Toilet to Tap: Will Tampa Be Next to Use Reclaimed Water for Drinking?
Posted by Jennifer Vettel, Water Matters @ Columbia on July 9, 2009 at 8:32 AM.

The Moment for a Clean Water Trust Fund Is Now
Posted by Mary Grant, Food & Water Watch on June 16, 2009 at 7:00 AM.

Recently in the Huffington Post, Governors Paterson, Schwarzenegger and Rendell called for more public-private partnerships to help improve our crumbling roads, water systems, schools and other public works projects.

Public-private partnership -- What's that? Basically, it's when the public pays a high price for a corporation to do something that local governments should be doing.

For example, if your city needs a new water treatment plant, it could contract with a corporation to design, build and run the plant. Governors Paterson, Schwarzenegger and Rendell want cities and towns to cut more of these deals and make the private partner finance the project.

Sound good? Local governments are struggling because of the economic meltdown, and they need assistance to build important improvement projects and protect public health. These Governors think they've found a simple solution: privatization.

But not so fast. It's not free and easy money. These private players are businesses, and like any business, their ultimate goal is to make money for their owners. They're not going to donate any money. In fact, they're going to charge the public a steep premium for it. In many ways, these public-private partnerships are expensive loans that you will have to pay back through user fees like water bills.

Public operation is a much better deal for taxpayers. It's cheaper and easier. And it doesn't require you to give a private entity control over one of your valuable public resources.

It's true that many government coffers have gone empty in the fallout of the housing bust, but a better solution is a Clean Water Trust Fund, which would help local governments pay for needed water projects and provide safe, clean and affordable water.

Act now and tell Congress that we need a Clean Water Trust Fund.

More information about how privatization can cost you money, see Food & Water Watch's report Money Down the Drain: How Private Control of Water Wastes Public Resources.

Are You Ready for a Global-Water Multimedia Adventure?
Posted by Abigail Brown, Water For The Ages on June 15, 2009 at 9:00 PM.

Already today, I have been able to visit people and places in Yemen, India, Mexico, Niger, and Kenya to learn more about local and global water issues. How, you may ask? Easy, I reply -- The Water Channel.

The Water Channel is a partnership between MetaMeta Communications, UNESCO-IHE, Cap-Net and Nymphaea. It compiles videos from around the world on water topics ranging from Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) to watershed education and outreach.

My favorite videos so far include -

Water is a Gift: An artful, short animation about water produced by the Natural Water Resources Authority in Yemen (complete with English subtitles). This animation juxtaposes drawings and digital video to talk about the significance of groundwater and drip irrigation in Yemen.

Tears (Lagrimas): A short “fictional” film about a young girl wistful for the days when she was able to access water at a local water source. This video has no words, only images, and was shown at fourth World Water Forum in Mexico.

Kenya: What Water Means to Me: One teacher at Karen ‘C’ Primary School in Kenya documents her students’ views on water. These students discuss the role of H20 in their daily lives: water shortages at school, water shortages at home, water-borne illnesses, and possible solutions to these water problems.

If you want to see others, visit the 164 videos (and counting) at The Water Channel website.

Mixed Bag on Coal Mining Decision from Obama Administration
Posted by Bruce Nilles, Sierra Club on June 15, 2009 at 12:12 PM.

This post was co-written by Bruce Nilles and Mary Anne Hitt, director and deputy director, respectively, of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign.

The Obama Administration announced steps to end the fast-tracking of certain mountaintop removal coal mine permits and to add tougher enforcement in Appalachia, important steps that -- with additional actions -- could greatly reduce the devastation to communities, waterways and mountains. However, these new policies alone will not necessarily improve conditions in Appalachia unless additional steps are taken and enforcement is stepped up significantly, and hundreds of mountains remain in peril.

That is why the Sierra Club is launching a new website called "What's At Stake," where you can track all the mountaintop removal permits now before the Obama Administration and learn more about the mountains and communities whose fate hangs in the balance.

