OCTOBER 1, 2003
Smoke Signals 2003 water feature
7
Corporate Ownership Of Water Is Growing
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Vivendi Environment, a French
multi-national company, recently
privatized an Argentine province's
water supply and the water bill for one
man's home more than doubled over
night, according to an article in The
New York Times.
A primary reason for farming a
water system out to a corporation, the
article said, is because so many are
antiquated and the
pipes are in great
need of repair. And
while corporations
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promise the world when they want a
government's approval for the
privatization, the money that ends up
being invested in maintaining the sys
tem often comes right from the people
who buy it, or the governments that
farm out the service.
"Any investments (in the system)
they made," complained a protest
leader in the Argentine province of
Tucuman, "were with government
money."
Demonstrations by water users in
Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama and South
Conservation
After years of struggle to bring
sufficient water to the Grand Ronde
area, the Tribe is not about to flush
it all down the toilet and be done
with it. Waste water from the ca
sino is reclaimed for irrigation.
Since 1995, the Tribe's water treat
ment plant has been recycling wa
ter to irrigate the land around the
casino.
"We have a very high level of treat
ment," said Tribal Engineer Eric
Scott, "and an ultra-violet light dis
infection system that enables us to
re-use waste water for irrigation."
As a result, the 170,000 gallons a
week that the Tribe uses to irrigate
the land around the casino is just
re-constituted, cleaned and scrubbed
waste water.
"We also have the ability to aug
ment the irrigation systems with
A Tribal Source of Bottled
With sixty acres at the foot of Spirit
Mountain, John "J.R." Robertson
(Sioux) also has a house that is hooked
up to a pristine source of spring water.
"When the land was allotted in the
1850s, this water right came with it,"
he said.
A few years ago, Robertson set in
motion a company to take advantage
of the resource. A real family opera
tion, Spirit Mountain Water LLC in
cludes two brothers, Jess (Sioux) and
Ron (Sioux), Jess's wife, Tribal mem
ber Candy, and partners David and Rose
Hutton. The goal: to market a Native
American bottled water product to a
Native American clientele.
With bottles and labels, the product
has been sold at a Veterans Pow-wow
with the proceeds donated to the Vet
erans' Memorial. Now, the company
has hopes of getting it on the shelves of
the Spirit Mountain Casino.
Currently, the casino buys, serves and
sells a house-labeled brand of bottled
water from the Sweetwater Company
in Culver, Oregon. Sweetwater gets its
water from Opal Springs in the Crooked
River Canyon in central Oregon and also
sells the Earth20 brand of bottled wa
ter. The same springs supply the city of
Africa all raise the same question:
"should water, a substance close to life
itself, be a profit-making business?"
said The Times article.
The questions and the concerns are
not new because before corporations
got in on the act, governments were
failing their people miserably. A 1999
World Commission on Water for the
21Ht Century report "surveyed water
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vending in 16 developing countries and
found that the poor pay on average 12
times more per liter, mostly to inde
pendent vendors who sell tap water in
small jugs or buckets," according to a
CNN report.
And the problems are not just in
developing nations. Atlanta's water
is not privatized, yet, according to an
article last year in U.S. News and
World Report, "The tap water was so
dark in Atlanta some days this sum
mer that Meg Evans couldn't see the
bottom of the tub when she filled the
Efforts Make A Difference
water from the river, but hopefully that
will not be necessary," said Scott.
At Chxi Musam Illihi, the new low
income rental housing development off
Grand Ronde Road, a 90,000-gallon cis
tern was built into the project to col
lect water for irrigating the property,
according to Duane Hussey, Develop
ment and Construction Coordinator for
the Tribes' Housing Authority.
From the roofs, the water is collected
in a sump where solids from the roofs
settle out, and the clean water then
goes into a 5,000-gallon tank, or the
first level of storage. As the cistern's
supply is used for irrigation, more is
pumped up from the 5,000-gallon tank.
Water not needed for irrigation simply
continues its path back to the earth.
The project saves the community an
estimated 270,000 gallons of water dur
ing the dry season, said Hussey.
Culver.
The big hitch has been finding in
vestors "who believe in a dream," said
Robertson.
This team is not alone in keeping this
dream alive. The industry has been
exploding worldwide. Nestle, the world
leader in bottled water, sells nearly 70
brands, according to TomPaine.com, a
public interest journal. In 2000, the
industry sold 22.3 billion gallons of
bottled water. The sparkling image of
the industry also has a dark side.
A 1999 Natural Resources Defense
Council study found that "one-third of
the waters tested contained levels of
contamination including synthetic
organic chemicals, bacteria and ar
senic - in at least one sample that ex
ceeded allowable limits under either
state or bottled water industry stan
dards or guidelines."
A 2001 study by the World Wildlife
Federation "shows that the bottled
water industry uses 1.5 rmllion tons of
plastic every year, and when plastic
bottles are being manufactured or dis
posed of, they release toxic chemicals
into the atmosphere." The report also
said that "the transportation of bottled
water is a contributing factor to the
bath." Decayed old pipes took
the blame in this case.
The question remains
whether private ownership of
the water will improve the poor
record of governments when it
comes to keeping the water flow
ing, or simply profit from the
crisis.
Corporations "own or operate
water systems
across the globe
that bring in
about $200 billion
amitm
a year," The New York Times
article said. And that represents
about 7 percent of the world's
population.
The U.N. estimates that wa
ter scarcity and impurity are
killing billions of children every
year.
"One person in six lives with
out regular access to safe drink
ing water," said United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan
on the occasion of this year's
World Environment Day.
"Limited-flow" toilets, fau
cets and showerheads are in
all of the Tribe's housing fa
cilities to save water and the
future holds even larger con
servation efforts.
The Tribe is working to
ward developing dual systems
for each housing unit one
for clean water and one for so
called 'gray' water.
The average water con
sumption per person per day
in the Willamette Valley is
270 gallons, said Hussey. "In
the Elders' project, we are
down to 90-gallons-a-day us
age." "We do take water conser
vation very seriously," he
said.
Water?
problem of global warming."
Rural communities around the
world have seen members of the
industry buying up farmland for
the wells, and then moving on
when the wells are depleted, ac
cording to the TomPaine.com
article.
"For the same price as one
bottle of this "boutique" con
sumer item, said the American
Water Works Association, one
thousand gallons of tap water
could be delivered to a person's
home."
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