Water & Industrial Water Market Value

Water

“Know where your water comes from and where it goes when it leaves you.”

From Taj Mahal - given to me by Don Roberts

In the western U.S. water is subsidized for agriculture. Certified Organic as well as commercial agriculture crops are grown in deserts and irrigated with surface water. This water is diverted from sources up north in California and from the Colorado River. The Colorado river is a polluted river, like most in this country. This water is not processed to remove the contaminants. This water becomes part of the food we eat. There has been so much diversion of the Colorado river that it no longer reaches the ocean. It can then be argued that there is that much less pollution entering the oceans of the world.

Industrial Water Market Value

Without a healthy water-base life cannot be healthy. If life does exist with an unhealthy water-base it will mirror that water-base.

Through the existing industrial infrastructure comes the pollution and the toxicity that destroys our water; hence, sealing the infrastructure’s, the culture’s and the society’s own doom.

There are corporations buying water rights from municipalities to provide water for the populace at a market value. There are corporations around the world succeeding at getting control of water rights so they can sell the water at market value. Water can never be reduced to market value, because it is a life giving right

not a product.

The argument goes that if companies had to pay more for the water they use in their manufacturing processes then they wouldn’t pollute it. Really? 

Assigning a market value for water only makes water more expensive and consequently only gives the biggest companies access to the water-base. This means that those companies get to exercise more control over the water and the population that depends upon it. This means that the population ultimately pays for cleaning up their drinking water. When water has a market value, poor, marginalized populations are going to lose access to water they can drink, pollution is going to happen anyway and corporations are going to make a lot more money. This means that the populace loses. The corporations win. In exchange, the population gets to keep buying cheap stuff when they want it. Business as usual keeps going. Are we willing to have this kind of trade off?

Instead of charging companies more for water thinking that they won’t pollute something they paid a lot of money for, we need to hold them accountable for the pollution they cause and make them clean the water they pollute. Be it ground water or surface water, corporations can still have cheep water. But then, if they pollute this water it won’t matter what the cost is to clean it up. They would have to clean it. The polluters must fix the problems they caused. Not the government, not the people who live there

but the polluters.