After a West Virginia court ruled against it recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed revoking the nationwide "one-size-fits-all" permit it had used to authorize the dumping of coal mining waste into hundreds of miles of Appalachian headwater streams. The bad news, though, is that the Obama Administration says it will continue to allow mountaintop removal mining to bury streams under tons of mining waste.

Kudos to GQ for Revealing the Coal Industry's Dirty Secrets
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on June 8, 2009 at 5:08 PM.

While lots of mainstream glossy mags take on some green issues, like Elle, Sports Illustrated, and Glamor, none that I've seen so far has picked a more important topic and done a better job at it than GQ's new feature on coal by Sean Flynn.

The narrative of the article focuses on the TVA coal ash spill in December in Tennessee, which we've reported on at length. It tells the story of a few of the folks who made their home, some for generations, around the area where the Emory River hits the Clinch -- a spot where TVA built their Kingston Fossil Plant to burn coal. For most of the people living there, the TVA plant was a neighborhood fixture, a big employer and a means for cheap electricity. Few questioned the potential hazards until the December catastrophe.

Here's a great quote from the story:

You assumed, when you live next to one of the largest coal-fired plants in the world, that it would not harm you, and that is not as irrational as it might first appear. You assumed that coal was at least relatively clean because you've been told that it is, and the air is clear and the water, nothing but beautiful water, is clean and there is a wildlife sanctuary in the big plant's shadows. You assumed that a green levee engineered by federal employees would not fall down. You assumed that the place you always wanted to live because it was so much prettier than anywhere else you'd ever lived wouldn't, in an instant, turn gray and poisoned.

And when you discover all of those assumptions were false, what more are you willing to believe? What more should you believe?

While the (quite lengthy) piece provides great reporting about the effects of the spill, which has been deemed the largest manmade environmental disaster in our country's history, and its narrative is sustained by stories of the folks who lived there, loved their homes, and lost it all -- the best part of the Flynn's article is how he confronts the myth of clean coal. Here's a part where he writes about the Hawthorn Group, a marketing firm hired by coal companies to convince the American people that coal can somehow be clean:

Obama still talks about it, and he gets cheers every time. Because the public now believes in clean coal. Hawthorn polled what the firm considered "public opinion leaders" in September 2007 and again at the end of 2008 on, among other things, whether they favored burning coal to generate electricity. The first go-round was a split: 46 percent in favor, 50 percent opposed. But after a year of Hawthorn bleating "clean coal" over and over, support rose to 72 percent--and opposition nose-dived to 22 percent.

Results such as these would be impressive no matter what the issue. Yet they are especially so in this instance, because the idea Hawthorn is selling -- Coal is clean! - -is complete horseshit.

Thank you Sean Flynn! Clean coal is horseshit, indeed. I hope Obama reads GQ.  Kudos to Flynn and GQ for a story that takes on all the aspects of why coal isn't clean -- from the extraction to the burning -- and all the hazards of what happens to the toxic waste at every stage.

And here's one last bit from the piece to give you something to think about while you click over GQ's site to read the whole story:

In a sense, then, our appetite for coal--our want and need for lights and televisions and toasters--is a slow-motion suicide pact, no different really from that of a two-pack-a-day smoker: It's all very pleasant and satisfying in the moment, but sooner or later...

Is Water Too Cheap in China?
Posted by Ju Young Lee, Water Matters @ Columbia on May 27, 2009 at 2:19 AM.

The Chinese capital of Beijing will raise water prices this year as an attempt to conserve its scarce water supply. Cheng Jing, the head of Beijing's water-resources bureau, announced on May 10th the city would raise water prices within the next two months. This price hike will be the fifth one since 2001 in a bid to promote conservation.

