Do it for your water and your WaterMan.

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Its Pushback Time.

After decades of a European Commission pushing for privatized water, it seems that civil society in Europe is calling for the end of water privatization.

The first-ever pan-European civil society coalition against water privatisation was launched last week during the European Social Forum in the Swedish city Malmö. Including citizens groups from Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Turkey and a dozen other countries across Europe, the European Network for Public Water will insist on major changes in EU policies towards water management, away from the current pro-privatisation approach.

Providing water and basic water services for people has been one of the most basic jobs of any functioning government, has been on rise. Water resources and basic water infrastructure has been sold to the lowest bidder.

Water privatization, Call it crazy, call it a sell out of basic public responsibility, which it is.

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Sam's Choice Water, the Walmart Brand, is the biggest culprit.

Walmart’s Sam’s Choice bottled water purchased at several locations in the San Francisco bay area was polluted with disinfection byproducts called trihalomethanes at levels that exceed the state’s legal limit for bottled water (CDPR 2008). These byproducts are linked to cancer and reproductive problems and form when disinfectants react with residual pollution in the water.

Las Vegas tap water was the source for these bottles, according to Walmart representatives (EWG 2008). Also in Walmart’s Sam’s Choice brand, lab tests found a cancer-causing chemical called bromodichloromethane at levels that exceed safety standards for cancer-causing chemicals under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Proposition 65, OEHHA 2008). EWG is filing suit under this act to ensure that Walmart posts a warning on bottles as required by law: “WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer."

That just ain't right. Here people are, buying bottled water at gasoline prices, brainwashed to think bottled water is purer than regular tap water and then they have to contend with such poisons. But that's still the tip of the iceberg.

Altogether, the analyses conducted by the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory of these 10 brands of bottled water revealed a wide range of pollutants, including not only disinfection byproducts, but also common urban wastewater pollutants like caffeine and pharmaceuticals (Tylenol); heavy metals and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes; fertilizer residue (nitrate and ammonia); and a broad range of other, tentatively identified industrial chemicals used as solvents, plasticizers, viscosity decreasing agents, and propellants.

Download the Environmental Working Group's Guide for Safe Drinking Water. (PDF)

In the meantime, to set the story straight, relax and watch Penn & Teller's piece on bottled water ... (note of caution - video contains a few bits of scatological language - but not too bad)

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You gotta wonder why this too so long. 

Remember the guy Vaclav Havel? Vaclav is no slouch, he's the former President of the Czech Republic and the International Gandhi Peace Prize, Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award and the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He's finally gotten some play for an idea who's time has come - Mideast Peace through water cooperation. 

Across the Middle East, water is a security issue. Indeed, people are now recognising two important facts. First, nations faced with conflicting claims to water have historically found ways to collaborate rather than to fight. Even during the 60 years of conflict in  the Jordan Valley, water has more often been a source of cooperation than of conflict.

Second, water scarcity is seldom absolute, and even less often an explanation of poverty. To quote the United Nations Human Development Report for 2006: "There is more than enough water in the world for domestic purposes, for agriculture and for industry …Scarcity is manufactured through political processes and institutions that disadvantage the poor."

But almost every nation in the Middle East is using more water than arrives on a renewable basis. There simply is not enough water for everything these nations want to use it for, and the situation will only worsen.

Yet, even in Palestine, the crucial water issue is not thirst, but arrested economic development. In the short term, Palestine needs more water to provide employment and income from farming; in the longer term, educational, cultural, and political changes are needed in order to develop a capacity to adapt.The region's climate and geography mean that water resources are unavoidably shared. But only if water is shared in a rational manner that respects the region's fragile ecology will human life be sustainable.

This, my friends is not rocket science. Its time to notice that water is really an opportunity. It is an opportunity to come together.  Yes, we can go down the road with no cheese and fight to the death over water rights and resources. But, that is a bankrupt option.

Water is the only thing that supports the possibility of life itself. It supports the possibility of human development beyond savage survivalism to the opportunity of full actualization.  This, Vaclav Havel understands.

Thanks Vaclav. 

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Could water be McCain's Waterloo? 

