H2O BUSINESS TURNS PUBLIC WATER INTO PRIVATE WINDFALL

By - - and Mark Sommer Reprint | | Print |

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BERKELEY, Feb 1 2004 (IPS) - In a seemingly unquenchable thirst for new wellsprings of profit, multinational food and drink industry giants are rapidly draining public water supplies worldwide into a billion-dollar bottled water industry, writes Mark Sommer, director of the US-based Mainstream Media Project and host of award-winning internationally-syndicated radio program \’\’A World of Possibilities\’\’ The issue, Sommer writes in this analysis, is whether industry giants are drowning in profits at public expense. When there are effectively no rules and no enforcement, when the profit margin puts drug dealers to shame, and an inalienable common resource is privatized at public expense, then we must reconsider the very basis of the enterprise. Pure fresh water is growing ever more scarce as population and pollution accelerate. But the most effective response is not to sell the last liters like fine wines to the fortunate few but to upgrade public water systems worldwide, at far lower individual and aggregate cost, so no one needs to resort to \’\’private\’\’ water.

In a seemingly unquenchable thirst for new wellsprings of profit, multinational food and drink industry giants are rapidly draining public water supplies worldwide into a billion-dollar bottled water industry. Advertising their beverages as the healthful alternative to sugar-laden sodas, companies like Perrier/Nestle (with 30 percent of the market), Danone (15 percent), Pepsi, and Coca-Cola have together created a USD 35 billion industry worldwide slated to grow 30 percent a year for the indefinite future.

It’s hard to argue with the virtues of pure water. Medical experts believe we consume far too little of it and urge that we drink up to eight glasses a day for optimal health. The issue, say critics of the bottled water industry, is not whether to drink water but whether industry giants are drowning in profits at public expense, placing the elixir of life out of reach of all but the affluent, leaving only the effluent for the planetary majority.

So dear has bottled water become that it now outprices oil three to one. In the US, bottled water costs about USD 4 a gallon if purchased in liter containers, gasoline USD 1.50 a gallon, filtered water eighteen cents, and tap water three-hundredths of a cent. At these prices, bottled water costs 13,200 times as much as tap water, a profit margin without precedent in human history.

Yet companies need only buy or lease the land on which a spring is situated and pay a nominal fee to gain limitless access to public groundwater supplies. In rural Wisconsin in the US, the state government provided Perrier with a ”high-cap” permit for unrestricted pumping — up to 500 gallons a minute, 24 hours a day — for a flat fee of USD 100. Attracted by the promise of jobs and industry, the state also offered Perrier USD 10 million in incentives and twelve years of suspended school taxes.

What enables companies to gain such favorable terms at public expense, apart from the influence their deep pockets buy, is groundwater laws dating from a time when water was abundant, population sparse, and irrigation demands limited. Texas and five other US states still apply a frontier-era ”rule of capture” familiarly known as ”biggest pump wins”. The law permits any landowner to pump right up to his property line, drain his neighbor’s water supply, and suffer no liability. Upholding the law in 1999, the Texas Supreme Court cited a mystical 1908 ruling that declared water so ”secret, occult, and concealed” that any effort to regulate it would be impossible.

Opponents of the bottled water industry cite a very different body of law of still more ancient derivation — the public trust doctrine that assigns governments the duty to assure universal access to the essential components of life, including air and water.

The bottled water industry is not confined to rich western nations. Residents of the water-rich US Pacific northwest quaff water shipped in from Fiji, 12,000 miles away. At the same time, from Ghana to India, Coca-Cola and other major multinationals are encountering stiffening resistance to their pumping and bottling operations from local residents who report their wells running dry, crops dying, and health flagging as the company drains their ancestral water sources. In the state of Kerala, India, Coke encountered such fierce opposition from a desperate but determined movement of rural women that it was forced to close its Plachimada bottling plant.

Despite its high price and reputation for purity, bottled water is not generally subject to the rigorous standards required of municipal water supplies. In a four-year study of a thousand samples of US bottled water, the Natural Resources Defense Council found that ”one fourth of bottled water is simply bottled tap water, some filtered and some not.” Moreover, the labeling and marketing is often misleading, ”implying the water comes from pristine sources when it does not. For example, one brand of `spring water’ whose label pictured a lake and mountains actually came from a well in an industrial facility’s parking lot near a hazardous waste dump”.

The US Food and Drug Administration exempts 60-70 percent of all bottled water sold in the United States from the agency’s bottled water standards simply because it is sold within and not between states. Even when it does regulate bottled water, the standards it applies are weaker in many ways than federal rules that apply to big city tap water, with just one inspector assigned to enforcement for the entire nation. In 1000 tests of 103 brands of bottled water, the Natural Resources Defence Council found that one-third of the samples ”contained significant contamination in at least one test.”

To cast doubt on the cost and quality of some bottled water and its impact on public water supplies is not to condemn the entire industry. As with other industries, there are those who play by the rules and those who don’t. But when there are effectively no rules and no enforcement, when the profit margin puts drug dealers to shame, and an inalienable common resource is privatized at public expense, then we must reconsider the very basis of the enterprise.

Pure fresh water is growing ever more scarce as population and pollution accelerate. But the most effective response is not to sell the last liters like fine wines to the fortunate few but to upgrade public water systems worldwide — at far lower individual and aggregate cost — to a level of purity where no one needs to resort to ”private” water. Then the only bottle you’ll ever need will be the one you fill from the wellsprings of our commonwealth. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)