According to the latest United Nations water report, China lists among the countries with the highest groundwater uses in the world. It withdraws between 50 and 200 cubic kilometers annually. Beijing, the capital city, is facing water limits, heightened by its fast pace of industrialization, wasteful irrigation projects and pollution of the region's underground water tables. But Beijing is now under even more pressure to conserve its water supply due to the delay of a huge and ambitious south-north Water Transfer Project. The plan is to divert 1 billion cubic meters (264 U.S. gallons) of clean water each year from the Yangtze River. However, the project, expected to be completed next year (2010), is delayed until 2014. The reason for the delay is thought to be related to the redistribution of water and relocation of residents along the 1,400 km channel that will link Central China's Hubei province with Beijing, Tianjin and neighboring provinces. Following news of the delay, policymakers are drawing up plans to conserve water in Beijing, including the raising of water prices for domestic and commercial users. Other water-scarce cities, including Shanghai and Shenyang, have recently decided to put a higher price tag on clean water.

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New York State Cuts Bottled Water Spending
Posted by Stacey Folsom, Corporate Accountability International on May 8, 2009 at 4:03 PM.

You may recall reading several months ago that the Think Outside the Bottle campaign had begun to call on governors across the country to eliminate bottled water spending in order to support strong public water systems.

We placed top-notch organizers in ten states, including New York, and we are already seeing the fruits of their efforts: this week New York Governor David Paterson issued an executive order to phase out state spending on bottled water in direct response to our grassroots efforts led by John Stewart, our New York field organizer.

It's the most comprehensive action taken by a governor to date on this issue, and it sets the standard for the 49 other governors we are urging to follow suit.

News of this early campaign victory reached millions of people across the country, appearing in the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Forbes, USA Today, and beyond.

Here is the statement we released to the press:

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Thanks to Natural Gas Drilling, PA's Water Is Flammable
Posted by Staff, Clean Water Action on April 30, 2009 at 4:00 PM.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the Marcellus Shale Formation, which stretches across 9 states and into Canada, is believed to contain up to 50 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. Potentially, two thousand natural gas wells could be drilled across northern and western Pennsylvania in the coming years.

Extracting this resource presents an incredible economic opportunity for much of the Appalachian Basin, and could help meet America's future energy needs. However, if the drilling is not done right, we could be faced with an environmental nightmare from which the region may never recover.

The wells into the Marcellus formation are very different from traditional natural gas wells. They are bigger, deeper, and present a host of environmental threats, including:

• Requiring two to four million gallons of fresh water per well, which could come from nearby streams.
• Producing a million or more gallons per well of heavily polluted water.
• Requiring exceptionally large well pads--up to 5 acres each-and a series of roads and pipelines to connect them. These pads, roads and pipelines encroach upon pristine habitats, damaging streams and fragmenting our forest habitat.
• Storing chemicals at the well site that contribute to air pollution and the prolific use of diesel trucks which spew soot into air breathed by nearby residents. Diesel soot has been linked to variety of cardiovascular diseases, including lung cancer.

Clean Water Action Pennsylvania is working with a coalition of organizations from across the state to urge the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental protection to enforce existing rules, and strengthen drilling standards to protect residents, water, health, and environment.

The PA Campaign for Clean Water has made a number of suggestions to DEP Secretary John Hanger for policies that would protect our watersheds from damage, and continues to press top DEP officials to make sure that our rivers and streams are protected. Pennsylvania must learn the lesson from past coal mining experience, and do things right this time!

In the video to the right, Victoria Switzer, a resident of Dimock, Pennsylvania, shares her account of local drilling development and the affect it is already having on her community.

Coke's Mixed Message: Opposing Environmental Sustainability and Advertising Social Responsibility
Posted by Kristin Urquiza, Corporate Accountability International on April 23, 2009 at 2:00 PM.

This Earth Day, Coke used its annual shareholders' meeting to spin the corporation's image green. But the gathering at the Gwinnett Center served more to expose the gulf between Coke's rhetoric and its action. In the last year, Coke split its time -- opposing progress on sustainability, on the one hand, and advertising its social responsibility on the other.