The Barack Obama campaign is now running radio ads in Colorado attacking John McCain for talking about renegotiating the Colorado River Compact, according to the Pueblo Chieftain.

The Chieftain is the newspaper that first broke the story of McCain suggesting that the seven-state, 1922 River compact be renegotiated to allocate more water to his home state of Arizona as well as Nevada and California in an interview with veteran reporter Charles Ashby.

Doesn't sound like such a good idea John. As they say in Colorado - Whiskey is for drinkin' and water is for fightin'. 

“I don’t think there’s any doubt the major, major issue is water and can be as important as oil. So the compact that is in effect, obviously, needs to be renegotiated over time amongst the interested parties,” McCain told The Pueblo Chieftain. “I think that there’s a movement amongst the governors to try, if not, quote, renegotiate, certainly adjust to the new realities of high growth, of greater demands on a scarcer resource.”

The Colorado River Compact governs how seven Western states, including Colorado and Arizona, share the Colorado River.

“Conditions have changed dramatically,” McCain said, while noting that he was not necessarily supporting a mandatory reopening of the issue.

Some of the regional leaders from both sides of the aisle chimed in ... 

Colorado’s statesmen also questioned McCain’s plan, with Congressman John Salazar, D-Colo., saying he is “totally disappointed in McCain.”

Salazar, via his spokesman, Eric Wortman, pledged to fight McCain’s plan.

“Over my cold, dead, political carcass,” Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer said.

“The compact is the only protection Colorado has from several more politically powerful downstream states,” Schaffer added. “Opening it for renegotiation would be the equivalent of a lamb discussing with a pack of wolves what should be on the dinner menu.”

The Colorado River Compact is a 1922 agreement among seven U.S. states in the basin of the Colorado River in the American Southwest governing the allocation of the river's water among the parties of the interstate compact. The agreement was signed at a meeting at Bishop's Lodge, near Santa Fe, New Mexico by representatives of the seven states.

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One Lonely House. 

As you drive past the three police checkpoints to the tiny Texas island of Gilchrist, population 700, the odor is nauseating. Dead cows litter the highway.

But the true shock to the senses is the complete devastation on the island. A 14-foot wall of water devoured homes, churches, businesses and people's dreams.

There is one exception. An impressive yellow house sitting high atop 19-foot pilings is still standing. In fact it is the last house standing on the Gulf Front.

Should residents of Gilchrist, Crystal Beach and the Bolivar Peninsula of Texas rebuild - who knows?

There is no community of Gilchrist, at least for now. The Bolivar Peninsula hamlet exists only on maps after the storm surge of Hurricane Ike all but erased it. Beachside cottages on stilts are gone, the roads impassable.

Similarly, the hurricane devastated other spots along the Texas coast, places like Crystal Beach and Surfside Beach, paradises lost.

The impulse to rebuild will surely follow, but Ike's surge has infused the coastal development debate that has been a staple of the state's political rhetoric for decades.

Already, one week after the hurricane, some scientists, lawmakers and property owners have wondered whether an area that will likely be ravaged again is worth fixing and further developing.

We have to protect people from themselves and certainly from developers," said Jim Blackburn, an environmental attorney and coastal expert based in Houston. "Anyone who wants to buy on the West End of Galveston Island should be shown a picture of the Bolivar Peninsula after Ike."

The reality is, the coastline is changing, and changing fast, geologists say.

While trophy houses, subdivisions and hotels have sprouted along the Gulf of Mexico, rising seas and sinking land have led to the rapid erosion of the state's shoreline. By some estimates, as much as 10 feet of beachfront washes away each year.

Hurricanes cause even more damage to fragile barrier lands, such as Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula, by raking even more sand into back-shore bays and hindering the natural accumulation of sediment on the ocean side.

As the sandy shore shifts over decades, a barrier island may look the same, but it will be farther landward. Houses that once stood hundreds of feet from the surf will be encroaching on the Gulf.

Back in college, my oceanography professor said, if you live by the beach you should be prepared to have your home taken from you. That is way it works. The ocean giveth and the ocean taketh away.

In the meantime help the victims of Hurricane Ike - Donate generously.

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