatization of water extraction and distribution is the disempowerment of people.
Bottled water is another manifestation of the corporatization of the water supply. We are being conditioned to believe the falsehood that water put into a bottle by a corporate bottler is somehow safer and healthier than water you or I might put into a reusable bottle. But it’s a fact that municipal and even private water systems are subject to stricter quality control than bottlers of water, and that often bottled water is drawn from municipal taps. Further, the sale of bottled water is exploitatively profitable; retail prices range up to 1000 times the cost of municipal tap water. It is regrettable that water extractors enjoy immediate profits and are not accountable for the costs that stem from removing – and not returning – vast quantities of water from a watershed.
When commercial water extractors assert that they are taking only surface water and not disrupting groundwater, that too is misinformation. Groundwater and surface water form a continuum in the hydrologic cycle. There is no inherent distinction between them, other than where the water may be at a particular time or location.
Although originally citizens created corporations with the objective of being served, they now risk being denied their voices by those same entities. Corporations do perform a service by bringing needed and life-enhancing goods and services to people throughout the world. They offer varied employment opportunities to people everywhere. The corporatization of water, however, fails tests of civic responsibility and of environmental stewardship.
Communities, on the other hand, are likely to allocate and prioritize water use with greater concern for long-term consequences than would a profit-motivated organization having limited public or local accountability. A public community is more likely to comprehend that the uniqueness and universality of water make it imperative that it be shared, as a matter of right, to meet the needs of all humans and other life forms. Those needs include industry and agriculture.
Water is so crucial a resource that its extraction and distribution and allocation must be in the hands of the human community, particularly a community accountable to the watershed from which the water was extracted. Any comprehensive management of water resources is likely to be contentious and exceedingly difficult. However, in the realm of water, the human community must be the sole caretaker.