Well, that has left a lot of people asking, 'what is the real thing, really?' Corporate Accountability International, delivered 6,000 comments calling on Coke to dispense with its high-priced PR and answer the popular demand that it label the source of its Dasani bottled water, provide better information on its quality, and stop threatening local control of water when operating bottling plants. Following the meeting, we were able to speak directly with new Coke CEO Muhtar Kent and members of the board to share our concerns about the corporation's practices. The interaction left room for some cautious optimism that perhaps Coke's new leadership will be more responsive to public demands.

The concerns that were shared are as follows:

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Maude Barlow Addresses United Nations: Water Crisis Is the Most Urgent Ecological Crisis of Our Time
Posted by Staff, Food & Water Watch on April 22, 2009 at 2:47 PM.

Food & Water Watch Board Chair Maude Barlow addressed the United Nations General Assembly today to support the Bolivian call for an annual "International Mother Earth Day" celebration. Her speech was a call to action to implement the human right to water and abandon the "hard path" of large-scale technology  - dams, diversion and desalination  - in favor of the "soft path" of conservation, rainwater and storm water harvesting, recycling, alternative energy use, municipal infrastructure investment and local, sustainable food production.

Barlow's speech comes at a time when the quest for a formal right to water instrument is gathering strength both at the United Nations and within countries. She is hopeful that it is only a matter of time before the "blue covenant" she called for in her speech will be a reality.

"The problem is that we humans have seen the Earth and its water resources as something that exists for our benefit and economic advancement rather than as a living ecological system that needs to be safeguarded if it is to survive," Barlow said. "The human water footprint surpasses all others and endangers life on Earth itself."

Barlow, who was appointed last year as senior advisor on water to the president of the United Nations General Assembly,  also participated in an afternoon program with Bolivian President Evo Morales, Brazilian writer-theologian Leonardo Boff, and United Nations President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann. Barlow also briefed more than 35 countries and met with key United Nations agencies on this visit as part of her ongoing commitment to the human right to water.

"Water must be seen as a commons that belongs to the Earth and all species alike. It must be declared a public trust that belongs to the people, the ecosystem and the future and preserved for all time and practice in law,” Barlow said. “Clean water must be delivered as a public service, not a profitable commodity. We need to assert once and for all that access to clean, affordable water is a fundamental human right that must be codified in nation-state law and as a full covenant at the United Nations."

"Watersheds must be protected from plunder and we must revitalize wounded water systems with widespread watershed restoration programs,” Barlow urged.

Simply put, we must leave enough water in aquifers, rivers and lakes for their ecological health. This must be the priority: the precautionary principle of ecosystem protection must take precedence over commercial demands on these waters.”

Read Ms. Barlow’s remarks to the UNGA.

NY Poets Take on the Water Crisis
Posted by Poetic People Power, AlterNet on April 21, 2009 at 12:22 PM.

Poetic People Power presents TAPPED OUT: WORDS ABOUT THE WATER CRISIS on Saturday, April 25, 2009 at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. This new show will premiere seven commissioned poems about the privatization of water, the dangers facing freshwater, and the growing scarcity of this precious resource. Poets include Tara Bracco, Erica R. DeLaRosa, Andy Emeritz, Frantz Jerome, Angela Kariotis, Dot Portella, and Jonathan Walton.

TAPPED OUT: WORDS ABOUT THE WATER CRISIS will present some of the best political poets in the city as they raise their voice to focus on the world water crisis. Poetic People Power founder, Tara Bracco, picked the water crisis as this year's theme after seeing the award-winning movie Flow: For the Love of Water. "This is the most important issue of our time because everyone needs access to clean, freshwater in order to survive," says Bracco. "Water belongs to the people not to corporations. We hope this year's show will make people think twice before they buy bottled water."  

