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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Corporations Are Creating a Life-Threatening Water Shortage
by Carl Gibson
Imagine the swift and fierce government response if Al-Qaeda took a precious resource out of a delicate environment, sold it for profit and endangered 40 million people in the process. Now compare that example to the nonexistent government response to American energy companies, golf courses and corporations like Nestlé taking 75 percent of the groundwater out of the Colorado River Basin at a time when the American West is facing a record drought.
Corporations will continue to abuse their constitutional protections as legal persons until fresh water has become fully privatized, or until corporate constitutional rights are eliminated with a constitutional amendment.
Depleting a Precious Resource
Nestlé has two plants on the Colorado River Basin that take in water to bottle and sell under its Arrowhead and Pure Life brands. One is in Salida, Colorado, on the eastern edge of the Upper Basin; the other is in the San Gorgonio Pass, halfway between San Bernardino and Indio, Calif., on the western edge of the Lower Basin. According to annual reports filed up to 2009, Nestlé bottles between 595 and 1,366 acre-feet of water per year enough to flood that many acres under a foot of water from the California source. The company takes 200 additional acre-feet per year from the Colorado source. This means altogether Nestlé is draining the Colorado River Basin of anywhere from 250 million to 510 million gallons of water per year, according to the acre-feet-to-gallons conversion calculator.
The Colorado River Basin is an especially critical water resource, responsible for supplying municipal water to 40 million Americans and irrigating 5.5 million acres of land. As the US Bureau of Reclamation has documented, 22 federally-recognized tribes, seven national wildlife refuges, four national recreation areas, and 11 national parks depend on the basin. In a new report by NASA and the University of California at Irvine, researchers discovered that between December of 2004 and November of 2013, the basin lost 53 million acre-feet of water. 41 million acre-feet, or 75 percent of that loss, came from groundwater sources, like those pumped by Nestlé. Thats more than twice the amount of water contained in Lake Mead, Americas largest freshwater reservoir. In the meantime, Nestlé, with 29 water bottling facilities across North America, pocketed $4 billion in revenue from bottled water sales in 2012 alone.
- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/how-corporations-are-creating-life-threatening-water-shortage
4b5f940728b232b034e4
(120 posts)Just this week a city in CA decided to waste over 20,000,000 gallons of water by refusing to turn off the flow after a leak.
CrispyQ
(36,461 posts)It's insanity.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Read it and weep
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025293904
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)Really needs to stop!
Initech
(100,068 posts)It's getting to the point where corporations can (and have) literally get away with murder. Unless we reverse deregulation expect things to get worse.
TBF
(32,056 posts)capitalism will kill us all
colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)I thought I might move west or southwest when I got older but...I'm partial to having water available.
The drop in water levels of basins out there, and the rate it is continuing to fall, is startling.
Corporations are raping our land for profit with the help of politicians from both sides of the aisle. I see those BP ads on TV about how it's all good in the Gulf Of Mexico now and I laugh. Yeah, right.