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Water and Big Business – Turning a Human Right into a Commodity
| May 3, 2011 | Comments (1)
What better way to make easy money is there than to sell something people can not live without for an incredible profit?
That is exactly what is happening with the privatization of the worlds fresh water supplies. Many municipal water supplies in the United States are controlled by corporations rather than local governments. The water is on public land and belongs to the people but in the early 1990s privatization programs began and now corporations can decide who gets the water and how much we have to pay for it.
Privatization of water supplies is going on around the world now and there are 10 companies that supply water for profit. The three largest companies are Suez and Veolia Environment of France and RWE-AG of Germany. These companies deliver fresh water and provide wastewater services to almost 300 million customers in over 100 countries.
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are backing efforts to privatize water supplies around the world. The corporations would have you believe that privatization of water supplies gives us an efficient and affordable way to supply water to the people that need it. The truth is that much of the world’s population does not have access to fresh water and with the privatization of water supplies prices for this precious resource have increased, making it even less accessible to the people that need it most.
Privatization of the water supply is just one more way for big business to get their hands into your pocket. The Nestlé Corporation is the world’s leading food company in terms of sales and one of their biggest products is bottled water. They sell water under brand names like Calistoga, Perrier, Arrowhead, Poland Spring. They sell bottled water under approximately 70 different brand names. Nestlé is a multinational corporation that is taking water from various sources across the United States and either selling it back to us at a huge profit or shipping it overseas.
The Nestlé Corporation takes advantage of a law called the “rule of capture” which states that groundwater is the private property of the owner of the overlying land and this law gives them the right to capture any water beneath their land. Many people refer to this law as the law of the biggest pump because whichever landowner (or corporation) has the biggest pumping capacity will easily be able to pump enough water out of the ground to drain the wells of adjacent landowners, basically giving the corporations the right to legally steal the water that belongs to their neighbors.
On February 28, 2007 the governor of Michigan signed a bill that allowed a multinational corporation (Nestlé) to take water from the Great Lakes, bottle it and sell around the world. Nestlé is allowed to take up to 250,000 gallons per day from Lake Michigan and then this foreign company is allowed to sell it back to us at incredible markups or take our water and send it overseas. Nestlé profits as much as $1.8 million per day by bottling and selling water that is taken from the Great Lakes and sold to people around the world.
Water that is on public land belongs to the people and the people should be able to have access to this valuable resource at an affordable price that would be enough to cover any processing and treatment that needs to take place. Instead we are turning our most precious resource into a commodity and allowing foreign companies to take it away from us and make huge profits.
We need to take our water back and stop allowing corporations to take what is rightfully ours and sell it back to us for a profit or sell it to someone else in another country. Contact your government representatives and put an end to this insanity.
Water and Big Business - Turning a Human Right into a Commodity | The Water Blog
| May 3, 2011 | Comments (1)
What better way to make easy money is there than to sell something people can not live without for an incredible profit?
That is exactly what is happening with the privatization of the worlds fresh water supplies. Many municipal water supplies in the United States are controlled by corporations rather than local governments. The water is on public land and belongs to the people but in the early 1990s privatization programs began and now corporations can decide who gets the water and how much we have to pay for it.
Privatization of water supplies is going on around the world now and there are 10 companies that supply water for profit. The three largest companies are Suez and Veolia Environment of France and RWE-AG of Germany. These companies deliver fresh water and provide wastewater services to almost 300 million customers in over 100 countries.
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are backing efforts to privatize water supplies around the world. The corporations would have you believe that privatization of water supplies gives us an efficient and affordable way to supply water to the people that need it. The truth is that much of the world’s population does not have access to fresh water and with the privatization of water supplies prices for this precious resource have increased, making it even less accessible to the people that need it most.
Privatization of the water supply is just one more way for big business to get their hands into your pocket. The Nestlé Corporation is the world’s leading food company in terms of sales and one of their biggest products is bottled water. They sell water under brand names like Calistoga, Perrier, Arrowhead, Poland Spring. They sell bottled water under approximately 70 different brand names. Nestlé is a multinational corporation that is taking water from various sources across the United States and either selling it back to us at a huge profit or shipping it overseas.
The Nestlé Corporation takes advantage of a law called the “rule of capture” which states that groundwater is the private property of the owner of the overlying land and this law gives them the right to capture any water beneath their land. Many people refer to this law as the law of the biggest pump because whichever landowner (or corporation) has the biggest pumping capacity will easily be able to pump enough water out of the ground to drain the wells of adjacent landowners, basically giving the corporations the right to legally steal the water that belongs to their neighbors.
On February 28, 2007 the governor of Michigan signed a bill that allowed a multinational corporation (Nestlé) to take water from the Great Lakes, bottle it and sell around the world. Nestlé is allowed to take up to 250,000 gallons per day from Lake Michigan and then this foreign company is allowed to sell it back to us at incredible markups or take our water and send it overseas. Nestlé profits as much as $1.8 million per day by bottling and selling water that is taken from the Great Lakes and sold to people around the world.
Water that is on public land belongs to the people and the people should be able to have access to this valuable resource at an affordable price that would be enough to cover any processing and treatment that needs to take place. Instead we are turning our most precious resource into a commodity and allowing foreign companies to take it away from us and make huge profits.
We need to take our water back and stop allowing corporations to take what is rightfully ours and sell it back to us for a profit or sell it to someone else in another country. Contact your government representatives and put an end to this insanity.
Water and Big Business - Turning a Human Right into a Commodity | The Water Blog