This year's poets are Tara Bracco (activist and founder of Poetic People Power); Erica R. DeLaRosa (co-founder of Mahina Movement); Andy Emeritz (writer and musician of the band Field Theory); Frantz Jerome (rapper of Cypher Matrix); Angela Kariotis (one-woman show Reminiscence of the Ghetto & Other Things That Raized Me); Dot Portella (member of 1997 Nuyorican National Slam Team) and Jonathan Walton (author of three poetry books Including Legal: The First 21 Years).  

Poetic People Power was created to establish an ongoing project that combines poetry and activism. Poetic People Power entertains, informs, and raises awareness about political topics by engaging audiences through the expressive art of poetry. Since 2003, founder Tara Bracco has been bringing together a diverse dynamic group to highlight issues of injustice through the power of spoken word. Packed crowds at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Ars Nova Theater and the Bowery Poetry Club have heard passionate and powerful performances about equal wages, preserving the environment, universal healthcare, and more. This project has worked with over 20 poets and commissioned over 45 new poems on social and political issues.  

TAPPED OUT: WORDS ABOUT THE WATER CRISIS will be presented on Saturday, April 25th @ 7pm - Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery). Tickets are $10 and are available for purchase at the door on the day of the event. For more information, please visit www.poeticpeoplepower.com.

Why I Was Deported from Turkey
Posted by Ann Kathrin Schneider, International Rivers on March 21, 2009 at 3:30 AM.

Back home in Berlin, I am overwhelmed by the show of support for our message that dams are a risky business. In India alone, one hundred activists and organizations signed a petition denouncing our deportation from the World Water Forum and thanking International Rivers for saying no to risky dams.

Payal and I traveled to the World Water Forum in Istanbul to inform the world about the risks of building large dams. We painted a large banner in red, yellow and blue with the words "No Risky Dams" and brought that into the official forum. With the banner, we wanted to show the world that while the World Water Forum seeks to advocate for the construction of more large dams, people around the world know that dams are a risky business.

Minutes before the start of the opening ceremony on Monday morning, when a speaker asked everybody to take their seats, and the stage was packed with reporters, we unfurled our banner. Filled with pride in our message and ready to get the attention of the entire 3,000-person audience, we held the banner over our heads and shouted "No Risky Dams!"

Not even a minute later, security took the banner and led us out of the venue. First, we thought that they would keep us for some hours, take away our conference accreditation and then let us go. However, after six hours, we were informed that we had to leave the country, or face time in a Turkish prison. We were accused of “influencing public opinion.”

While we of course wanted to influence public opinion, the World Water Forum and the World Water Council, with their harsh reaction to our peaceful protest (for their reaction to a demonstration outside of the venue, read Peter's blog), sought to stifle the debate about controversial dams. This is no surprise, as Turkey is planning to build the Ilisu Dam, one of the largest currently planned dams, on the last free-flowing river in the country, the Tigris. The dam would have a reservoir of more than 300 square kilometers; threaten the habitats of endangered fish species, migrating birds and the Tigris turtle. It would also drown almost one hundred villages and displace more than 50,000 people who have not had the right to make their voices heard in the decisions related to the dam.

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Corporate Water Barons Indifferent to Running Water But Not Security at World Water Forum
Posted by Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch on March 19, 2009 at 5:15 AM.

Istanbul -- Now into its third day, the World Water Forum has an incredible police presence, and the security is downright oppressive. So much so that there are special VIP entrances and areas – including the restrooms. Yet despite the painstaking attention afforded to security, the forum is lax on certain other logistical details. Last night, one of the buildings that housed panel discussions and workshops did not have water for flushing the toilets or washing hands -- a sad but fitting metaphor for the inefficiencies of privatized water systems that the World Water Forum promotes.

Now into its third day, the World Water Forum has an incredible police presence, and the security is downright oppressive. So much so that there are special VIP entrances and areas – including the restrooms. Yet despite the painstaking attention afforded to security, the forum is lax on certain other logistical details. Last night, one of the buildings that housed panel discussions and workshops did not have water for flushing the toilets or washing hands -- a sad but fitting metaphor for the inefficiencies of privatized water systems that the World Water Forum promotes.

Indeed, it is security, not access to water, that reigns as the top concern here. Forum attendees must have their access badges scanned at multiple security checkpoints. Our whereabouts are tracked throughout the forum, following which building we are in and what workshops we are going to. Security intervenes if we try to ask questions at panels or ask to present information that is contrary to what is being promoted.  Even the bathrooms have security. What, do you suppose, are they so afraid of?

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Violent Clash Against Peaceful Protesters at World Water Forum
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on March 17, 2009 at 3:37 AM.

The fifth World Water Forum opened today in Istanbul with a clash between peaceful protesters and the Turkish police.

Here's a dispatch from Mary Ann Manahan of Focus on the Global South, Philipp Terhorst of Transnational Institute, and Martin Pigeon, Corporate Europe Observatory:

At 9:30 this morning, a group of about 300 Turkish and international activists began a peaceful march towards the entrance of the 5th World Water Forum in Beyoglu to express their concerns about the political agenda of the event and prevent people getting inside. Turkish police forces, outnumbering by far protesters, quickly intervened and charged, using rubber bullets, separating Turkish activists from international protesters and violently dispersing the action.

17 Turkish activists from the "No to commercialisation of water platform" were arrested, mostly women who couldn't escape fast enough and one high-profile leader of anti-dam movements. Arrested activists are now in hospital, waiting for their transfer to Vatan police station where they might be prosecuted for illegal protest. The renowned Turkish hospitality seems to not apply to those critical of the World Water Forum.

Other activists then entered the WWF venue to protest against this inacceptable way of treating democratic protests and further challenge the World Water Council and Turkish government's water privatisation plans.

The week-long forum is expected to be contentious, with many groups from all over the world protesting the position of corporations at the decision-making table and plans for increased privatization of water. But the opening of the conference with a police crackdown has activist groups further incensed.

The People's Water Forum, "representatives of a broad international coalition of water rights activists," denounced the repression:

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Forget Flowers -- Here's the Best V-Day Gift You Can Give
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on February 13, 2009 at 12:27 PM.

OK, I'm not normally in favor of commercial holidays like Valentine's Day, especially considering the environmental impacts and the impacts on water resources from the cut flower industry, but I can't pass up an opportunity to urge people to think differently when it comes to giving. And, when times are tough economically at home and across the globe, we should be hoping our dollar makes the biggest splash it can.

Here's how.

This Valentine's Day, MicroPlace, a website that enables everyday people to make investments in the world's working poor, is offering a different way for people to demonstrate their love on Valentine's Day through Invest With Your Heart, a program where people can make investments in honor of loved ones for as little as $20.

Anyone can log onto MicroPlace and invest as little as $20 "in honor of" a loved one. The honoree will receive a specially wrapped box of fair trade chocolate hearts from Divine Chocolate -- co-owned by a fair trade farming co-op of microfinance borrowers in Ghana -- along with a personalized gift card highlighting the impact of microfinance.

Because MicroPlace investors can reinvest their dollars over and over again, they can help an exponential number of the working poor lift themselves from poverty. Worldwide there are 100 million hardworking poor entrepreneurs who have benefited from microfinance while nearly 1 billion could benefit if given the opportunity. Invest With Your Heart aims to meet this need with the power of love.

Nothing says I love you like helping the working poor right?

If you're familiar with the idea of microfinance already, then I'm sure you get how huge this project can be. If not, here's the quick run down. MicroPlace, launched in 2007, was the first website to help people get involved in the amazing concept of microfinance -- giving small investments to people (or micro-loans) to help lift people out of poverty. To so many of the world's poor who live on a dollar a day, it is impossible to save money to start a business, grow more food, get the education needed to improve their circumstances, etc. But with small investments, you can change the life of a family and a community.

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